Keeping Your Brain Engaged: Things You Can Do To Help keep the Alzheimer’s “Boggy Man” Away, or at the Very Least at Bay.
As a caregiver, you are on the front lines of Alzheimer’s disease. You may be asking yourself this question: Is there anything I can do to try to prevent myself from ever getting this devastating disease? You want to know if there is something—anything—you can do to give yourself an edge in preventing Alzheimer’s.
Well, there just might be a way.
There has been and continues to be, large amounts of research money being put into the field of “brain training,” money spent in university studies and by private companies, in the hopes that keeping your brain active and healthy is a way to ward off the effects of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. There is also evidence that training your brain can help with many other facets of everyday life, including your attention span, brain speed, navigation skills, and people skills. Science today is at the point of proving we can “train” our brains to do a lot more than we realize.
The studies conducted so far have been very encouraging. Exercising the brain may help in keeping the Alzheimer’s “bogy man” away from you, or, at the very least, slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease down.
You may have heard that if we stimulate our brains and maintain a healthy brain, activity programs such as a “brain training class,” playing games, card games, crossword puzzles, reading, and other activities may help in warding off the effects of Alzheimer’s. Keeping our brain working and giving it something of value to do certainly makes sense as a way of helping us keep Alzheimer’s at bay.
But the question remains, is this true?
Of all the studies that are being done and the ones that already have been done, the elusive answer is still out there. No one can say with certainty that this is the case when it comes to Alzheimer’s. But one thing is for certain: we can do some pretty amazing things when we work towards goals that we want to accomplish.
