Puzzles, Games and Sudoku in Retirememt

Doing puzzles, games and Sudoku during your retirement can keep your mind active and healthy, and even decrease your chances of developing Alzheimer's Disease.

Experts suggest that not using your brain enough (particularly in later life) can be a major factor in losing your mental abilities as you get older.

Stimulating your brain regularly with puzzles and games means that you are frequently testing your mental abilities. You can also use puzzles, games and Sudoku to train your brain, which can improve your memory and concentration.

Puzzles

There are plenty of puzzles that you can do to keep your mind active and healthy. A popular example is the crossword. Many newspapers and magazines have a crossword puzzle that you can try your hand at. These vary in difficulty depending on the type of newspaper or magazine. For example, a crossword in a newspaper like The Times will invariably be more challenging than a crossword in Heat magazine. Other popular types of puzzles include the wordsearch and code breaker puzzles.

Games

There are a variety of different games that you can play to boost your mental abilities and keep your mind stimulated. Word games are good options, and this can include games such as Scrabble and Boggle. As well as helping your mind stay active and healthy, playing word games can also expand your vocabulary.

Sudoku

Playing Sudoku is an idea for keeping your mind ticking over. If you are not familiar with the Sudoku craze, this puzzle involves using your logic skills to place numbers in the correct sequence. To successfully complete the puzzle, you need to place the numbers in a 9 x 9 grid so that all of the columns, rows and 3 x 3 boxes only contain the numbers one to nine once each. The Sudoku grid will be filled in with a few numbers to get you started.

As it is a taxing puzzle to solve, playing Sudoku can easily keep your mind active, especially if done on a regular basis. You can now buy entire puzzle books dedicated to Sudoku. Alternatively, you can play Sudoku games online at websites such as Web Sudoku.

While keeping your mind active with puzzles, games and Sudoku is recommended for reducing the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's Disease, you need to combine this with other things for it to have any significant benefits to your mind. While solving puzzles and playing mentally challenging games is recommended for increasing your mental agility, but it should not be done in isolation.

Regularly stimulating your brain using puzzles, games and Sudoku needs to be done in conjunction with following a healthy diet and exercising regularly. Eating unhealthy foods can restrict blood flow through your arteries, which can in turn affect the amount of oxygen that is able to reach your brain. Because of this, attempting to boost your brain with mental stimulation will not have optimum effects, as your brain will not function to the best of its ability without you doing as much positive groundwork as you can.