EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: The Brain Game Benefit

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Memory loss and diseases like Alzheimers are all heartbreaking. Enter our Extraordinary Person of the Week who actually has been featured before. The first time it was about his passion for the game of Pachinko. Now, it is for the extraordinary benefit his brain games could have to slow down those mind robbing diseases.

We first met Leo Daniels earlier this year when he took us back his days at the first place to play Pachinko in the country.

“I was a little kid, a teenager,” Daniels said, “and actually worked at the Pachinko parlor in Carolina Beach(the first in the country)”

He owns Pachinko World in Wilmington, and like before, it’s the only one in the country.

“I think it’s great,” Daniels said. “There are a lot of seniors that play, there’s a lot of kids that play too. Teenagers and college kids too.”

But behind the lights, knobs, and shiny balls is a bonus that has caught the eye of researchers for many years.

“They say because you are using eye hand coordination and using it a lot,” Daniels said of the health benefit. “And some of the bonus games make you think a lot of what to do about how to do it. So it keeps their(players) brain active.”

In fact, just this past July at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference(AAIC), preliminary findings of a 10 year study on brain games were presented. In them, the brain games cut the risk of dementia among healthy people by 48 percent.

Another study released in 2008 actually included the game ‘Pachinko’ in its findings that leisure activities appeared to lower risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

Which brings us back to a game of skills.

“Seeing that it helps seniors because with other games there’s not as much though in it,” Daniels said of his brain games. “If you are playing a slot machine, you were just hitting a button. No thought process, nothing intrigued them. All they were doing was pushing buttons and hoping to win something. With this, you are actually drawn into the game. It makes you think, do you go left, or go right? (you)Press buttons at different times in bonus games. And it makes you think all the way through because if you’re not, you’re not going to win because this is based on skill.”

We already knew that you are the extraordinary “Prince of Pachinko, Leo Daniels. But the idea that your games could help strengthen our mental health? Well, that’s extraordinary too.

**Sidenote: Pachinko game payouts at Daniels game center are legal. You win prizes like at an arcade place. Except, instead of stuffed bears and other toys, you can win prizes like real drones and gift cards.

To read more about the findings from the 10 year study presented at the AAIC, click here.

To read more about the 2008 Takashima study, click here.

And to watch the original story on Leo Daniels, click here.