Playing bridge good for brain health

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This article was published 28/08/2024 (391 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kathie Gordon, a retired Brandon music teacher, says she wants to help people “stay sharp” with a card game that is played around the kitchen table.

“My husband and I played a lot with our friends,” Gordon said. “And we referred to it as kitchen bridge — that was how people used to get together and play socially,” Gordon said.

“But once I retired, I started playing more bridge — first at the Valleyview Community Centre, then to Prairie Oasis and now we’ve moved over to Seniors for Seniors, where I am about to teach beginners how to play,” she said.

Described as one of the world’s most popular and mentally challenging card games, bridge involves four players, organized into two sets of partners.

“It’s really a game of skill and logic,” Gordon said, “So, there are kind of two parts to the game. There’s the bidding, and then there’s the play, as in playing the cards out.

“So, you look at your hand and bid according to what’s in your hand, how many tricks you think that you’re going to take. A trick is when the four cards go down, and the highest card wins the trick,” she said.

The hand is sorted by suit, she added, and higher cards are the best.

“When we’re teaching the beginners, we’re teaching them to follow rules. And the further on you get, the more you use judgment calls. It’s not always black and white, sometimes there are grey areas. And that’s why it’s interesting — because it’s never the same,” she said.

Challenging the brain is the best way to keep it healthy, said Zahra Moussavi, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Manitoba. Aside from her academic work, she has created memory fitness programs for the aging population and developed a smart phone app called “Mind Triggers.”

“The key for brain exercises is to keep the brain active,” said Moussavi. “You have to challenge your brain with the things that you don’t know. During a bridge game, the synapses in the brain are activated and being strengthened, so they remain active.”

The human brain is made up of billions of neurons that “talk” to each other using a combination of electrical and chemical and electrochemical signals. The small pocket of space where neurons connect and communicate with each other are called synapses.

And as we age, said Moussavi, we lose some of our synapses, so it’s important to strengthen our “short term, working memory.”

“Our goal is to keep those synapses alive, and to strengthen and even generate new synapses with cognitive exercise,” she said.

Cognition is the set of processes that take place in the brain, including thinking, attention, language, learning, memory and perception.

Studies have shown that by keeping our brain active, we may be helping reduce our risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, said Christine Jefferies, regional co-ordinator with the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba.

More than 19,600 Manitobans have Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, and by the year 2050 it is expected to increase to more than 39,100.

According to an Alzheimer Society of Manitoba report completed in 2021, more than 50 per cent of Manitobans are aware that challenging the brain and choosing a healthy lifestyle are strategies to maintain brain health.

“Challenging our brain does not have to be difficult,” said Jefferies. “It can be as simple as playing games that challenge your mind, pursuing new interests, breaking your routine or by simply doing tasks differently than you did yesterday — dial the phone with your opposite hand, for example,” she said.

Social connection is also important, she said, as people with few social connections have a greater risk of developing dementia.

“So, it’s really important for folks to maintain and even increase social connections as we age,” Jefferies said.

At Seniors for Seniors, four days of bridge are offered. Contract bridge is played on Wednesday and Friday afternoons. It does not require a partner, and after four hands are played, people move to a different table.

Duplicate bridge is played on Monday and Thursday afternoons. It is for the more competitive card players — those who have previous bridge experience, said Gordon.

When asked why she wants to bring new people in and offer lessons, Gordon said: “It’s a lot of fun. I think some people get the wrong impression of bridge that it’s so serious and that you can’t talk, but ours is a friendly group. We laugh and have a really good time.

“And I started in my 20s with just plain social bridge, so it would be great to get more younger people playing.”

Beginner bridge lessons start next Wednesday from 9:15 to 11:45 a.m. at Brandon’s Seniors for Seniors Co-op at 311 Park Ave. East and run until Dec. 4. The cost is $3.50 per person for members and $4.50 per person for non-members.

The registration deadline is tomorrow. For more information, email Gordon and her fellow instructor at lori.mcbeth@gmail.com or call 204-725-0223.

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