The Online Brain Games Blog

It’s the end of the year, and I’m sure many people are starting to put down on paper their New Year resolutions list.  Most people are probably putting something down on their list that has to with physical fitness, like losing weight or starting up a regular exercise program.  In terms of brain health, good physical fitness is good for the brain.  In fact, studies have shown that physical exercise can help reverse brain decline as we age.  But physical fitness is only one aspect of overall brain fitness.

So, what does brain fitness actually mean, anyway?  Well, I recently came across a great definition for brain fitness over at Mind Tweaks.  It goes as follows:

Brain Fitness is: 1. A state of general good health and well being of the brain 2. The ability to perform specific mental tasks and functions at normal or above skill levels.

Just what kind of things can you do to enhance your brain fitness level next year?  Educator Alvaro Fernandez boils it all down to 4 main items, or The 4 Pillars of Brain Health, as he likes to call them.

They are:

1. Mental exercise
2. Physical exercise
3. Nutrition
4. Stress management

Expanding upon these 4 pillars a bit, we might include things such as:

• Regularly play a variety of good brain games
• Eating brain healthy foods
• Spending more time with others
• Reducing stress
• Getting enough rest
• Learning a new language
• Taking a course on something new to you
• Learning to juggle (yes, it’s true)
• Learning to meditate
• Enhancing your spiritual life
• Regular physical exercise

This list is really just a short list of the many, many things you could do next year to enhance your brain fitness.

So by all means, put something down on our New Years resolution list that has to do with enhancing your physical fitness (pillar #2).   But in addition, why not include something from pillars #1, 3 or 4?  If you do, you’ll be improving both your body AND your mind!

Have a Happy and Healthy New Year!!

References:

Mind Tweaks

The 4 Pillars of Brain Health

Brain Food

Juggle to Boost Brain Power

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I actually don’t care too much for hot chocolate.   But what I recently discovered in an article has caused me to think twice about this.  I found out that cocoa has been shown to boost blood flow to the brain.  And increased blood flow is a good thing if your after improving your brain fitness level.

Cocoa also contains flavanols which are nutrients considered to act as antioxidants and they have anti-inflammatory benefits. These chemicals can protect our cells and tissue from damage, which in turn helps to protect against heart disease and cancer. The researchers also write that flavanols could have a “promising role” to treat brain conditions such as stroke and dementia.

To read more about the research pertaining to cocoa and how it can help improve your brain fitness, click here.

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Pulitzer Prize-Winning author, Ronald Kotulak, summarized recent scientific discoveries about the brain at the 45th Annual Meeting of the American Society on Aging (ASA) last March in Orlando, Fla. His discoveries were detailed by April Thompson on the ASA website.

According to Kotulak, scientists now realize that the brain actually organizes and constructs itself, something no other organ does. Rather than being hard-wired for growth, the brain wires and even rewires itself–for example, to enable it to continue operating in the wake of a stroke or spinal injury. “At the core of this new knowledge is the plasticity factor, a term used to describe the brain’s amazing capacity to constantly change its structure and function in response to experiences coming from the outside,” said Kotulak

To read more about what Pulitzer Prize-Winning author, Ronald Kotulak had to say, click here.

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Let’s face it, we’re all growing older every day. If you’re over 30, Scientists say the number of brain cells you have are starting to decline. But, they also say that based on a physical behavior called neuroplasticity, our brain can grow new brain cells throughout our lives, regardless of age. The key, they say, is to continually be challenging our brains. It’s this challenge that causes the growth. Therefore, it is possible to reverse the mental decline normally brought on as we age.

Now, lets take the neuroplasticity concept one step further..

If we were to be regularly challenging our brain, our brain would respond in turn by growing new brain cells and new brain connections. By continuing this habit over time, we not only could reverse the brain-age decline normally associated with growing old, but we could actually be building what’s called a “cognitive reserve”.

This so called cognitive reserve, or brain-buffer, can help protect us against Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. In fact, studies such as the Nun Study have shown that even if we do contract the markers of Alzheimer’s, our cognitive reserve can help us compensate.

Nun Study Video:

So how do we go about building our brain-buffer?  Well, Alvaro Fernandez tells us how via the four pillars of brain health. To learn more about these four pillars, click here.

How big is your brain-buffer? Why not increase it’s size by playing some free online brain games?  Check out our list of free online brain games by clicking here.

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Our minds and bodies need sleep. Prolonged sleep deprivation has been shown to kill rats, flies, cockroaches and even humans.

Scientists have discovered that one of the many benefits sleep has is in memory improvement. In rats, certain brain cells that activate during their daytime exploration tend to reactivate during sleep. Scientists speculate that during sleep the brain reenacts waking activity in order to lay down lasting memories.

In humans, one particular study looked at memory recall with and without sleep. Forty-eight people between the ages of 18 and 30 took part in the study. All groups were taught the same 20 pairs of words in the initial training session. One group was taught the word pairings at 9 a.m. and then tested at 9 p.m. after 12 hours of being awake. Another group was taught the word pairs at 9 p.m. and then was tested at 9 a.m. after a good nights sleep. The study found that people who slept after learning the information performed best, successfully recalling more words than those who had not had sleep prior to being tested.

So, how much sleep is really required to keep our memory sharp?

“Long” sleepers who slumber more than eight hours a night and “short” sleepers who get fewer than seven hours of shuteye both report more sleep complaints than people who sleep in the “just right” zone of seven to eight hours, say Michael A. Grandner, B.A., and Daniel F. Kripke, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego. Their study appears in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. “Although it is unclear why long and short sleepers should have similar types of sleep complaints, these data challenge the assumption that more than seven or eight hours of sleep is associated with increased health and well-being,” Grandner says.

What can you do if you don’t get the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep? Take a power nap!  The video below describes how taking a nap can help our memory.

The main point here is to make sure you get between 7-8 hours of sleep in order to keep our brains in top shape. If you you get less than 7 hours, feel free to take a nap!

To further improve your memory, click here to play free online memory games.

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