Oui Wii

Have you tried a Wii yet? We have. We have the basic games that come with the unit and recently bought Big Brain Academy. There are numerous sport games that come with the system, including tennis, baseball, boxing, and golf.

Do you get exercise from the playing the games. Some of the games offer minimal activity, for example, you can play golf with minimal movement of the controller. Be prepared for tired arms if you go all out with the boxing game. Three minutes per round never seemed so long.

Click on the link below to get a detailed review of the Wii from Amazon.com.

Wii

Keep Your Body Moving to Stay Brain Young

What does your brain need to Stay Brain Young? A great blood flow. How do you get that? Through physical exercise.

A Dana Foundation reports that Columbia University neuroscientist Scott Small and colleagues found that a "structured exercise training program increases neurogenesis—the birth and development of new nerve cells—in a memory hub of the brain.".

The researchers found that middle-age subjects who had exercised for hour hour a day, four times a week for three months experienced increase blood flow in this memory hub, the dentate gyrus area of the hippocampus. The scientists correlated this with the rate of blood flow in mice along with the growth of nerve cells in this same area.

They inferred that the same type of benefits of increased neurogenesis in the mice was incurring in the human subjects.

In other words, consistent exercising did increase the blood flow and nerve cell growth in the critical area responsible for memory retention.

So what does this mean for you? Get out there and exercise or stay in an exercise. Regardless of where you do it, get off your duff and get going. One! Two! Three! Four! Get your body off the floor!

Can You Guess the Fastest Growing Alzheimer's Group?

Can you name the fastest growing population developing Alzheimer's? Hint: It's the same that has become the fastest growing population segment in the United States - Hispanics.

Medical News Today reports that The Alzheimer's Association has developed a set of tools to help this group cope with the disease, from a telenovela DVD describing the impact of the disease on a family to an online virtual tour of the brain in Spanish.

Why is this group the fastest growing group vulnerable to Alzheimer's? A combination of lifestyle factors plus the sheer fact that their population is growing at a high rate accounts for this phenomenon. Diabetes and high cholesterol related diseases is another contributory factor.

Two other observations of note:

• Latinos have the highest longevity rate among ethnic Americans, which was the strongest predictor of developing the disease
• Latinos develop Alzheimer's on average about seven years earlier than other non-Latino white Americans
  

Tips to Impove Memory from P. Devipriya

P. Devipriya lists 10 strategies to improve memory at his blog site. I thought 2 of them were particularly useful yet unusual.

Tops among the list, in my humble opinion, is Believe in Yourself by ignoring negative perspectives about aging and memory. He mentions a study that found that middle-age and older learners performed better when exposed to positive rather than negative stereotypes. In other words, you are what you think!

The second valuable tip is to Space It Out - repeat your memorization of something you have to learn, spacing out the repetitions in increasing interval of minutes, hours and days until you've mastered the material. Recalling the information should be easier as your brain becomes more comfortable at retrieving the information.

Welcome to Stay Brain Young

There is an exciting new scientific movement - the study of brain exercises that help people stay brain young. And that's what this blog is all about.

Studies, tools, software, and simple exercises that keep brains stimulated and agile are the focus of this blog. Helpful reviews and commentary are also provided to round out the avenues you have to stay mentally fit.

Come back often to learn the latest and the best of the techniques to Stay Brain Young!