Facilitators to run a Brain-Healthy Lifestyle Club

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Facilitator to run a Brain-healthy lifestyle Club

Looking for a volunteer facilitator to run a brain healthy lifestyle club for a senior wellness center in Delray Beach. Need to be creative, energetic and love working with the elderly. Experience with group facilitation preferred, ideal for professionals with a background in social work, psychology, neuropsychology or students seeking a career in brain health. You will be required to design and develop new creative activities for the club members. The club meet twice a month for 90 minutes.

Project background:

We don’t just lose muscle over time - our brains can atrophy, too. More specifically, your brain's cognitive reserve - its ability to withstand neurological damage due to aging and other factors without showing visible signs of slowing or memory loss - diminishes through the years. That can make it more difficult to perform mental tasks. But just as weight workouts add lean muscle to your body and help you retain more muscle in your later years, researchers now believe that following a brain-healthy lifestyle and performing regular, targeted brain exercises can also increase your brain's cognitive reserve.

People who participate in multiple healthy behaviors significantly reduce their risk for dementia. Avoiding ruts and boredom is also critical. The brain wants to learn new things, people are more vulnerable to dementia when they pay less attention to the things around them. When the brain is passive, it has a tendency to atrophy, sedentary and relatively passive activities, such as sitting in front of a TV for hours a day, can be detrimental to brain health over time.

On top of a healthy diet and regular exercise, there are ways to give your brain its own workout routine - Experts recommend sticking to brain training that involves real-world activities. Exercises to strengthen brain function should offer novelty and challenge. Almost any silly suggestion can work, brush your teeth with your opposite hand. The brain works through associations [which is why it's easier to memorize lyrics to a song than it is to try and remember the same words without music], so the more senses you involve the better."

Soon people will realize that they can take steps to keep their brains healthy, just as they know they can prevent heart disease by taking certain actions. "In the coming decade, I predict brain wellness to be right up there with heart health - now that there's proof that living a brain-healthy lifestyle works!"