There are lots of brain fitness programs and products out there that supposedly will improve your brain function. There are individual brain games to play, online brain games, brain supplements, even brain fitness gyms. It can be confusing to know which game, book, brain fitness program or software out there to choose from when trying to improve ones brain fitness.
To help us decide, lets first define what brain fitness really is..
I came across a great definition of brain fitness some time ago and it goes like this:
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.
Having this definition in hand, lets now discuss what we can do to specifically improve the state of general good health and well being of our brain.
Educator Alvaro Fernandez lists four primary things that help contribute to a state of general good brain health. He calls them, The Four Pillars of Brain Health.
They are:
- Mental exercise
- Physical exercise
- Nutrition
- Stress management
Most people, when they think of brain fitness, think primarily of mental exercises. In fact, most brain fitness programs you find available today are focused primarily on the mental exercise aspect of brain fitness.
Mental exercise programs usually come in the form of what’s called brain games. Brain games can be found in the form of free online brain games as well as a commercially available online and offline games.
As you can see, mental exercise (like playing free online brain games) is just one of the four pillars required for overall brain fitness. You cannot ignore the other three pillars and expect to enjoy the benefits of optimum brain health and fitness. They are called pillars for a reason – they support an overall structure. Any weakness in one of the pillars can seriously affect the stability of the structure as a whole.
We’ll be discussing each of the other four pillars of brain health and fitness more in depth in future posts.. So stay tuned!
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There are definitely multiple pillars to improving memory – we talk about them at Posit Science as approaching brain fitness with a holistic approach … eating a healthy diet, getting physical exercise, staying emotionally and socially engaged, and challenging your brain. Challenging your brain is part of those elements because learning new stuff re-wires your neurons and improves brain performance. So whether you want to improve your ability to learn a language or remember new friends’ names, you can do it. The next step is to take action.
Liked your writing about four pillars for brain health and fitness. At the same time role of brain fitness software for brain fitness.
best of luck
Fitness software
Thank you Joy!!
Mental exercise, nutrition, and stress management came to mind but I didn’t think about physical exercise being part of brain health. It makes perfect sense now that I think about it. Its amazing how somthing like working out once a day could help you do better in school, or at a job.
These games are so much better than the crap video games people play. Some people say that they are better for you (reaction time, etc) but I think video games are a waste of time.