7 Benefits of Jigsaw Puzzle for Adults

Puzzles not only are fun and a great way to bring the family together, but they provide a series of great health and mental benefits to you as well. In between the calm and the challenging frustration of completing a puzzle, the brain is constantly working in different ways helping you grow as you have fun. Let us look at the top Benefits of Jigsaw Puzzle for Adults.

1. Puzzles decrease stress levels

Puzzles are great at helping lower stress levels. Puzzles help bring our focus from all of the outside world into the task at hand. The noise slow can fade away and you hit a state of “flow” which has scientifically been proven to help lower stress and help put you in a better mood. Every time you find the right piece of puzzle and push it into place, we get a small shot of dopamine as a reward. The brain is encouraged to continue forward and helps increase optimism and motivation both related to feelings of a better mood.

2. Puzzles double as meditation 

Many of us find meditation difficult. Having to sit on one spot and not have our thoughts wander is a lot harder of an exercise that it appears to be. Puzzles end up forcing us to focus on the here and now and the small task at hand. As you do a puzzle, your thoughts can slow down, and you can feel a sense of peace and tranquility that lowers your heart rate and blood pressure like a meditative state.

3. Puzzles help with your short-term memory

Have Social media and short-form news have slowly worn-down short-term memory? Having trouble remembering small things like what you were just doing five minutes ago? Puzzles can help flex the muscles needed to combat that. Puzzles help strengthen the brain and increase mental sharpness this increasing your short-term memory.

4. Puzzles can help you live longer

For seniors, a puzzle can improve the quality and duration of life. It has been shown that people who do puzzles have fewer chances or slower degradation of mental issues such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, or memory loss. Puzzling ends up being a cardio workout for your brain and keeps it fit and healthy.

5. Puzzles help you connect or disconnect

Puzzles are a great way to bring family and friends together. Working towards a shared goal helps create bonds and trust between individuals and we inheritably are social creatures. Sometimes the introverted side of us takes over and we need to be alone to recharge. In that case, puzzles end up being a nice quiet break for a mental recharge from the noise of the world.

6. Puzzles Increased productivity and IQ

Researchers from the University of Michigan, led by Dr. Susanne Jäggi, found that spending 25 minutes a day solving puzzles and riddles can raise your IQ by 4 points.

7. Jigsaw puzzles improve your visual-spatial reasoning

As you look for the right puzzle pieces for the right space, your brain is training itself on the basics of visual-spatial reasoning. Being able to determine if items will fit in a suitcase, or if that other car is too close to you when parking are all examples of the spatial reason that occur in daily life that get better the more you work with puzzles as well.