translated from Spanish: At what times of the day your brain is more efficient

the brain is not a perfect machine that always work equally. And physical responses to the events of the day are not consistent at all times.
Intuitively, it is likely that you experience a decrease in concentration after eating. But neurological responses fluctuate much more than a numbness after lunch.
How to identify the signals that the brain undergoes changes while you work?
And if you knew when is your best time of performance, do you planearías your day differently?
To pay attention to the neurological differences, can you do that your brain is a better employee?
Set the stress in the morning the evidence suggests that if your performance is not best in the mornings, it is better to not try to force it.
Despite the advice of famous business leaders and celebrities with extreme physical training routines, changing your sleep pattern does not necessarily produce better performance if it is not part of your natural rhythm.
Getty ImagesSe recommended to deal with stressful situations in the morning for a better functioning of the brain. However, the morning is still a very important part of the day.
A study on Japanese workers showed that the brain responds better to stressful events during the morning.
Employees were exposed to two stressful tasks during the workday: one to two hours of waking up (the first day of work) and the other to 10 hours (before leaving office).
The study revealed that workers cortisol levels were significantly high after early testing, but not after the last one.
“Cortisol plays an important role in protecting our bodies,” said Yujiro Yamanaka, Professor at Hokkaido University in Japan. “Cortisol is the major hormone involved in the reaction of fight or flight (or acute stress response)”, a physiological reaction to the perception of damage, attack or threat.
Without the release of cortisol, parts important reaction of fight or flight do not occur. Cortisol regulates blood pressure and also increases the levels of sugar in the blood. This ensures that when you are stressed, you enter into panic and have the mind and energy ready to do something about it.
The hormone also restores equilibrium after a stressful event, which means that you can stabilize you better after a morning of stress. If the moment of stress occurred at night, it could have an impact on your mind.
Stressful events repeated at the end of the day may also cause health problems long-term such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, as well as depression, warns Yamanaka.
Find your best time Getty ImagesLa sleepiness, alertness, short term memory, and even performance during the fiscal year related to the rhythm of body temperature. Cortisol levels may be higher in the morning to help us to better deal with the early tasks.
“Not all people are most effective in the morning,” says Cristina Escribano Barreno, psychologist at the Complutense University of Madrid.
“Sayings as ‘to the early bird God helps him’ bring to light that our working life is oriented to the morning, by what people who prefer the morning have an advantage.”
Be a morning or night person is influenced by many things: age, sex, social and environmental factors. Our bodies prepare us for the stress of the day shortly after waking, as long as you have this chemical advantage, so better make the most of it.
However, for certain tasks, our bodies take a time to get in shape. Performance on simple tasks such as mental arithmetic is correlated with the body-core temperature: higher is the temperature, better is the performance.
In general, our bodies are warmer in the early hours of the night, so it is better to let simple mental tasks until then. This daily rhythm is controlled by our circadian clock, which means that our preference for getting up early or late has little effect.
“Getty ImagesLa body temperature affects cognitive processes.” In the morning people, (increased body temperature) appears a little earlier and appears later in the afternoon people”, says Konrad Jankowski, psychologist at the University of Warsaw, Poland. “But, in general, this time difference is not surprising: a maximum of a few hours”.
Higher body temperatures caused by normal daily changes increased the metabolic activity of the cerebral cortex. This accelerates cognitive processes.
“Artificial increases in body temperature can also increase performance, but only to levels slightly higher than 37 degrees Celsius.” A brain boiling would not work well “, says Jankowski sleepiness, alertness, short term memory, and even performance during exercise are related to body temperature rhythm, says Jankowski. But that does not necessarily mean that the temperature directly affects all these processes.
“It is rather the circadian clock that affects temperature and other functions, by which, depending on the temperature profile, performance can be predicted.” For example, there is an increased risk of accidents when sleepiness and alertness decreases in the early hours of the morning, moment in which the body temperature is low ‘. ”
Respects your sleep cycle Getty ImagesEl the sleep cycle is essential for the correct functioning of the brain. For more complex tasks, however, the best time of the day depends on much more than if you’re a morning or night person. Most importantly is to isolate themselves from distractions, and is better to do it in a way that suits your sleep cycle.
“People need to perform very complex tasks requiring to avoid distractions often choose hours in which the rest of the world is asleep,” says Jankowski. “For morning people, this would be very early in the morning before others are awake. For nighttime, this would be the time when others are already asleep.”
It is safe to say that labour stressful situations, such as presentations or conflict management, should be prioritized at the beginning of your day, then give margin to return to work. This gives time to later in the day to concentrate on more individual tasks that require focus the mind, but allows some flexibility depending on what kind of person you are.
So the best way to prepare your brain for the workday can start from the comfort of your own bed.
If you want you can read the article in English here.
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Original source in Spanish