Travel Crosswords to Keep You Entertained in Lockdown

Last updated on June 28th, 2023 at 04:46 pm

Keeping Your Mind and Body Active During Lockdown

As the UK’s tightens its restrictions, with a new tier 4 introduced – it’s important to look after our mental health by staying both physically and mentally active. Just as we exercise to keep our bodies fit and healthy, we can also exercise our minds.

Luckily, you don’t need a gym to stay mentally active. Puzzles are a great way to challenge yourself and they can be done from the comfort of your own home. Challenging your mind daily via puzzles can help reduce feelings of boredom that can often arise during a lockdown.

However, banishing boredom may not be the only benefit of puzzle-solving, check out what the latest research has revealed about puzzling solving and the potential benefits that puzzles can bring you.

Benefits of Puzzle Solving

In 2019, puzzle-solving became headline news. The Daily Telegraph suggested that ‘Completing a daily Sudoko could delay brain ageing by eight to ten years’ and The Daily Mail suggested that ‘Older adults who regularly do Sudoku have sharper brains that are 10 years younger’. With both headlines seeming to promote the power of puzzles on our cognitive ability, what does the evidence within the field suggest?

The NHS found that while mental activities cannot prevent disease which causes mental decline such as Alzheimer’s disease, it’s believed that staying mentally active can build ‘cognitive reserve’ . What does that mean? Basically people can retain their mental abilities for longer. However, there’s little evidence to determine which mental activities create a ‘cognitive reserve’.

So, while studies surrounding ‘brain training programmes’, especially those linked specifically to puzzles, remain inconclusive in their ability to reduce mental decline, they’re still beneficial if they’re something you enjoy, Dr Alan Gow suggests:

‘doing hobbies and activities that we enjoy is important for quality of life and wellbeing anyway.’ – Dr Alan Gow, Associate Professor in Psychology at Heriot-Watt University

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Lockdown Resources and Future Travel Inspiration

Although at this current time – we are unable to travel, most of us are dreaming of the time when holidays are possible once more. To inspire your wanderlust we’ve collected some travel blogs to help plan your next trip…

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If you have a COVID-19 travel-related topic you’d like us to cover, or if you’ve simply enjoyed and would like more of our Lockdown entertainment resources – feel free to get in touch, we love to hear from our readers!

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