Like your muscles, your brain needs regular workouts to stay healthy and fit as you age.
Benefits of Brain Exercises
- Increases Cognitive Reserve
- Protects Your Memory
- Delays or Prevents some Neurological changes**
- Helps Regain Lost Brainpower
**Catholic nuns- Autopsy revealed Alzheimer’s lesions with no symptoms, lived a life that increased their Cognitive Reserve:
- Life of Meditation
- Continued Studying
- Eating a low fat diet
- Strong social ties with nuns and community
- Stimulate Your Brain in Several Ways (Brush your teeth with your opposite hand; read a variety of material including comic strips, novels, and the newspaper)
- Use Creativity
- Challenge
- Novelty
- Do Not Become Passive- will atrophy
Be Creative
- Sculpt- Use Play dough, you can re-use it
- Paint
- Draw or Color in a coloring book
- Craft Kits
- Woodworking
Test Your Recall
- Make a list — Grocery items, Things to do, Family Birthdays, etc. — and memorize it.
- An hour or so later, see how many items you can recall.
Do Math In Your Head
- Add up grocery items, bills, etc. without the aid of writing down or a calculator
- Make this more difficult by walking at the same time.
Cooking
- Challenge your taste buds – Identify individual ingredients in your meal
- Cooking class/ New Recipes – Uses senses: smell, touch, sight, and taste, using different parts of the brain
- Cook with a Friend
Learn a Foreign Language or to Play a Musical Instrument
Stimulates the Brain by:
- Listening
- Hearing
- Memorization
- Challenging and Teasing your Brain
Play Games
- Any games, the more variety, the better
- Monopoly, Cards, Chess, Electronic Games, Board Games
- Its Social too!
Stay Connected and Socialize
- Have Company for Dinner
- Join a Club
- Support Groups
- Invite Children and Teens over
- Pets