Brain Fitness

Never Too Late

For some people, brain fitness is more a way of life than a newly established goal. Dorothy Spencer, 74, has had an eclectic career. A longtime runner, she was one of the founders of Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth in the late 1970s. She’s also been a school bus driver, an executive administrative assistant, a calligrapher, a sign painter, and a masseuse to athletes. She was winding down her career in sports massage in 1995 when a client asked her to help him run a fast marathon.

His day job was building homes, and Spencer found herself helping him with a project. “I went out there one day to his job site and brought him some lunch. He said, ‘While you’re here and not doing anything, why don’t you cut me some boards?’” Soon Spencer, who had never used a saw, found herself sawing lengths of wood and tearing shingles off a second-story roof. She still works in construction today.

“You’re working constantly [in construction]. You’re using your brain constantly,” she says. “Life is easier when I can do these things, when I can keep up with people who are a lot younger than I am.” A lifetime of learning new skills has made it possible for her to physically and mentally meet new challenges—like hanging sheetrock.

Not all brain fitness comes from heightened activity. Sometimes the brain needs to be recharged, which can be accomplished through calming activities. Meditation is a way of “learning how to empty your brain, learning how to let your day’s work go, and just be there in the moment,” Tarrel says. If meditation doesn’t sound like your kind of relaxation, walking, yoga, or reading for pleasure are other ways you can refresh your brain.

All that effort to stimulate and calm your brain can lead to impressive results: faster calculations, deductions, and reactions, and clearer thinking and problem solving. Forging new neural pathways makes your brain stronger and more flexible.

Tarrel likens it to clearing a forest: “I’m sitting here with this image of a guy with a machete, walking through the forest, just literally forging new paths. Cutting away the brush and then coming back and forth and trampling down the ground—and doing it over and over until you have a nice, well-worn path, easily taken.” And once that path is worn, you can clear a new one.