Doing crossword puzzles was my "morning coffee" during college- the absolute only thing that kept my forehead off the desk in 8am classes. I justified it by convincing myself that word puzzles were just as important to keeping my neurons happy and healthy as the chemistry I was unable to concentrate on.
Well, it turns out that might not be true....
I had always heard that word puzzles were great for keeping the mind young ("plastic" if you will), but a recent study showed that older people who do lots of physical exercise had less brain atrophy than those who didn't exercise. However, older people who did word puzzles did not show any measurable decrease in the amount of atrophy, making physical exercise the clear winner.
Although only severe brain atrophy is linked to cognitive decline (thank goodness it isn't a linear correlation!), there's always the possibility that there is a direct link between cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's (in which brain atrophy is characteristic) although that's a chicken and egg argument for the time being.
That's unfortunate news for me because I spend a lot of downtime doing crosswords and sudoku, and much less time exercising....
Moral of this story is if you're waffling, take a hike instead of pulling out the newspaper crossword.
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