A lot of brain fitness and health advice is good old fashioned common sense:
- Eat lots of fruits and vegetables
- Get plenty of rest
- Reduce the amount of stress in your life
- Be active
We’re familiar with these healthy tips because we’ve been reading them for more years than we’d care to count. These 4 rules are the core of every disease-prevention tool box out there. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, obesity, and so on – none of these tend to favor the individual who eats a healthy diet, gets plenty of activity in their life, gets around 7 hours of sleep each night, and manages stress (rather than the other way around).
The fact that we’re so familiar with them is what concerns me. Sometimes we take them for granted. They become like the old standards:
- If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.
- Wash your hands before eating.
- Brush your teeth 3x a day.
- Always say PLEASE and THANK YOU.
- etc…
I don’t have to point out how few of these we adhere to religiously. Don’t tell my dentist, but I can’t remember the time I brushed my teeth 3x a day.
When we hear things so often (or read them, for that matter), we get to the place where they don’t even register. How many times have you read an article about health and fitness and just glanced over the paragraph about trans fats as you thought, “Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”?
When advice can help us live longer and live better, we need to stop glancing and start advancing. Our heart and our brains desperately need for us to eat healthier, stress less, get more activity, and sleep 7 hours each night. Don’t wait until problems creep up before you give your life a healthy overhaul – do it before any problems are even thought about.
One of the Most Important Necessities of Brain Strengthening
In addition to the healthy advice above that we’re all going to start LIVING OUT rather than LEAVING OUT, an equally important part of brain strengthening, improving your memory, and preventing Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia is this: Work out and challenge your brain each and every single day. Yes, you should read a variety of subjects. But if you want to really challenge your brain and flex your mental muscles, you need to fall in love with brain training games.
These brain training games can improve your memory, train you to think faster, help you focus, and make your confidence soar. Some games that you may have on your shelves qualify: Scrabble, Monopoly, Pictionary, Checkers, LIFE, etc.
As someone pretty much… make that very much… obsessed with the subjects of brain health, fighting memory loss, and preventing dementia (including Alzheimer’s), I’d love to see people collecting and using brain training and strengthening games as faithfully as resistance bands and dumbbells. A pet peeve is when people put their ALL into their physical health without thinking about their mental health whatsoever. Certainly, many things that improve our physical health also improve our mental health – but it takes more. And, seriously, what’s the use of a strong body if one has a weak mind? Our brains are our control centers. They deserve more of our attention!
For optimum brain strength and health, we have to challenge our mind and work it out as we do the rest of our bodies.
That’s where brain games can be golden. And fun! The game shown at the top of this article is a perfect example. This game is the Name 5 Game and it should, in my humble opinion, be the first brain game added to a growing collection. Why? Because it meets the criteria:
- It’s fun! You’ll play regularly – for fun without even thinking about it’s function.
- It’s effective. The Marble Store’s Brain expert puts it this way: “Activate your frontal cortex as you think critically and make decisions during this game.” What they said.
- Games such as this train you to think fast on your feet. Remember in school when the teacher asked a question and your hand darted up? Or when you completed homework in 20 minutes because your bike was waiting for you? We can train our brain to work faster again. The great thing is, it’ll be as fun as a bike ride!
I hope you’ll click through and check out this exciting game, as well as the countless others in Marbles: The Brain Store. You might want to start with their 2012 Marbles Sweet 16. WHERE you start isn’t nearly as important as THAT you start.
Make each moment count double!
~ Joi
).
( only $6.49 at Amazon) is right up my mental fitness alley.
We’ve all made our New Year’s resolutions, right? Judging from the crowd at Subway this afternoon, I’m not the only person who has vowed to eat healthier. With any resolution or lifestyle change, the trick is to stick with it – to remind yourself of why it’s important to you each and every day.
