Today marks the beginning of Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month – and with The Longest Day quickly approaching on June 20th, our team at Sinceri Senior Living is working hard to continue building awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, while encouraging others to focus on keeping their brains healthy.
For overall health, exercising your brain is just as important as exercising your body. When you exercise your brain, you form new neural connections, strengthen old ones, and even build a reserve that may slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease! JEA’s Meaningful Moments® specialized Alzheimer’s program makes mental exercise entertaining, stimulating, and engaging.
Here’s how it works. The brain is stimulated through purposeful activities such as social interaction, spiritual well-being, good nutrition, mental stimulation, and physical exercise. These activities improve cognition and strengthen neuro-synaptic connections (talk between neurons) and are incorporated daily into JEA’s Meaningful Moments® programming.
JEA’s Meaningful Moments® programming is designed to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain by engaging the creative, intuitive, arts and imagination of the right hemisphere with the logical, factual, sequencing, analytical left hemisphere of the brain.
We know that there is no cure or prevention for Alzheimer’s disease, but we do know that through unique programming and stimulation we can slow the progression.
Brain Health with “Dash to Dine”!
JEA knows how important physical exercise is to our residents and offers a variety of daily exercise and walking programs that are weaved into a resident’s daily routine.
The “Dash to Dine” program is just one great way we encourage physical exercise which in turn increases strength, endurance, and balance. “Dash to dine” is incorporated into our signature dining program and encourages ambulation to meals and snacks. That’s an opportunity to get our residents up and moving an additional 6 times per day!
Many studies have shown exercise helps with mood through the release of endorphins and can provide a sense of wellbeing. Exercise can alter one’s pain perception, increase strength and endurance, and most importantly, exercise improves circulation.
Exercise increases blood flow to the brain, called cerebral circulation. Circulating blood supplies our brain with the oxygen and nutrients it needs to function properly. 25 percent of blood from each heartbeat goes to the brain! Exercise also increases the development of neurons in the brain’s memory region and growth in neurotransmitter connections—that’s neurons talking to each other. Our Meaningful Moments® program offers a variety of daily exercise and walking programs.