At Youville Place, we’re serious about providing opportunities to stay healthy.
We know that maintaining good, overall health is good for your brain.
Here’s what we know about maintaining cardiovascular health that can relate to brain health:
Keep physically active:
- Regular physical exercise enhances how we use our biochemistry on behalf of ourselves physically, emotionally and mentally.
- Using our muscles to coordinate movements – whether in aerobic, callisthenic, yoga, dance or other kinds of movement – helps integrate the physical and cognitive areas of the brain; and – if we’re having fun – the emotional dimension is added, too. (Remember, ladies: Ginger Rogers did what she did – while dancing backwards. You can do it, too! In fact, you probably did – just a while ago.)
Keep your blood pressure and cholesterol under control.
- There is a clear relationship between these key dimensions that affect cardiovascular health and those that have an impact on brain health.
- Manage your stress and anxiety with exercise, meditation, conscious breathing, and other stress management practices.
- Chronic stress, depression, anxiety, and other emotionally-based states can interfere with our cognitive, emotional, relational, and daily functional levels.
- The bottom line: Do what keeps your heart healthy, and you will keep your brain healthy. Period.
Maintain long-term relationships – and establish new ones:
- One of the most significant dimensions of life in an assisted living community is the ready opportunity for a wide variety of social interactions.
- Dining together, engaging in new and familiar activities, learning about common interests, and finding new friends, can have a significant impact on how we experience our daily lives.
- Even such simple activities as those mentioned above can be essential to the social and intimate relationships that can affect both emotional and brain health.
Seek out new learning and experiences
- Learn a new (or revitalize an abandoned) card or board game
- Take a painting or drawing class
- Read something in an unfamiliar topic
- Interrupt old habits (for example, open doors or use your door key with your opposite hand)
- Wear your watch on your opposite wrist as a reminder
