Playing a game of chess is a great mental activity. It is more than an interesting pastime. It is like teasing the brain and chess players are in fact training their brains. In one test done in Beijing China, a group of Chinese scientists set out to map the effects of a mental activity like chess on the mind. In a park where a group of 50 or more retired Chinese men congregate daily to play Chinese Chess, the researchers found that most of the men had above average mental and cognitive skills. They could hold witty and intelligent conversation and are much less prone to depression, dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The research, spanning over 5 years conclude that the mental faculties of the group of chess-playing men showed no signs of waning as the group continued to age. If fact, their memory continued to improve.
Indeed, other scientific studies in the west show that the gray cells in the brain don't just diminish in old age, as many people believe. Research shows that as the brain is challenged, the better it will function. Conversely, you are like a couch potato, doing little mental or physical activities, then your brain will start to fail you more and more as you grow older.
The brain can be trained, for instance by reading books, challenging mental puzzles or games, mathematical problems, memory games or with brain-teasing software programs developed by psychologists. There are some memory training programs that can help you perform mental calisthenics like memorizing long chains of numbers, grocery lists or even recognizing hundreds of faces. These programs can also help you to learn a foreign language.
There are other factors however, that can contribute to your maintaining your mental agility into a ripe old age. If you had a good general education, have an active and varied lifestyle, have an energetic partner and a supportive social environment, then you have something of a head start. On the other hand, if you live a life of constant routine, dissatisfaction with your own life or a dysfunctional social environment, this can lead to a deterioration of your mental faculties.
The general agreement between researchers and scientists is that if you keep your mind active, constantly learning new things to enhance your life and the lives of those around you, then you will find that your mental health will keep in tandem with you. Your memory will improve even as you age. You'll find that your concentration will not falter as your mind becomes sharper. Happiness will then become not only a state of mind but also a by-product of your earthly existence. Your mind will be in the best possible state and a healthy mind will also lead to a healthy and vibrant physical body.
One simple concept to understand that doesn't require a PhD is the fact that any organ in your body, including your brain, needs a healthy blood supply to access nutrients and oxygen. This is one reason why heart disease and mental health problems, including dementia are so often related. If you tied a tourniquet around your leg to cut-off the blood supply, you shouldn't be surprised when your foot stops working to well.
The same is true for your brain. If you continue to do things that are bad for your cardiovascular system, like sit around all day and eat chips, your vascular system will eventually have a problem, and this is not good news for your brain. In fact, your brain uses about 20% of the oxygen that you breathe and the calories that you eat. Your blood supply is responsible to get that stuff to the right place in order to keep your brain in good working operation.
The benefits of life-long learning and continually challenging your mind to keep it sharp are well established. But if you don't couple that effort with doing what's necessary to maintain a healthy neurovascular system, you cannot fully realize the benefit. You may have read a lot about neurogenesis and synaptogenesis, which is the constant rewiring of your brain that occurs when you stay mentally active and helps to keep your mind agile. However, this process can only work well if the blood vessels near all this rewiring are healthy enough to do their job. Otherwise, where is the energy, nutrients and oxygen necessary for the remodeling job going to come from?
Think of neurogenesis as a new housing subdivision going into an existing community and the roads as the blood supply to service the houses. If you were the builder constructing this new development you wouldn't get very far if you didn't first attend to the new roads. Not only are the roads needed for the new owners to get in and out of their homes; but they are needed for delivering all the lumber and concrete, enabling the different crews to come in and construct the new houses, and take all the trash away. Similarly, new brain cells or new brain cell connections need healthy roads (neurovascular system) to work right.
Related to this, a recent large study, just unveiled this month (April 2008) by Dr. Thomas Montine from the University of Washington, reports that 33% of the risk of dementia stems from disease of small blood-vessels in the brain. In this 12-year study, 3,400 men and women over age 65 volunteered for periodic cognitive testing and a brain autopsy upon their death. In the 221 autopsies performed, researchers discovered that small blood vessel disease accounted for about 1/3 of the risk for dementia. Importantly, this type of small blood vessel disease may go unnoticed for some time. We're not talking about big events like a stroke or blood clot blocking a large vessel. However over time these small problems can add up, and result in cognitive impairment.
Admittedly, this study comes from the Pacific Northwest, the origin of grunge-rock and Starbucks coffee. We can't be sure that all these people aren't suffering from some kind of post-angst cognitive disorder, or a latent flannel shirt allergy! We also can't rule out suffering from some sort of post-tramautic stress after invading the world with high-priced coffee, equivalent to about $18.00 per gallon; slightly more than we're currently paying for gas. In fact, one of us (Evans) was raised in Seattle and may be showing some early symptomology.
However, with these potential confounds aside (unless Austin Powers was right, and during the time that Dr. Evil was cryogenically preserved his faithful cronies invested heavily in Starbucks), this study is an incredibly important step that illustrates the diversity of factors that can lead to dementia. Even more importantly, it suggests that you can substantially decrease your odds of developing dementia by attending to life-style factors that can protect against vascular disease.
The beauty is that we have a good idea of how to do this since blood vessels serve to supply active areas of the body with nutrients! So if your brain is active (which requires energy), and you're maintaining your overall vascular health by eating right and exercising, odds are that you will be greatly reducing your risk of developing dementia from small vessel disease. Now it should be noted that research is ongoing on this subject, but common sense would suggest that this will hold true.
Taken together this highlights some very important reasons as to why exercise and nutrition play such a crucial role in brain fitness. Attending to both of these lifestyle factors is necessary to maintain a healthy blood supply and the creation of new blood vessels, in order to feed new brain circuits established by learning and mental activity. If you neglect this aspect of brain fitness, you may literally limit your ability to benefit from neurogenesis and synaptogenesis induced by many of the 'brain-training' programs designed to keep your mind young.
Both Martin Mak & Simon Evans are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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