Exercise Thy Brain!
It that simple.
Simple, but not easy. Fun, even, but not easy.
I will include some ideas about nutrition and other theories on keeping your brain healthy as you age. They will be challenging and fun, like learning a new game, which is what makes it simple. What makes it not easy is that learning any new game to the point of being good requires consistency and some work.
Movel tov!
Get That Brain to the Gym and Spa!
We boomers know how to take care of ourselves. We take our bodies and our muscles to the gym where we lift weights and take grueling, but fun classes. We take our skin to the spa where it is pampered into good health.Our brains tag along, but wonder why they are being ignored or worse the butt of jokes. "I just had a senior moment!" Ha Ha. We blame our brains when we make little mistakes, but what do we do it get the brain into shape! Little to nothing, that's what!
Our brains need exercise and pampering also, as much as our bodies or skin. And frankly, since all this care taking is going to make us live longer, we had better start taking care of those brains or have a lot of insurance for nursing home care!
Did that scare you? Well, don't be scared, just do something.
The Nun Study
Nothing is conclusive yet, but there is a lot of evidence that exercising the brain can overcome the effects of even Alzheimer's.
- The Famous Nun Study
- Thanks to 678 school nuns we have better insight into what happens to the brain, what makes it healthy and what prevents dementia.
This site also has wonderful pictures and tests you can take to learn about the status of your brain and its health.
"Do a puzzle. Take fish oil. Learn Spanish. Brush left handed. Your brain will thank you!"
I. While Exercising: Protect Your Head!
Head injuries contribute to brain problems later in life. So, while you are exercising on those bikes, don't forget your helmet.If you had a head injury earlier in life and avoided immediate brain injury, don't panic now, but keep an eye on your brain! You might want to do two jigsaw puzzles a day because your brain might need more. Ditto if you played football or other rough sports as a kid.
II. Make Your Brain Feel The Burn!
Make your brain do things differently than it is used to doing. Just as your muscles need cross training to be really effective, so does your brain.If you are right handed, brush your teeth with your left hand. Do cross words and jigsaw puzzles or other mind benders.
Do your check book without a calculator! If that makes you nervous, recheck it after with the cheater!
III. Use It or Lose It Goes for Brains Also
Take a class; lots of them!Learn a language. Go to museums and don't just walk around, ask questions, do the hands on things that are for kids!
Keeping Brain Young: To Do List: Morning
1. Brush teeth with left hand.
2. Go to Jigzone.com and do a puzzle
3. Call Sally to make a date for the new museum.
IV. The Training Table
Remember that 'Old Wives Tale' about fish being 'brain food' well it is. Make sure that it is fatty cold water fish. Eat it or take it in a pill. Either way its necessary.The good news is that the same foods that are good for your muscles, your body, your face are also the foods that are good for your brain. You have been eating them for a while, you know what they are! Don't forget the alkaline balance!
Eat drink and remember!
V. Know the Original Game Plan
The more you know about the blueprint that your parents gave you, the better off you are. Don't despair if there is something that might slow you up. Just find out where you need to pump up your plan. VI. Stay Connected With Your Team
Stay connected. We are social animals, the brain gets stimulated and exercised in social arenas. People get you thinking. Be sure that the people around you will stimulate your brain. Find people who will challenge you. Find someone to help you do your brain exercises. Start a brain gym among your friends. Make a brain team. Keeping Brain Young: To Do List: Evening
1. Meditate or Pray
2. Take fish oil capsule
3. Sign up for language class!
From Personal Experience:
My mother had dementia before she died. She also had internal bleeding that couldn't be stopped. Whenever she had a transfusion, she became lucid, until she lost more blood.
Exercise enhances your circulation, increasing the blood flow to your brain.
Don't want to exercise? Trying to convince yourself it isn't important? Remember what blood for my mother's brain function.
Physical exercise will get more blood to your brain, it will help keep your brain in shape.
Just Do It!
EFT and the Brain
Skeptics will say that it just gets the nervous system going. Whether you prefer one of those theories or another one, do know that it works.
Here are some examples of how EFT work affects the brain and its functions.
- Alzheimer's Patient Remembers Her Husband
- Virginia McConnell discusses her successes with an Alzheimer's patient.
- EFT Effects on Brain Waves
- Gary Groesbeck, BCIAC fellow and Donna Bach, ND have done research on how EFT positively affects the brain waves.
Get Your Brain in Gear
Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day!
Amazon Price: $19.99 (as of 12/21/2009) 
Murder Mystery Party - A Taste for Wine and Murder
Amazon Price: $22.49 (as of 12/21/2009)
Brain Waves: Puzzle Book
Amazon Price: $7.95 (as of 12/21/2009)
Colorful Lateral Thinking Puzzles
Amazon Price: $6.95 (as of 12/21/2009)
Brain-Busting Lateral Thinking Puzzles (Mensa)
Amazon Price: $8.95 (as of 12/21/2009)
Exercising Links
- Online Jigsaw Puzzles
- I never liked doing jigsaw puzzles, until someone got me into this. Doing one of these in the morning could be all you need. Its just like your morning walk!
You can pick from hundreds of pictures, some with a lot of clues and others, with patterns, where where the clues are scant.
You can also choose cuts that are simple with under a hundred pieces or complicated cuts with many hundreds. It it your choice how much you want to challenge yourself in a day.
But remember, jigsaw puzzles have been shown to be great exercise for the brain. - Sudoku and Others
- If you can do Sudoku your brain is better than mine. But go at it. This will work wonders for you.
Great Lens from Other Lensmasters!
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Announcing The Online Brain Games Blog
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Let me introduce you to the onlinebraingamesblog. The site blogs about online brain games and contains links to free online brain games, paid online brain games, strategies, tips and more!
Keep Your Brain Young: Communicate With Us!
Share your thoughts about the brain and this lens.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
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Reply
- julcal julcal Mar 2, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
- OH! and a lensroll, of course!
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Reply
- julcal julcal Mar 2, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
- Great lens ! Where have you been all my life???
you know what I'm going to do - the old 5* and favorite ! :)
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Reply
- gdash1 gdash1 Nov 28, 2008 @ 7:36 pm
- Great lens! Really appreciate the tips. In regards to brain exercise, remember that you need to continually challenge yourself. The same type of game played a the same level over time becomes no challenge. One thing you can do is play games that increase in difficulty as you progress, or time yourself and try to beat the clock. Again, excellent lens and thanks for sharing it!
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Reply
- askshardotcom askshardotcom Nov 23, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
- Thanks for getting the word out!! Great lens!! I am so shocked by my friends and family that aren't hooked on taking care of their mind and body. I see how their memories and forgetfulness is effecting their lives. I am one for learning all I can about the mind-body connection. Thank you for some new great ideas!!! Love and Learning :) Shar
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- rms rms Nov 9, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
- Great tips and I am definitely going to check out that online jigsaw puzzle site. sounds like a fun way to keep my brain active.
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100 Cool Facts About Your Brain
- 100 Cool Facts
- Did you know that your brain uses 20% of all the oxygen that enters your body?
There are 99 more facts and (and to me, at least) previously unknown facts about your brain.
I Told You It Can Be Fun! Use Popular Culture to Exercise Your Brain:
His hypothesis, which he backs with scientific research, is TV shows have become much more complex to the point that even the creative schlock is good for the brain because the increased complexity builds the brain in much the same way that going to the gym to pump iron builds your muscles.
So enjoy your guilty pleasures while doing good things for your brain.
Everything Bad is Good for You
Amazon Price: (as of 12/21/2009)
Any Purchase Here Will Contribute to Heifer International: The Pay It Forward Entrepreneurial Charity
The New Library
However, 10 years later when I sold my Raleigh house, I couldn't face moving them across town. I purged, and purged when I moved again. And frankly, although I still believe that every room needs books, I am beginning to see walls of them as oppressive.
Enter the Kindle. I think this will save my life! Not only can I have my entire library with me at all times, but the books are much less expensive AND I am saving forests.
Its a win/win all the way around. Just so long as I have some books in each room!
Kindle: Amazon's Original Wireless Reading Device (1st generation)
Amazon Price: (as of 12/21/2009)
It is unwise to travel without books. You never know when you will have a long wait in an airport, well these days you can count on it. There will be rainy days, or days when you just need to get away from others, into a book.
However, which books to take? I can pack with a minimum of cloths; good thing too, because I always take too many books!
Kindle to the rescue! You can have your entire library with you at all times in a machine that isn't much bigger than a trade sized paper back.
This is the future.
Are You Commiting to This or Going to Be Commited?
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All aspects are covered. A little enclyclopedia
- Your Amazing Brain
- I found this enclyclopedic site through StumbeUpon. Well worth the time.
Wear Your Brain on Your Sleeve!
Feed Your Cells Pure Food
My blog "Creating Business Energy" is dedicated to success in small business and social consciousness. If you don't think the two combine, then bending your brain to see how they do go hand in hand will be good exercise.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byAbout Margo Arrowsmith
Lensmaster Margo_Arrowsmith has been a member since June 21 2008, has rated 2,016 lenses, favorited 120, and has created 129 lenses from scratch. Margo Arrowsmith donates their royalties to Squidoo Charity Fund. This member's top-ranked page is "Heifer International: The Pay It Foward Entrepreneurial Charity". See all my lenses
My Bio
For Arrowsmith Printing 9/22/08
I was born into a small business, I believe that small business and entrepreneurs are the backbone of America and what has made us great. They are what made us great and will save us in these unsure times. I have never wanted to have a great job. Well, better a great one, than a boring dead end one, and I have had both. But I have never really wanted a job at all.
Don't get me wrong, I am a hard worker. I have worked a full-time job, a part time job and a private practice all at the same time for a lot of years in my past. It isn't the work, its the working for someone else. Never wanted to do that, and I don't understand those who want to do that.
When I was six months old my parents bought their first small town weekly newspaper in Iowa. This was back in the day, back when small town newspapers were not just advertising sheets. Perhaps there are still some of them that are real, I hope so.
So I came by this perverse nature naturally. My path to self employment has been different than theirs, but it has always been my path, my direction.
Growing up in Iowa, in the fifties, I also grew up politically conservative. By the time I was 30 I was radically left. Today? I am proudly liberal and what that means will be clearer as we progress.
However, I have had conflicts about 'taking advantage of people'. I now know that employing people is not automatically taking advantage of them, but it took a while for me to learn that nothing is intrinsically good or bad. Well, almost nothing.
I have educated myself in business, I have a small business and I have used EFT and other energy clearing methods to help me clarify the old conflicts and move forward.
My mission here is to provide a forum for people who want to work independently through one person businesses or through employing others and for whom the betterment of human kind is an important value. My lenses are about offering good products, teaching people about betting their lives, and using the money they make for their pleasure and the benefit of others.
That is how I see business and if you have a similar vision I invite you to my blog www.creatingbusinessenergy.com
Margo Arrowsmith
Raleigh, North Carolina
Mother and Grandmother
Clinincal Social Worker, Coach and Internet Marketer
Interfaith Contemplative Minister
Student of life, business, the human spirit that motivates us to be our best in all circumstances.
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by Margo_Arrowsmith
For Arrowsmith Printing 9/22/08
I was born into a small business, I believe that small business and entrepreneurs are the backbone of America and w... (more)
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