We all know to exercise our bodies to keep fit, but how often do you think about exercising your brain? And what type of exercise does it need anyway? What are
facts? What is secret to mental agility?Keeping mentally active will keep your brain in good shape. Getting older does not mean that you have to be forgetful!
Recent research into Alzheimer's disease found that people who were less active between ages of 20 and 60 years are almost 4 times more likely to develop disease. The brain, like rest of body, needs to be kept active to keep healthy.
You exercise your body to keep it in shape. Now it has been shown that exercising your brain can keep it in shape too.
That leaves us with question of what to do to keep our brains active. The research discovered that how you spend your leisure time can affect health of your brain.
Leisure activities can be divided into -
Passive activities, which include watching TV, participating in social activities, and listening to music.
Intellectual activities are reading, painting, playing a musical instrument, woodworking.
Physical activities, for example, gardening, playing sport, working out at gym, walking, jogging.
The only 'activity' that Alzheimer's patients had performed more frequently than control group was watching TV!
The research team was lead by Robert Friedland, professor of neurology, University Hospitals of Cleveland. He said "A relative increase in amount of time devoted to intellectual activities from early adulthood (ages 20-39) to mid-adulthood (ages 40-60) was associated with a significant decrease in probability of having Alzheimer's disease later in life."
