Why ‘Mental Exercise’ is Important for Brain Health

CLEVELAND - We often hear about the importance of physical exercise for long-term health, but mental exercise matters too. 

“Anytime an organ of the body isn't being used for what its intended use is, it tends not to function as well. So, brain and mental exercise help to build resiliency -- that's the ability of the brain to withstand challenges. And those challenges can be anything from a highly stressful day, or rough afternoon, to brain pathologies, like Alzheimer’s disease pathology, Parkinson's disease pathology, and so forth,” explained Dylan Wint, MD, neurologist at Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Wint said unlike physical exercise, there aren’t established recommendations for how much mental exercise is needed. 

However, it is suggested to pick exercises that are considered challenging and require your brain to think. 

Some examples include reading, putting together a puzzle, playing a memory game, or learning a new language. 

Dr. Wint said there are also things we can do in daily life to get mental exercise, such as figuring out a new route to work or using your non-dominant hand for routine tasks. 

“The real goal here is to avoid passivity, for your brain to be thinking, to be exploring, to be coming up with ideas, to be looking for solutions to problems, and those can be real problems,” he said. “There's data suggesting that the longer someone stays at work instead of retiring, the better their brain does in the long run. Or they can be sort of contrived challenges such as we see in games.”

Dr. Wint adds that it’s never too early or too late to start mental exercise. 

Research shows that it can be beneficial at any age.