Mental and Physical Exercise, The Fountain of Youth

Ponce De Leon searched the new world seeking the Fountain of Youth. I bet it never crossed his mind that what he was searching for, he was searching with. The Fountain of Youth was contained in his mind and body. Just like Ponce De Leon, today we are still searching for that magic pill, or formula that will keep us youthful, when we have access to what we are looking for right in our hands. It’s called mental and physical exercise.

A report by the Washington Post titled Short Mental Workouts May Slow Decline of Aging Minds, showed that mental exercise is just as important to keeping your mind sound as physical exercise is to keeping your body fit. The report concluded that ten sessions of exercises to boost reasoning skills, memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body.

The benefits of physical exercise on your body are numerous. A report by ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2010), stated — Physical activity appears to be associated with a reduced risk or slower progression of several age-related conditions as well as improvements in overall health in older age, according to a commentary and four articles published in the January 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

What other evidence do you need in order to know that you can keep yourself youthful and healthy by doing regular mental and physical exercise? The elusive Fountain of Youth can be found in simply doing a daily crossword puzzle and taking a 30 minute walk.