The brain, like any other part of the body, needs daily exercise.ignore you brain health May increase susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of degenerative brain disease dementia.
As neuroscientistI have been guiding memory impaired patients for decades Brain-strengthening habits and exercises — Many of them I also practice.
Here are the 7 brain rules I follow to keep my memory sharp at 81.
1. Choose fiction when possible.
Much can be learned from non-fiction works, but they are often structured in such a way that they can be skipped based on personal interests and prior knowledge of the subject matter.
Fiction, on the other hand, requires you to train your memory to go from beginning to end and to retain various details, characters, and plots.
By the way, in my years of experience as a neuropsychiatrist, I have noticed that people with early dementia, one of the earliest signs of developing dementia, often stop reading novels.
2. Never leave the museum without testing your memory.
“Western Motel” by Edward Hopper, 1957. Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 50 1/8 in (77.8 x 128.3 cm). Located in the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
Fine Art | Getty
My favorite drawing for practicing visualization is Edward Hopper’s “Western Motel” It depicts a woman sitting in a sunlit motel bedroom.
Start by diligently studying the details until you can see them with your mind’s eye. Next, I will explain while looking away from the picture.
Illustration by Olivia de Recat for CNBC Make It
Got a little clock on your bedside table? A gooseneck lamp? The clothes on the chair in the lower right corner of the painting? Can you recall the colors and composition of the room?
You can do this with any work of art to enhance your memory.
3. Limit naps to 90 minutes.
The nap lasts from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours between 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM. shown to increase You will later recall the information encoded before your nap.
some research I also found that naps can compensate for lack of sleep at night.If you suffer from insomnia, you can take an afternoon nap Improve memory performance.
Over the years, I’ve trained myself to just take a 30 minute nap. Some people I know have learned to take as little as a 15-minute nap and then feel refreshed and revitalized.
4. No party is complete without brain games.
My favorite activity is the “20 Questions” where one person (the questioner) leaves the room and the rest of the players choose a person, place or thing. The questioner can ask up to 20 questions to guess what the group decided.
Success depends on the questioner’s ability to clearly remember all the answers and mentally eliminate possible options based on the answers.
Bridge and chess are also great for training your memory. To do well, you have to appreciate the previous games. We also need to consider the future consequences of past and present decisions.
5. Eat brain food.
Dr. Uma Naidua nutritional psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, brain hood:
- B.: Berries and beans
- R.: Rainbow colors of fruits and vegetables
- a: Antioxidant
- I: Contains Lean Protein and Vegetable Protein
- N.:nuts
- debt: Fiber-rich foods and fermented foods
- 〇: Oil
- 〇: Food rich in omega
- D.: dairy products
- S.: Spices
And good news for chocoholics (like me) :A 2020 survey Cocoa flavonoids, a component of dark chocolate, can enhance episodic memory in healthy young adults.
6. Use images for things that are hard to remember.
My wife’s dog, Leah, is a Skipperke (pronounced “SKIP-er-kee”). It’s a unique name, but the hardest to remember. So that you can finally answer, “What breed is that?” At the dog park, I imagined a strong captain holding a huge key to a small sailing ship (small dog).
Get in the habit of transforming anything you find difficult to remember into a wild, weird, or attention-grabbing image.
7. Don’t sit on the couch all day.
Recent research Among 82,872 volunteers, participants aged 80 and over who engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity were found to have a lower risk of dementia compared with inactive adults aged 50 to 69. rice field.
Even moving from sedentary inactivity (sitting for long periods of time, “never walk when you can drive” attitude) to active movement (standing, climbing stairs, walking 1 mile daily) made a difference. bottom.
housework so far lead to higher attention Improving memory scores and sensory and motor function in older adults.
Dr. Richard Restak, MD is a neuroscientist and author of 20 books on the human brain. “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening the Mind” and “Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Brain Performance” Currently, he is a Clinical Professor of Neurology at the George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. In 1992, Dr. Restak received the Chicago Neurosurgical Center’s “Brain of the Year Award”.
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