Preserve and Build Your Memory

Like your muscles, your brain needs regular workouts to stay healthy and fit as you age.

Benefits of Brain Exercises

  1. Increases Cognitive Reserve 
  2. Protects Your Memory
  3. Delays or Prevents some Neurological changes**
  4. 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
  1. 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
  2. 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

Click to watch the video on foxrochester.com