Like your muscles, your brain needs regular workouts to stay healthy and fit as you age. Researchers are showing that performing daily brain exercises can increase your brain’s cognitive reserve.  This reserve can protect your memory and perhaps even delay or prevent the visible symptoms of age-related neurological changes, including the damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease.  Challenging your brain can also help regain lost brainpower.  In Alzheimer’s disease, some normal brain cells remain, and research supports that they can be stimulated to create new connections

In fact, in a study of retired Catholic nuns, autopsies revealed Alzheimer’s lesions in the brains of some 80- to 90-year-old nuns even though they did not exhibit symptoms prior to their deaths. “Leading a life of meditation and continued studying, eating a low-fat diet, and having strong social ties with other nuns created a life that increased their cognitive reserve,” says Robert Bender, MD, medical director of the Johnny Orr Memory Center and Healthy Aging Institute in Des Moines, Iowa. “This enabled them to function very well despite the clinical evidence of Alzheimer’s disease.”

The most effective plan to increase your cognitive reserve is to stimulate your brain in several ways. The brain wants to learn new things.  Some researchers believe that people are more vulnerable to dementia when the brain is passive.  The brain has a tendency to atrophy if it is not used. For this reason, sedentary and relatively passive activities, like sitting in front of a TV for hours a day, can be detrimental to brain health over time.

Exercises to strengthen brain function should offer novelty, present challenge, and use creativity. Drive home via a different route; brush your teeth with your opposite hand; read a variety of material including comic strips, novels, and the news paper.

Be creative. Sculpt (use Play dough so you can re-use it), paint, draw or color in a coloring book. 

Test your recall. Make a list — of grocery items, things to do, etc. — and memorize it. An hour or so later, see how many items you can recall.

Draw a map from memory. After returning home from visiting a new place, try to draw a map of the area; repeat this exercise each time you visit a new location.

Do math in your head. Figure out problems without the aid of writing down or a calculator; you can make this more difficult by walking at the same time.

Challenge your taste buds. When eating, try to identify individual ingredients in your meal, including subtle herbs and spices.

Take a cooking class. Learn a new way to cook. Cooking uses a number of senses: smell, touch, sight, and taste, which all use different parts of the brain.

Learn a foreign language. The listening and hearing involved stimulates the brain.

Let the music play. Learn to play a musical instrument, study music, or listen to music.

Use your hand-eye abilities. Learn a new skill that involves fine-motor skills, such as knitting, drawing, painting, sculpting, assembling a puzzle, etc.

Engage your senses. Try activities that involve as many of your senses as possible, such as gardening.

Play games. Any games, the more variety, the better, such as Monopoly, cards, chess, electronic games, , , use your imagination (and yes, that’s good for your brain too!)

Information from everydayhealth.com