Blog > What Can Your Senior Do to Protect Her Brain Health?

What Can Your Senior Do to Protect Her Brain Health?

Keeping your senior’s brain as healthy as possible seems complicated, especially when you look at all the different ways that she can control her own brain health. Choosing just a few options off the list can give your senior a good start on improving how well her brain works.

Get Better Sleep

Sleep is incredibly important for brain health, but science isn’t sure exactly how or why just yet. Some studies are pointing to the connection between sleep issues and dementia and other brain health issues. Help your elderly family member to figure out why she’s having trouble sleeping and put solutions in place to help her to get better sleep consistently.

Eat Healthy Foods

What your senior eats definitely affects her brain health. Foods that are full of empty calories, like junk food, don’t offer the nutrition that your senior’s body and brain need most. What she truly needs are healthy fats, lean proteins, and plenty of vegetables. Incorporating more of these into her diet can be incredibly helpful.

Manage Stress Effectively

Stress has a negative effect on overall health and brain health. Your elderly family member needs to find ways to manage her stress that are effective and that help her to relax more often. Journaling or taking time for meditation might be two techniques that your senior might want to add to her repertoire.

Move More Often

Exercise does great things for your senior’s brain. First, it helps with cardiovascular health, which means that blood and oxygen are moving better throughout your senior’s body. But exercise also helps your elderly family member’s brain to make and to release chemicals that help her entire body to be healthier. Moving more benefits all of the systems of her body.

Challenge Her Brain

Like any other muscle, your senior needs to use her brain in order to keep it healthy. Learning new things, like through taking a class, or reading new books are two easy ways for your senior to keep her brain challenged. Games and puzzles are another option. Finding ways to keep her brain going that she enjoys is crucial for brain health.

Companionship also helps your elderly family member to keep her brain strong. Hiring a caregiver to spend time with your elderly family member helps to reduce social isolation and can go a long way toward helping your senior to stick with her plans for keeping her brain healthy.