Contents
Easy and creative tricks to stimulate your tired mind
Psychology
Establishing a routine, avoiding excessive screens and playing word games helps quarantine cognitive development
El confinement wreaks havoc in all areas of our life: it changes the way we relate to others, the way we manage our emotions, numbs our body and also dulls our mind. And while we strive to stay in touch with our family members, eat well, and exercise, there are times when we forget to keep exercising the mind.
The lack of external stimuli and the new monotony of everyday life, in which we can almost say that we live in a constant “groundhog day”, can make our mind is not “so fit” as it should. This is something that has a higher incidence in children and the elderly, but we must all strive to keep up.
“Confinement has produced a change of life for all of us and, faced with this, adaptation is necessary,” explains Dr. Robert Cilveti Portillo, pediatrician and medical director of the Adsalutem Institute. This is where lack of stimulus comes in. Eva Vinader, director of the «memoriK» platform, focused on cognitive stimulation, explains that, although when we talk about this stimulation we think of a therapy, when really everything around us activates us. «Go out to the street, say hello to your neighbor, spend the day with your coworkers … everything makes you work your memory and attention, and now that we are at home this activity is paralyzed “, explains the expert. It is the elderly and children who are most affected by this lack of stimulation, but people who during quarantine do not establish a routine, either because of work or simply self-imposed, should strive to Exercise the mind. “You lose the notion of what day we are, spend hours and hours watching television, in general the mind is disoriented”, says the director of “memoriK”.
Establish a routine
Dr. Cilveti explains that the best way to keep our mind active is through the establishment of patterns: “Work, school and all the obligations we had before confinement act ordering our lives. Now that these external activities do not exist, we have to make an effort to achieve something similar.
He recommends doing “very simple things” that have a positive impact on our mind. Among these recommendations, we find having some regular sleep and meal times, keep organized, worry about personal hygiene or not spend the day in pajamas. In short, maintaining routines similar to those we had when we were in the situation prior to confinement.
Also, the doctor reminds us of the importance of exposure to sunlight, one of our main synchronizers and regulators. “From a cognitive and emotional point of view, sunlight adjusts us so that all metabolic, emotional and vital signs are organized temporally, harmoniously,” he says.
Likewise, both experts agree on the importance of exercising and having a good rest to establish a routine that maintains “normality” in our mind. screen abuse and all this affects our sleep, “explains the medical director of Adsalutem Institute. “If we do not sleep well, our life can become a situation of chaos and that will not help us,” says the expert, who underlines the importance of acquiring a routine to sleep well.
Crosswords and sudokus
At the time of doing specific exercises to promote cognitive activity, Eva Vinader recommends choosing something that suits us: “The first ones recommended are always sudoku, but it’s something that, if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t insist on doing.” Continue proposing easy exercises, in which older people will find more benefit. “Crosswords, word games, preparing lists, reading a recipe and trying to remember the ingredients, doing mental math … we must choose activities that are challenging for us,” he says.
In order not only to have more mental activity, but also to calm the mind a bit, many times fatigued by constant exposure to screens and worries, Dr. Cilveti recommends starting with the mindfulness technique, with the aim of learning to better control our mind. “Practicing 10 or 15 minutes of mindfulness a day allows to obtain favorable results in five days,” he points out and with the idea that this confinement can become an opportunity to carry out activities that we had not dared to do.