Keeping your brain strong and your memory intact should be a goal that everyone should strive for. As we age, our brains start to weaken, making us more susceptible to certain diseases of the mind. No one that I know wants to lose their memories, precious memories especially, like the day your children were born, your days in school having fun or old friends long gone. Luckily the brain can be exercised, and everyone should be challenged to do so every day.

But how do we exercise our brain exactly? There are many tried and true ways, but the most common, and most fun by far, are with brain and memory games. Brain and memory games come in all different types, at varying levels of difficulty. The most common games that help strengthen the mind are puzzles. Crossword puzzles, for example, force the brain to use its cognitive powers daily to help figure the answers that go in the correct boxes. This simple exercise for the brain helps stave off neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's disease. Games like, Sudoku, also provide our brains with much needed cognitive exercise.

In this day and age, where everybody seems to have either a computer at home or a Smartphone in their pockets, there are many other ways to exercise the brain with games daily. Simple games, like Tetris, take a ton of hand to eye coordination. It also makes you think forward, where to place your next piece, which way that piece needs to fit when it gets to its destination, and then we repeat the process again.

Some of us even go as far as looking past our current piece and on to the next one in line, planning where it will go even before you have dropped or rotated the current piece. This exercise seems pointless, but put that into perspective for either a teenager or elderly adult, both of who want to drive. Being able to look forward and planning your moves and planning your routes is very important abilities that we all need to use while driving, and games like Tetris helps keep our brains sharp in this aspect.

Researchers and game designers at UCSF have built a special video game just for older adults. NeuroRacer is a great example of the importance of playing games for the brain. These researchers found that the adults that were playing their game strengthened their multi-tasking cognitive skills, which helped to not only remedy certain targeted brain deficiencies, but also helped strengthen their working memory. The working memory is the part of the brain that allows us to remember simple things, like a person's name that they have just given us, or their email address. In some cases, the older adults were on par with the cognitive multi-tasking skills of a much younger person. Simple steps forward like this for some people are very important, especially in the early stages of mental a disease, and even old age itself.

For the younger generation of people out there, these games still have great value in strengthening the brain and memory. Some students have problems maintaining information that they need, important details and facts that may seem to slip away from them when it comes time to test them. By playing certain mind strengthening games, that student can train their brain to hold more information than they has previously, and for longer periods of time. It also helps them maintain better focus in the classroom; this in turn gives them the chance to absorb more information. Even young toddlers and children need memory games.

The game Memory is a perfect example of a memory training game, and can be used for young children, all the way through to the elderly. The premise of the game is simple, use your memory to remember where each card is, and try to find matching pairs while remembering the layout. It seems simple enough, and it is. But do not underestimate the power of this useful game, for even the parents of young children who are playing with them can still, and often do, make mistakes. It is imperative that we not let our brains become lax and useless tools that sit on the shelf and gather dust.

What happens when we forget to exercise our leg and arm muscles? They grow soft and weak, unable to lift the heavier objects as easily as someone who keeps in shape. They start to have problems holding our bodies up us as well, making it difficult to walk, or even stand up straight. The same thing can happen to our brains if we do not exercise them regularly. The connections in our brain that help with our cognitive skills get soft, and some even fade away completely. This cerebral atrophy is common in many aging adults, and even more common in adults that are suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's. By playing these games, these puzzles and challenges, we are exercising our brains in much the same way as we would exercise our muscles.

There are many other simple exercises and games that we can use to keep our minds sharp. Using and reading an analog watch, for example, can have the same positive effects on your brain and as a puzzle game. Even games like Blackjack can have an effect on the brain, and other similar games, that encourage the use of math and memory to try to predict the best move each round. There are also complex mind puzzles that have you using your brain and fingers to try to undo pieces of the puzzle, using trial and error to find the solution to each complex problem.

But no matter what your chosen brain or memory game is, just remember that just having the puzzles and games around is not enough to take advantage of their benefits. That is the same as having a home gym that you never use. You must use them regularly on a daily basis, training your memory, strengthening your other cognitive skills, and having fun while doing it. It does not matter if you are a 2 year old with a memory game, a 35 year old with a crossword puzzle, or a 75 year old with a special designed video game, we all need to make sure that we are keeping our minds strong and sharp.

Chapter 2- Keeping the Mind Sharp- 10 Speed Exercises

Speed reading is a valuable skill that many people utilize to double the words per minute that they read from an average of two hundred fifty words per minute to an average of five hundred words per minute. It can be an asset for those who often have to read lengthy documents or policy for their careers as it provides them with additional time for other tasks and helps them view the big picture of the content that they read. Here are ten exercises to help you learn to speed read and the reasons why each one is effective.

Learn to Chunk Words: Chunking is a process that entails looking at groups of words rather than just reading one word at a time.

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