Exercise your brain

While brain exercises lke sudoku and Brain Age (a Ninteno DS game) may help keep you mentally sharp, it doesn't help in all areas of the brain.

According to the article, "Exercise on the brain," one of the best ways to keep the brain sharp is by exercising. This helps the kind of thinking that is called executive function.

Those are, "the set of abilities that allows you to select behavior that’s appropriate to the situation, inhibit inappropriate behavior and focus on the job at hand," according to the article.

Normally, executive function begins to decline as people age, around the 70's. But, according to the article, elderly people who were athletic most of their lives have better executive function than those who did not. Even those who are older and their executive function is already declining, can improve their executive function by exercising.

So how does exercising help the brain? Exercising helps slow the "age-related shrinkage of the frontal cortex, which is important for executive functions," according to the article.

Exercise also helps cardiovascular health, which is the heart, and that in turn can help prevent heart attacks and strokes, which damage the brain as well. And exercise releases proteins that can stimulate growth in the number of connections between neurons that can help in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that stores memories.