The Academy for Lifelong Learning has a tagline: An Athletic Club for Your Mind. People across the nation are getting into Brain Calisthenics and a recent article by Pam Belluck appeared in the New York Times. Some highlights from the article are listed below:

Dozens of studies are under way. Organizations like AARP are offering tips on brain health. And the Alzheimer's Association conducts hundreds of Maintain Your Brain workshops, many at corporations like Apple Computer and Lockheed Martin.

At least two health insurers are pushing brain health. MetLife is giving prospective clients a 61-page book it commissioned called "Love Your Brain." Humana will provide, free or deeply discounted, $495 worth of brain fitness software to some four million older customers, and offers "brain fitness camps" with the software at computer stores and community colleges.

There are Web sites like HappyNeuron.com, which offers subscribers cranial calisthenics, and MyBrainTrainer.com, marketed to anyone who "ever wished you could be a little quicker, a little sharper mentally." And Nintendo's Brain Age, a video game intended for baby boomers and their elders, features simple math, syllable-counting, word memory activities and the quick reading aloud of passages from the likes of Poe and Dickens, which "gives your prefrontal cortex a workout," the instructions say.

"I just felt that, Hey, this is something I ought to do," said Roy Gustafson, 85, who tried it at a Nintendo promotion at his Redmond, Wash., retirement community. He quickly got top scores (his "brain age" was low 20's), and decided to quit while ahead. But almost daily, he plays the Sudoku games in the handheld device, saying, "It keeps me alert."
Whether the hopes for brain health programs are realistic is still largely unknown, scientists say.
Certainly most brain-healthy recommendations are not considered bad for people. They do not have the potential risks of drugs or herbal supplements. And things like physical exercise and Omega-3 fatty acids help the body, even if they do not end up bettering the mind.