SheSue Experience

What happens if you do weight lifting for years, than stop? Your muscles go away. What happens if you don’t use your brain? Your brain cells go away. Many studies have shown that if you have a buff brain, it will resist Alzheimer’s disease.

Although scientists still don’t know for sure the cause of Alzheimer’s, many studies show a link with protein build-up in the brain. One theory is that this build-up blocks communication between nerve cells which in turn destroys these nerve cells. Symptoms of Alzheimer’s include memory loss, communication difficulties, lapses in judgment, difficulty performing familiar tasks, disorientation, misplacing objects, mood changes, and apathy.

Studies have shown that diet, social interaction and exercise help to ward off the disease, but mental stimulation has proven to be the most preventative. Puzzles, crossword puzzles, cards, games, attending lectures and plays, taking up a new hobby or watching educational TV. Learning dance with steps also keeps the brain buff. For more information on Alzheimer’s disease, check out www.alz.org.

To get that brain working, here is a word puzzle for you from “Brain Games”:

Picnic Puzzle

Ally was preparing a picnic lunch for her hungry family. First, she covered the square table with a red and white checkerboard tablecloth that had 64 squares on its surface. Then she put a pitcher of lemonade in each of 2 diagonal corner squares of the tablecloth. She had a plate of 31 hoagie sandwiches, each one big enough to cover 2 adjacent squares. Sally wanted to put the hoagies on the tablecloth and cover the remaining 62 squares with no hoagies overlapping, none hanging over the edge of the table and none standing on end. Was she able to figure out a way to do it before her hungry family showed up to eat them?