In recent years the importance of physical exercise has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds, but unfortunately the spotlight has been taken away from how important it is to keep your brain active and healthy. Once you’re out of school it can be easy to get into a routine of work-relax-sleep-repeat and your mental faculties will begin to suffer as a result.
Brain fitness is a growing topic of discussion, with scientists at the forefront saying that proper brain training can improve memory and stave off degenerative diseases like dementia or Alzheimer’s. Anything that engages the brain is considered brain fitness, like learning a new skill or challenging yourself mentally. Essentially, anything that “gets the juices flowing” is a perfect way to give your brain a workout.
Why Is Brain Training Important?
There’s an old adage that goes something like this: use it or lose it. This concept applies to your mental capacity as well as your physical body. An inactive mind is much more likely to deteriorate with age, with memory and difficulty completing complex tasks becoming most apparent. While many people have simply accepted these things as a consequence of becoming old, it doesn’t have to be that way. When your brain is inactive certain areas shrink as the neural pathways within get weaker which can have far ranging consequences like hormonal imbalances and of course dementia later in life.
Choosing to keep your brain active and engaged slows down the process of age-related brain deterioration and keeps you at your best for as long as possible.
Ways To Engage Your Mind
To work out your muscles, you do weightlifting, simple enough. But how do you train your brain? Well, according to Brain Fitness Solutions, there’s actually a myriad of ways to strengthen some of the neural pathways in your brain for specific results.
Memory Workouts
It is said that memory works just like a muscle and you need to constantly use it to keep it as nimble and ready to go as possible. Simple matching games as well as having to memorize a list in a specific order and repeat it back to yourself is just one way to keep your memory engaged. Also, something called the number game in which you take a number, add 3 to it 3 times, then subtract 7 from it 7 times engages both the reasoning and memory parts of the brain, so there are compound workouts so to speak when it comes to brain games.
Pattern Learning
Choosing to engage in pattern learning exercises is great for the frontal lobe, leading to an overall healthier brain. This is most easily done through online resources since it is a much easier way to deliver this kind of training. Doing a puzzle book or sudoku is a good real-life alternative if you don’t have access to the Internet.
Conclusion
The biggest hurdle when it comes to aging gracefully is being diligent in maintenance of both your physical and mental health. There’s more than enough resources on how to keep your physical body in good shape but we’ve only recently began figuring out the best ways to keep the mind active. Finding fun ways to keep your brain active and chugging along is essential to staying at the top of your game, so try and incorporate some brain teasers into your daily routine.
