Keeping Mental Function

An active brain is a healthier brain.

With brain power and mental capacity, as with the body, “use it or lose it” applies. It is an old cliché but it is true. Exercise your brain to keep it functioning well.

If you continue to be mentally active then you lower your risk of age-related dementia.

It has been shown many times over the years that those have interests or hobbies that require them to be mentally active, or like to do puzzles and brain teasers, or have jobs that require lots of mental agility, have a slowed mental decline.

Recent research has shown that it is possible for our brains to rewire and gain new function. We do not need to slide off into senility just because we are aging.

Recently there are number of brain training programs that have been developed to exercise our brains, and improve out mental function. Examples of these are Luminosity and Posit Science.

Aside from brain training programs, how can you keep your mental agility?

Basically by finding some things that are interesting to you that require some reasoning or by learning a new skill. They have to be interesting to you, or you won’t continue to do them. To get benefit from exercising the brain, you have to keep it up.

Many people like puzzles. These help with reasoning and often memory too. Sudoku has become very popular. If you have not tried it, do a quick internet search and find some easy puzzles to try it out. For something so simple, it can be quite complex. How about Mahjong tiles or other games on the computer? Mahjong involves logic, memory and observational skills.

Going to vacation in Mexico, French Caribbean or other country. Try learning a little of the local language. Research has shown that the learning another language is excellent for keeping the brain sharp.

Try adding some mental exercises into your daily life. You could figure out how to be more efficient in working in the kitchen, best route for running a list of errands, how many spoons you use a week, see if you can name everything that is on a particular shelf without looking.

Hopefully you have an interesting, varied job that makes you think, figure things out and make decisions. If not, think about ways that you could make your job more mentally challenging. Perhaps sometimes, you could use a pencil and paper instead of the computer or calculator to figure out some sales numbers. How about mentally rearranging the office, so that those two over there who gossip all the time would be separated, or so that people using the copier no longer get in the way of anybody passing through. Waht ever gets you thinking about something different.

Try to think of a variety of activities that you can do to keep or increase your mental agility. An array of assorted things will probably hold your interest better. Additionally, a diverse array of activities will increase different aspects of mental agility.