Looking for ideas for Christmas gifts for friends, family or business relations? Break out of the fruitcake, desk calendar and mugs-with-candy rut and give a gift that will change someone’s life. Here are some of my favorites, in alphabetical order.

Casa de Fe

Home for abandoned, mostly special-needs children in Shell, Ecuador. Casa de Fe provides love, education and medical care for these children. Donate to the general fund, or sponsor special projects. Visit the site to meet the children and provide Christmas gifts for them. Casa de Fe is a small, local organization but its finances are administered by Cornerstone International, and its budget is published on its website.

Compassion International

Provides education and medical to children and their families all over the world through sponsorship. Make a one-time donation or sponsor a child.84 cents of every dollar is spent on its programs and it has received the highest rating from Charity Navigators 12 years in a row.

Doctors Without Borders

Doctors and nurses volunteer all over the world to provide medical care to those most in need. Make a one-time donation or become a monthly donor. 86 cents of every dollar is spent on its programs and it has an “A” rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy.

Translators without Borders

Through this platform, translators volunteer their services for charitable organizations such as Doctors without Borders and others that focus on health, nutrition and education, allowing critical information to reach people in their own language. Financial transparency is a guiding principle, and specific financial details are published on their website.

World Vision

Sponsor

a child or visit the catalog for gifts that help families become self-sufficient. You could buy chickens that will provide eggs to eat and to sell, or a share of a cow, or medical packages; the options are creative and endless. 16 cents of every dollar is spent on administration, and of the other 84 cents, 24 cents is invested to acquire 70 cents’ worth of large corporate, private and government donations. In other words, every donated dollar brings in $1.30 worth of value. World vision is accountable to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and Charity Navigator.

As a professional chair-dweller whose work is mostly done in my head, I have always comforted myself with the thought that although I might never run a marathon, at least my brain will be buff and toned by the time age catches up to all those athletes.

So imagine my disappointment, uh, surprise, when a study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, claimed that physical exercise is actually more beneficial than mentally stimulating activities in preventing cognitive decline. Study author Alan Gow, PhD, with the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, followed 638 seniors by recording their reported physical and mental activities over a 3-year period.

MRIs at the start and end of the study showed that physical activity resulted in less brain shrinkage, while mental activity appeared to have no effect. However, since these activities were self-reported rather than imposed, could it be that the study participants did not engage in enough (rigorous) mental activity to make a difference?

Then a new study came out last month: the Mental Activity and eXercise (MAX) trial, a randomized, controlled trial with a factorial design. The subjects were assigned to one of four groups: intensive mental activity/intensive exercise, intensive mental activity/control-level exercise, control-level mental activity/intensive exercise, or control-level mental activity/control-level exercise.

The surprising conclusion of this study was that all four of the groups showed improved brain function, with no difference between the intervention and control groups in

all four groups, leading the authors conclude that perhaps the amount of activity is more important than the level of activity. On the other hand, it has been suggested that maybe there wasn’t enough contrast between the interventional and control levels of activity. It could also be that 12 weeks is not long enough for reliable results.

So although these two studies come to different conclusions regarding mental activity, they do agree on one thing: exercise is good for the brain. So turn off that computer every now and then. Three hours on Facebook never counted as mental activity anyway.