The light of un­der­stand­ing is shin­ing brighter when it comes to the hu­man mind. For too long cul­ture has pre­sumed that lit­tle could be done to pre­serve or en­hance the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of our brains. But those days are gone. Lead­ers in sci­ence are peel­ing back the lay­ers of the hu­man mind, and re­veal­ing an in­cred­i­ble pat­tern-mak­ing or­gan that is con­stant­ly in­ter­act­ing with the world and es­sen­tial­ly learn­ing how to adapt and grow.

The brain's ca­pac­i­ty to stay ac­tive and in peak con­di­tion re­lies on con­sis­tent stim­u­la­tion just as our bod­ies re­ly on phys­i­cal ex­er­cise. Even as se­nior cit­i­zens, it is ab­solute­ly wrong think­ing to as­sume that poor brain func­tion­ing is in­evitable. Sci­ence is demon­strat­ing the brain's ca­pac­i­ty to ac­tu­al­ly grow new neu­rons and ex­pand its ca­pac­i­ties de­spite age.

Se­vere de­clines in men­tal health are most of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with some type of dis­ease where­as mem­o­ry loss or di­min­ished mo­tor skills are more like­ly caused by our fail­ure to stay ac­tive in our old­er years. Be­cause our brains are pat­tern mak­ing ma­chines, we have a ten­den­cy to ob­serve life and quick­ly dis­miss the won­der right in front of us. Un­like a child, we no longer have cu­rios­i­ty and the dri­ve to dis­cov­er new things or try some­thing new.

When was the last time you saw or heard some­thing on the news that struck your cu­rios­i­ty and sent you scur­ry­ing to the com­put­er or li­brary to learn more? These learn­ing mo­ments are lit­er­al­ly a call to en­gage in life and keep your brain fit. Some­times brain fit­ness can be as sim­ple as do­ing some­thing you rou­tine­ly do, but in a dif­fer­ent way. An­oth­er ex­cel­lent way to stim­u­late the mind is sim­ply trav­el­ling to places you have not been be­fore. Too many se­niors are re­luc­tant to stray too far from home.

Here are some day to day tips to help keep the se­nior mind alert

-En­gage all your sense every sin­gle day. Smell, touch, hear­ing, see­ing, tast­ing, tex­tures, hard­ness etc.

-Com­mu­ni­cate with friends and spous­es us­ing dif­fer­ent meth­ods eg eyes on­ly, fa­cial ex­pres­sions, no hands.

-Take on some of your dai­ly tasks, but do it with your eyes closed. Can you feel your way?

-Mul­ti-task with the sens­es...ac­tive­ly use your see­ing and hear­ing ca­pac­i­ties at the same time and pay at­ten­tion to slight dis­tinc­tions.

-Get out of dai­ly rou­tines-do things in dif­fer­ent or­der; try to ac­com­plish a task in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way;

-Trav­el about on new roads. Get to the store a new way. Dri­ve home on a dif­fer­ent route. Shut off the ra­dio while dri­ving and lis­ten to the sounds;

For se­niors, the key is to stay play­ful with life.