HEALTH BENEFITS OF PLAYING CHESS

For Children:

Dear Mom and Dad, We understand that many of you are concerned about your child’s future and want to know how you can help him or her succeed. Instilling chess as an integral part of their upbringing is one way you can aid them in unlocking and maximizing their true potential. Creating and embracing a chess culture in the home will have a significant impact on the type of future adult you shape for a world that is changing fast.

TCA recognizes the level of duty and obligation we bear in helping to shape a transformative society. This, we feel, can only be accomplished by fostering a shared value of chess as a core component of a child’s education at both the institutional and parental settings. We are working relentlessly to design and develop curriculum that is appropriate for policy influence at the national level. Our passion is fuelled by a thorough grasp of the health benefits that chess may have on a youngster, including the following:

• Strengthening of the executive functions (cognitive control) at a time in their development.
• Gives children better control of their own brains  (more organized thoughts, better planning, better imagination, better focus and control.
• Can help cure Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)
• Manage dyslexia (a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words – decoding)
• Develop cerebral hemispheres (logic and creative side of the brain)
• Promote brain growth by increasing synaptic connections and Intellectual Quotient (IQ)

For the Elderly and Senior Citizens

Chess has demonstrated to help the elderly with logical reasoning and problem solving. These mental benefits contribute to their social, psychological and even physical well-being. As a  game, it has had a significant impact on the quality of life of older players.

Chess is purely a mental game that requires the player’s brain to stay active while playing. To grow, all muscles, including the brain, they must be exposed to some level of resistance. Chess is the best type of resistance and exercise for keeping the brain healthy.  It has been medically proven to aid in the reduction of some of the most common neurological disorders, including:

•  Alzheimer’s (progressive neurologic disorder that causes the brain to shrink – atrophy – and brain cells to die)
• Dendrites deficiency (Dendrites are tree-like branches in the brain that transmit messages from other neural cells into the neurons to which they are linked. As a result, learning chess at an early age allows those dendrites to continue to grow indefinitely thus improving information processing)
• Recovery from a stroke – rehabilitation and therapy (occurs when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures and bleeds, or when there’s a blockage in the blood supply to the brain)
• Loss of creativity (activating both sides of the brain – left and right – hemisphere)
• Treating schizophrenia (mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally – may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning, and can be disabling)