Four Exercises to Maintain Mental Clarity in Old Age

Although some of these exercises are a little difficult at first, their habitual practice is a way to keep your mind active. Learn about their benefits and encourage yourself to do them.

Exercises to maintain mental clarity are important. Over the years, several of your body’s functions and processes can be affected, including lucidity and clarity of mind.

Therefore, in addition to picking up healthy lifestyle habits, such as eating a balanced diet and engaging in regular physical activity. It’s also important to exercise the mind on a regular basis to strengthen its capabilities and keep thoughts in order.

Below are 4 exercises that’ll help you keep your brain sharp even as you get older.

1. Exercises to maintain mental clarity: color text

Our first exercise for maintaining mental clarity above involves finding one of these charts. Then, start reading the color each word is written in out loud. Do this until you have read every word and then go backwards, starting with the last one.

This will be a workout for both brain hemispheres, because they have respond to the perception of text and color. It may be difficult at first, but it could be beneficial in order not to lose your lucidity and clarity of mind.

It can also help you:

• Create new connections between the two hemispheres of your brain.
• Train yourself in a new set of abilities like concentration and attention switching.

2. Schulte table

To do this exercise, the Schulte table, you start by concentrating on the number in the center. However, you have another goal: find the number 1 and continue with all the other numbers in ascending order.

To continue with the exercise, you can make a new table with the random order of the figures. The benefits that could be obtained by doing this activity are:

• Increase your information processing speed.
• Develop your peripheral vision.

3. Exercises to maintain mental clarity: finger signs

You can also do a simple exercise with your fingers. Make a peace sign with your right hand. At the same time, make an OK sign with the fingers of your left hand. Then do it the other way round and repeat several times.

Once you’ve done it with both hands, you’ll need to try to do them both simultaneously, alternating signs between each hand in its own cycle. This way you will:

• Increase and train your capacity for concentration.
• Improve both your attention and your ability to switch quickly between one task and another.

4. Simultaneous writing

Doing simultaneous writing can help a lot if you want to exercise your memory. To do this, you need 2 pieces of paper and a pen for each hand. First, start by drawing different geometric figures with both hands at the same time.

You can also write letters or words of the same length. The key is to do it simultaneously. Otherwise, the exercise won’t work. The benefits of this exercise are:

• Teaching the brain to do several tasks at the same time.
• Activating both hemispheres.

Other exercises to maintain mental clarity

Train your non-dominant hand

In other words, if you always brush your teeth with your right hand, try doing it with your left hand and vice versa. This way, your brain learns to give orders and do actions different than what it’s used to.

You can also shower and do other daily activities with your eyes closed. Change your routine when you’re going to work, to the shore or other places where you often go to activate your memory.

Always remember to eat well

Doing exercises to maintain mental clarity is really important, but so is eating  well. After all, diet plays an important role in reinforcing your memory. There are specific nutrients that help your brain keep working well.

In relation to this, a Harvard Medical School publication points out that there are some foods that could increase brain health such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and olive oil, as well as limited consumption of red meat.