Help your brain age better

It’s amazing how little the media talks about exercising your brain. I mean, we are bombarded with news and information concerning fitness, strength training, flexibility and cardio workouts, but how often do you read about “fitness for your brain”?

Our brain is like any muscle on the body … if you don’t use it … you’ll lose it.

I read many years ago that women who did aerobic dancing had less chances of suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s. I’m talking about the aerobic classes of the 90s where choreography was a huge part of the workout and you had to remember and practice complicated routines that would humble many contestants of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ … today many of those types of classes have been replaced with much more simplified routines that don’t require you to “think” as much.

“Not thinking” can actually become a hazard as you age. When you’ve been doing the same job for 10, 20, 30 years, it becomes second nature and you really don’t have to think as much. If you take the same route to work every single day and have your life set on auto-pilot there is very little brain stimulus and that can actually hurt you in the long run.

In fact, many experts now believe that brains stimulated in a healthy manner can better resist debilitating mental conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

I personally had to live through, at an early age, seeing my grandmother (who really acted like my mother) lose all her mental capacities after a stroke that left her partially paralyzed and I still remember going to her room when she was hospitalized and she would just stare at me … not really knowing who I was.

As much as I loved my grandmother, I have to admit that her life was not set-up to provide consistent brain stimulation and I wonder if that had anything to do with her deterioration. I remember saying to myself that I will do whatever it takes to protect myself in order to remain as lucid as possible for as long as possible.

That said, just like my grandmother … there are many people who don’t have a lifestyle that provides daily mental stimulation and as much as most people like to watch the telly as a form of distraction and off-work activity, the tube is not the best way to get a brain-workout.

Living longer and healthier is certainly a popular theme and a San Francisco company has determined that they wanted to translate the fitness craze into a brain workout.

VibrantBrains is a San Francisco start-up that has created a workout centre for the brain, patterned after a conventional health club.

So how can a VibrantBrains workout keep your brain in shape?

Instead of exercising muscle groups via a series of circuit-training machines, VibrantBrains members work out their mental skills using a variety of computer software programs and other tools, for a monthly membership fee of US$60.

There is a large market of baby boomers who understand the benefits of a regular body workout and this crowd won’t have too much difficulty embracing this new ‘brain exercise’ concept.

More and more baby boomers and Gen-Xers (especially high level executives in both generations) are turning to activities such as yoga, meditation, ‘brain’ vitamins and training seminars to give their brain power a boost. A concept like VibrantBrains formalizes and centralizes this new type of workout under one ingenious roof.

For now, VibrantBrains has one office on the West Coast of the U.S., but I have no doubt that this ‘brain exercise’ trend will catch on and we’ll soon start seeing VibrantBrains brain training centres in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and many other parts of the world.

You can read more on this brilliant new concept: VibrantBrains

Photo by Geekgirly