Brain Science - Good Mental Housekeeping

Good Mental Housekeeping

Lifelong brain health

Good mental housekeeping means certainly more than just challenging brain ageing with mental workouts, vital as those are.

Constant intellectual stimulation, based on the familiar ‘use it or lose it’ approach to maintaining a long life brain, is a necessary – indeed essential – precondition to what I have termed braingevity. However, such an overly narrow approach cannot on its own maintain the brain in peak condition and slow the consequences of ageing.

Brain ageing is best avoided by a holistic view. Ensuring we take account of all the health promoting - as opposed to life limiting – aspects of our lifestyle – is no less important.

Holistic approach

The key factors here include enjoying adequate sleep and continued social involvement, a sensible diet and regular, vigorous, exercise, the ability to relax deeply and manage stress efficiently, the capacity to remain hopeful and the determination to stay optimistic even in the face of loss and adversity.

By signing up for the Brain Gym you will be taking one important step towards helping ensure you are the proud possessor of a long life brain. By reading my advice in our periodic magazine Grey Matters you will be able to receive continued concise, practical advice on all the other aspects of good brain housekeeping described above.

Remember that I, and my team of scientists from Mindlab International, are here to help and guide you through the sometimes tricky but always rewarding task of living a good, long life – with the emphasis on good and long.

As the poet Robert Browning put it: “The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”

Welcome to the Brain Gym.