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Brain Teasers - How This May Help What are Brain Teasers?

They're exactly what they sound like -- games that tease the brain. Teasers enhance mental sharpness and help stimulate the brain. Brain cells, like any other cell in the body, can deteriorate and die if not used or stimulated on a daily basis. Challenge your brains to help maintain neural, brain cell development, and keep mental pathways open. Age is not a limiting factor.

The brain is a muscle and to stay sharp it needs regular exercise. In order to maintain mental acuity, sharpness, focus and interaction, you've got to stimulate the brain. Help your loved ones maintain their attention span and focus by encouraging such games for a fun way to do just that.

Teasers challenge the brain to think and reason through puzzle solving. Teasers not only offer problem-solving benefits, but also enhance the memory, increase attention span and speed up brain function.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, brain teasers, "...boost reasoning skills, memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body."

A person's brain is the most important organ in the body. Teasers encourage thought, thinking and reasoning. When it comes to seniors, mental stimulation and activity may help prevent depression and encourage social activity with others, developing interaction and communication with others, which in turn enhances listening, speaking and cognitive brain function.

Cater games and teasers to the current aptitude of your loved one. Start easy and spend perhaps 10 minutes a day engaged in brain teaser or other types of puzzle activities and gradually increase that time, depending on feedback by your loved one.

Take the time to daily encourage your loved one to participate in some type of teaser or brain activity involved with guessing games, riddles, math games, or games that encourage mental stimulation, reasoning, memory, and most of all, fun.