Train your Brain
Ok, so this is meant to be a blog about business _and_ fitness, and I have yet to write anything about the latter. Here’s my first post on personal fitness: train your brain.
Your brain works like a muscle and, like any other muscle, it’s use it or lose it. Not only will exercising your brain make you smarter, but it’ll relieve stress and help you think more clearly as well. Some of my favorite ways to stay mentally fit are to play casual games and puzzles like sudoku and chess.
If you’re willing to spend some money, the absolute best place for this is Lumosity. This is basically like a web based version of the very popular Nintendo DS game, Brain Age. A bunch of neuro PhDs got together, did some research, and actually crafted a series of games to help you increase your IQ. The games are a lot of fun, and, I shit you not, you feel noticeably sharper after playing for just 10 minutes (and no, they’re not paying me to say that!). I find it’s a great way to regain focus after staring at my screen for too long all day.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 11:35 am and is filed under Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on August 1, 2007 at 4:55 am Katharine Osborne wrote:
Studies have shown (particularly as part of longevity studies in Japan) that the more you use the brain, the healthier your brain will be. And it is comparable to muscle. For a long time the conventional wisdom was that if your brain cells died (and they inevitably will), no new brain cells would develop in adults. But this has been proven false. If you learn something new, especially a new skill, not just new knowledge, your brain will grow new brain cells to accomodate. The axons and dendrites will actually reorganize themselves to be optimized for the new skill (which just blows my mind).
Personally, I think game play is positive, but you get more benefit from mixing it up and exposing your brain to totally new stimuli.