When older loved ones open a holiday gift of brain teasers, a chessboard or Sudoku puzzles, you can cheerfully remind them that such lifelong mental exercise will probably arrest their eventual mental slide at a slightly higher point than might otherwise be the case.
December 11, 2018
Things to say cheerfully....
From "Your aging brain: Is it 'use it or lose it'?" (LA Times):
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23 comments:
Anyone who says something like that to accompany such a gift deserves a good thrashing.
Your Mind is Antifragile
This theory regularly waxes and wanes in the popular press. It makes me think the puzzle companies fund these 'studies' to roll out every Christmas.
To be preceded by "I know it's a little late for this."
After she was diagnosed with cancer, Jackie O told a friend "All those pushups for this?", or the equivalent.
Does blogging work as well?
Thwarting the Left works, too.
It’s true, though. Every morning I solve the day’s Daily Hashi* logic puzzle, and it has largely arrested my inexorable descent into, like, dumbness and stuff.
(*By way of disclosure, I built that game.)
Ralph L said...To be preceded by "I know it's a little late for this."
I'm thinking along the same lines, but of ending it with "but how would we know?"
I keep mentally fit by reading the comments on Althouse.
I’m not sure it’s working.
I hope that's true. I love kakuro puzzles.
Sean Gleeson,
Congratulations on inventing a new puzzle! I'm impressed and will give it a try.
Blogger The Godfather said...I keep mentally fit by reading the comments on Althouse. I’m not sure it’s working.
I know the feeling. Every time I see/read a comment by Pee-pee Tape or Anti-Shitter (PB), I'd swear as few brain cells were just lost.
s/b a not as
On a more serious note, my dad who just turned 90 last month stays sharp by doing both the cross-word puzzles and several sudokus in the newspaper every day and keeps abreast of (and involved) in the stock market.
It may keep the aging mind sharper but it will not prevent dementia.
I have to use a red Sharpie to circle each episode of Matlock in my TV Guide so that I can remember to watch.
(eaglebeak)
What are the young ones doing to keep their minds sharp?
It is possible that the "keep mentally active" thing is like exercise and longevity: perhaps healthy people enjoy exercise more and thus do it more. Over my life I have been unable to resist running because I had too much energy to sit around.
Similarly, perhaps people who are not mentally deteriorating keep doing mentally challenging stuff. There is the fact that those in mentally challenging jobs get less dementia, but this could be the genetic effect that very smart people have a lower genetic load of bad genes (which interfere with health and IQ).
How about a treadmill for fat Aunt Sylvia?
When it comes to aging, "Use it or lose it" becomes a greater truth.
Some cognitive decline is inevitable. At 58, I'm forgetting names. I have to work harder to remember them. When I'm typing, my fingers make mistakes (actually they're jumping ahead to what I'm going to say next), or I forget how to spell words.
This decline has been slowly accelerating since I was 53, when the prospect and reality of losing my newspaper job caused anxiety attacks.
So I make adjustments, learn new skills, and keep moving forward day by day. In an hour, I'll be in the lobby of my former newspaper (now a 3-day-a-week print edition and online portal), selling my 18 books I've published in the last five years. And we're planning at least another 10 next year.
Life is good when you have something to look forward to. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
I'm going to start listening to 50-wpm CW while riding a bike to stay sharp like rhhardin
I do play too much Sudoku. On this iPad, I have 3,170 consecutive “wins” at the intermediate level. Wins require the right answer, of course, but no more than two wrong moves along the way. Of course, there is a little cheating there, because, on occasion, I will fat finger wrong moves, and at two of those in a game, I restart with a new one. Using an iPad in bed is esp problematic in that regard, because if you have the screen at a bad angle, you can drag your knuckle over one of the numbers, inserting the wrong one in the selected cell. Making it maybe worse, I try for speed. I was doing the advanced level on one of my iPads, but had to take notes to figure it out. At this level, I get better times when I don’t take notes, and, maybe not coincidentally, probably get a better brain workout this way, doing it all in my head.
My father was a crossword puzzler to the end. He was mentally alert until the last month or two at 94. We have, on his computer, decades of two and three character answer keys that he dutifully recorded for decades, maybe to publish. None of his boys do crossword puzzles. For me, they just don’t make much sense. My guess is that he was more verbal than most of his kids, and we got our mathematical side from our mother. Sudoku is good for me because it is so visual, at least for me. He was much better at word play than any of the rest of us. I try, of course, but my partner is too literal to appreciate my sense of humor. But I think that my mother was that way with my father. While we thought him hilarious, she always kept a straight face. Which was always interesting: my mother and her close friends all came across as seriously humor impaired, while their husbands were hilarious.
Your aging fuckability: Use it or lose it.
Oops, wrong thread.
Not only that, but in time your mental capacity will decrease to absolutely zero.
The outcome of aging is death. Is that news to someone?
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