Brain Exercises
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We all know how it feels to have our bodies age as we get older. Muscles feel sorer, joints stiffer, and speed, well, not so speedy. Most of us don’t pay attention, though, to how the old noggin ages. It too suffers reductions in speed, clarity, and coordination as we get older.

Good thing is, just as exercise can minimize the effects of aging on the body, mental exercise can decrease the effects of aging on the brain. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3 and A, B, C, only in puzzle format.

For starters, here’s a riddle to get your brain synapsing: Can you name four days that start with the letter ‘T’? Please think about it, sleep on it, then check the end of the article to confirm your answer.

Here are some healthy aging facts I’ve gleaned from The Successful Aging Website:

• We only lose 10 – 20% of our memories due to aging.
• Working memory, the brain’s temporary scratch pad, can only hold 7 to 10 bits of information at a time.
• Long-term memory stores all the experiences, facts, events, skills, etc that have been transferred from your working memory.
• You can teach an old dog new tricks. While the rate of learning is often slower with advanced age, research shows that people of all ages can learn and remember new information, if they are allowed enough time.
• Research has shown that exercise not only improves physical health, but it also has improves mental health and mental fitness. As does a positive attitude.
• The more activities you take part in, such as socializing with others, walking, gardening, playing cards, dancing, going out, playing bingo, reading, doing cross-word puzzles, and so on, the better your memory ability will tend to be.
• Vitamin and mineral deficiencies can contribute to memory difficulties.
• Stress reduces the brain’s ability to acquire, store, and retrieve information.
• The more you exercise your brain, the better your memory will be.

I do a lot of reading, writing, and exercising. But I wondered, was I really doing all I could do to help my mind and memory age better? So I thought I’d try some puzzles. Everyone raves about Sudoku, so I thought I’d try.

First, I watched two people working through a Sudoku puzzle, and so learned how to. Next I tried a Sudoku. When my brain got sore and frustrated, I got distracted and wandered off, never actually finishing the puzzle. I slept on the puzzle style for a while. Then, when I recently tried again, not only did my brain not hurt, I was able to figure out the strategy to the puzzle, completing it successfully.

Unbeknownst to me, my working on the puzzle, sleeping on it, then going back to it was a great learning method according to the article ‘Quiet! Sleeping Brain at Work’ by Stickgold and Elengogen published in Scientific American Mind, August/September 2008. Here are some interesting quotes from the article:

• ‘The brain evolved to use light and darkness wisely: acquire information by day; process it by night.’
• ‘Sleep, it seems, does something to improve memory that being awake does not do.’
• ‘The sleeping brain may be selectively rehearsing the more difficult aspects of a new task.’
• ‘It is also obvious that skimping on sleep stymies these crucial cognitive processes: some aspects of memory consolidation only happen with more than six hours of sleep. Miss a night, and the day’s memories might be compromised--an unsettling thought in our fast-paced, sleep-deprived society.’

So no matter how badly you feel you’re doing when you first try new tasks or activities, get a good night’s sleep, then try try try again. It will get easier with each doing.

Some puzzle sites:

Mind Exercise Puzzles
Daily Sudoku
Web Sudoku
Brain Teaser’s Network
Archimedes’ Laboratory
PuzzlersParadise
BrainBashers

And if you’re interested in more online information on aging well, here are some good links:

Mayo Clinic Senior Health Center
Healthy Aging
WebMD Healthy Aging Centre

Oh, right, the answer to the riddle is: ‘Tuesday, Thursday, today, and tomorrow!’ Lateral thinking at its best.

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Photo Credit: Cecilia Picco

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