Did you know that exercising your brain is also part of staying healthy?

Most people have a pretty good understanding that staying healthy typically requires some sort of exercise—even if it’s gentle chair exercises, light walking, or stretching—and eating right.

However, mental fitness includes your brain health and also your emotional health.  Keeping it in tip-top shape helps you do things like:

• Slow down
• Destress
• Decompress
• Boost a declining memory (or prevent it from getting to that point)

According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, certain memory training exercises can increase “fluid intelligence”.

Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason and solve new problems.

Exercising your brain helps activate neurons and parts of your brain that you may not be using regularly.

Imagine if you just sat and watched TV all day without really doing anything to have to think.

You’re not activating different parts of your brain, which means some parts of your brain may be getting slower to respond.

This may eventually lead to slower responses in conversation, reactions to outside stimuli, memory impairment, and even brain fog.

How Do I Exercise My Brain?

Exercising your brain seems like a strange concept, considering it feels like thinking all day would be enough exercise.

But when all you’re doing is thinking about TV shows or about your daily worries, you’re only using one side of your brain.

To get a good hard brain sweat in, make a point to do one or more of these things at least once a day:

Do crossword puzzles

Whether it’s in the daily newspaper, a crossword puzzle book or even a crossword puzzle app, doing a crossword can help stimulate your brain, increase your vocabulary, and help you use parts of your brain you don’t typically use in everyday tasks. If you’d prefer to do a crossword puzzle online, try USA Today’s puzzle games.

Read a book

Grab a fiction book and escape to far-away places while trying to imagine what the worlds would look like visually or pick up some non-fiction literature and learn a bunch of new things you’d always wanted to know more about. Since you can’t walk to the library right now, try ordering your books from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or you can get an ebook version for your Kindle or from Google Books.  Digital books also gives you the option to read any book in large print if that’s your preference.

Put together a jigsaw puzzle

Try a 1000-piece or more complicated puzzle or try something simpler and go for bigger pieces with wildlife and nature scenes. Whatever you choose, when you do a puzzle, you’re using multiple cognitive functions and the exercise is also a protective factor for visuospatial cognitive aging.

Play a musical instrument

Maybe you’ve played guitar your whole life or maybe you have a passion for the piano. Or maybe you’ve never played an instrument in your life. No matter what the circumstances, playing an instrument can help you use the creative side of your brain, and if you’re learning a whole new instrument or some new songs, the concentration it takes to learn something new strengthens your brain!

Learn a new language

Websites such as duolingo and babbel allow you to learn a new language at your own pace. Learning a new language can make your brain concentrate and focus on listening, which stimulates the brain.  It strengthens your vocabulary (in both languages) too!

You can do one or all of these activities and find yourself strengthening your brain.

Or maybe you have another brain-stimulating activity that you are passionate about and could return to if it’s been awhile.

It doesn’t matter what you do to stimulate your brain, just make sure you do it (and make sure you have fun with it too!).

Caregivers at Assisting Hands® Home Care can help aging patrons improve their mental health journey by assisting them with brain stimulating and enjoyable activities.

Assisting Hands® Home Care takes great measures to provide the best caregivers who can help seniors improve their mental health journey.

Our caregivers can also provide services such as companionship, reminders to take medications, assist with dressing and taking walks, and more.

Other services include meal preparation, groceries, shopping, Alzheimer’s and dementia care, and more to maximize the health and wellness of our beloved seniors.  Call us today!