Wellness
FEATURES
e
The Ultimat
CEREBRAL
ORKOUT
W
Despite the fact
that the web link I’d
been sent took me to
a site called AskMen.
com, I decided to
choke back my feminist attitudes and give
it a shot.
After all, given the masses of
grocery lists I’ve forgotten on
the kitchen table and all the
‘where the heck are my sunglasses’ expeditions I take
every day, my brain is clearly
in need of a...uh…what
was it again? Oh yeah…
my brain needs to work out
more. Definitely. Loving the
idea of a workout that didn’t
involve changing into spandex or lacing up my runners,
I settled in to give the old
grey matter a bit of a run.
All brains, I discovered –
yours…mine…male…
female…youthful…aging – have five big jobs on
their to-do lists. They handle
memory, attention, language,
visual spatial skills and
48 | whiteoaksclub.com | fall 2013
executive functions such as
logic and reasoning. It’s a
challenging lineup and one
that, according to researchers, can best be handled
by brains that have the
benefit of daily workouts.
STEP?ONE: CHALLENGE
Memory is first on the toneup list, and with good reason
- we all tend to panic when
we fear we’re losing it. Even
if you can’t remember what
you had for breakfast, and
your car keys have become
as elusive as Big Foot,
according to the experts,
your memory muscle can be
trained and retrained using
simple exercises. Challenge
yourself to perform parts of
your daily routine - such as
getting dressed or brushing your hair and teeth - in
the dark or with your eyes
closed. When you can’t see
your dresser, the sink, your
toothbrush or your comb,
your brain will be forced to
exercise the memory muscle
to complete the tasks. There