Let’s Talk about Mental Health Today – by Dr. Harold Gunatillake

It has been shown that playing mental sports like chess lowers the risk of dementia by 74% according to studies conducted by the researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Neuroscientists agree that in addition to proper diet, fitness memory can be improved by learning something new to sharpen your brain over the years.

Sri Lanka has paved the way to the world how playing chess at a young age or other challenging mental sports do lower the risk of developing dementia as mentioned earlier, as much as 74%.

School going children and young adults from 800 families, a few from abroad, being members of the 64 Squares International Chess Academy, had their annual chess championship in August in Kandy, Sri Lanka from the 22nd of August for a week, ending with a grand finale of speeches, dance performances, and the prize distribution to the runners-up and the champions in each grade, on the 27th August, at the Oak Ray Regency Hotel, having one of the best function centres in Sri Lanka for such large scale events.

It is their 10th encounter naming as the 10th edition of the “Kandy Open Chess Festival”, considered as the biggest International Chess Festival.

It has been revealed and published in the scientific journal Nature on the topic “Neuroplasticity: Changes in Grey Matter Induced by training by playing mental sports like chess, 15 minutes daily for a period of three months resulted in a significant increase in the brain’s grey matter.

Please enjoy the video and share with others. Send your children for chess one of the best mental sports to prevent memory loss in their old age.

Thank you