Use It or Lose It

For the first two years of our marriage, Harold and I drank our morning juice out of mustard-colored Tupperware juice glasses. One day, I noticed some stunning crystal goblets shoved to the back of the cabinet. I knew they had never been used because they still had the stickers on them. Now, wouldn’t my tomato juice and his apple juice look so much better in those glasses?

After using the glasses about six months, I managed to break the stem off one of them. I threw it away and took another one down. A few days later, I told Harold, “I broke one of the juice glasses.”

He shook his head and said, “I bet I’ve had those glasses twenty years.”

“Well, look at it this way,” I, the optimist, said, “since we started using them for juice glasses, you’ve gotten more pleasure out of them than you did during the entire twenty years you had them.” Really? How much good is something if you never use it?

Anyway, this little incident caused me to think about the expression, “use it, or lose it.” That expression can be taken a couple of different ways. Like so many people my age, I’ve accumulated so much stuff that I don’t use a lot of it. I basically flunked out of minimalist class because I couldn’t seem to “lose” enough stuff.

There is another way that use it or lose it applies to our health. Lack of exercise is damaging to our minds and bodies. Oh, sure, we all know about going to the gym to exercise, but do we think about exercising our brains?

We lose a certain amount of physical and mental agility as we age. When we exercise our bodies, it helps keep us physically agile. When I was much younger, I went to a wellness seminar. One woman said, “I walk so that I am able to walk.” She had severe arthritis and said that unless she kept moving, she wouldn’t be able to.

When I don’t feel like moving, I am most motivated to do it. A few days ago, Carolyn and I were walking into exercise line dancing class and we were talking about our aches and pains. But we were both there and ready to dance. Amazingly, I felt better by the end of class.

Mental agility works the same way. Use it or lose it. Keeping your mind active doesn’t guarantee that you won’t develop Alzheimer’s, but it may reduce your risk.

We all know how to exercise our bodies, although we may not do it. You might be a little puzzled as to how to exercise your brain. As with physical exercise, if mental exercise isn’t fun, you won’t do it!

To decide on the brain exercise that will work for you, think about the things you always wanted to do, but never seemed to find the time or the motivation to follow through.

Here are a few ideas:

1.      Take a class. Have you fallen behind on technology? Check out online or community college classes. Many colleges offer short courses on a variety of interests.

2.      Learn a new skill or hobby. After going to a few “painting parties” my sister discovered she had an artist’s eye. She’s learning and expanding her skill canvas by canvas. I decided to try to learn to play the ukulele. I may never be great at it, but I have a lot of fun and at least my dog enjoys hearing me play.

3.      Read, read, read. Read for pleasure and for learning. With a library card, reading must be the least expensive pastime ever! I don’t even need to spend gas money to read. I browse hundreds of library books online and check them out on my Kindle.

4.      Working puzzles is another inexpensive hobby. I buy crossword puzzle books and Sudoku books at the dollar store. I also work the puzzles in the newspaper. Heck, I’ve already paid for the paper, so the puzzles are free. A good way for me to ease into the day is to work on a puzzle while drinking my first cup of coffee.

Exercising your brain is a way to lower your risk of Alzheimer’s disease and enrich your life at the same time. Make your own list filled with things you enjoy.

My goal is to have as much mental agility throughout my lifetime as my ninety-year-old mother has. The only way to reach that goal is to think, plan, and take action to use my brain every day.   

Copyright © July 2017 by L.S. Fisher

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