Keep Your Brain In Shape

How to keep your mind fit and healthy with a few easy lifestyle changes and fun activities!

- SUSIE KEARLEY

Stay Sharp As You Age

Making healthy lifestyle choices can help to keep our minds sharp as we grow older, and reduce the risk of cognitive decline. Healthy eating, an active lifestyle, and mind exercises are all beneficial.

In one study, participants who received advice from a dietician, an exercise physiologist and took part in online brain training for six months scored more highly in cognitive tests than participants in the control group, who did not do such activities.

In another study, called "Train The Brain", participants were encouraged to learn, remember and increasingly stimulate their grey matter as the challenges progressed. There were memory, learning and attention tasks, including a mix of social games, pen and pencil tasks, and computerised challenges, too.

Participants took part in weekly music sessions where they sang, played instruments, and moved in time to music. They also attended fitness training three times a week. The report concluded that there was "a significant beneficial effect of the combined training" compared to the control group.

To try to replicate the success of this study in your own life, you could take up new hobbies, start writing, doing quizzes, social activities and constantly challenge your mind with new things.

Exercise is important, too. It can increase blood flow to the brain, which helps keep the brain healthy and may reduce cognitive decline.

"Exercise changes the brain in ways that protect memory and thinking skills," says Heidi Godman of Harvard Health.