You don’t have to be a Memory Champion, or even a memory expert, to have a great memory. A few simple changes in your lifestyle can have a big effect in improving memory skills and also help to keep your brain healthy for life.
1. A healthy diet leads to a healthy brain. A diet rich in “brain food,” like Omega 3 fatty acid, (fish oil), and antioxidants (spinach, broccoli, blueberries) promotes healthy brain function. Change from eating three full meals a day to grazing — eating 5-6 small meals a day, which levels the sugar and insulin in your blood. A good idea would be to find a good multi-vitamin/multi-mineral that covers all the necessary nutrients, and it’s all in one pill!
2. Pump up your heart. When your blood is circulating un-constricted through your veins, it is running well to your brain. Exercise to get your heart going faster brings more oxygen to your brain, and more importantly to your hippocampus – the area of the brain where information is stored temporarily before being transferred to the cerebral cortex. Studies have shown this area of the brain is particularly related to age-related memory loss.
3.Take time to relax. When you are under stress you have a hard time thinking clearly. Under prolong periods of stress your hypothalamus tells your pituitary gland to release hormones that can weaken the memory center to your brain (hippocampus). Learn meditation, deep breathing exercises, yoga or any thing you can find to help you relax.
4. Get Plenty of Sleep. According to studies conducted at Harvard Medical School, “Getting a good night’s sleep — a minimum of seven hours a night — may improve your short-term memory and long-term relational memory.” The amount of sleep we get affects the brain’s memorizing ability.
5. Eliminate Distractions. Forming a memory is much more difficult if you are distracted. Force yourself to focus on what you are trying to remember and eliminate what is going on around you. Concentrate!
6. Play Brain Games. As we age, our neurotransmitters also age and die off. By regular brain exercise (brain games) you can develop new connections that will keep our minds clicking on all cylinders. These exercises could include learning a new language, playing a musical instrument, or doing puzzles and word games like “sudoku.” Keep your brain active by providing it with fun challenges.
7. Organize! The more organized you are the easier it will be to find things, and the better able you are to concentrate on more important things. “A place for everything and everything in its place,” is a common phrase that is worth heeding.
8. Drink Less Alcohol. You may think alcohol relaxes you, but medical research supports that excessive alcohol does considerable damage to brain cells. Prolonged or sporadic heavy use of alcohol negatively affects memory, and even moderate reductions in use can lead to improvements in memory performance. This does not mean one glass of red wine with your dinner meal is a problem, in fact red wine can do some good, but everything in excess is not to your advantage, and adding poison to your diet is not exactly heart-healthy.
9. Take Memory Training. Attend memory training seminars or memory training workshops that will help with memory techniques to keep you mentally alert for years to come.
Resources:
Midnight Fire — http://sentinel-midnightfire.blogspot.com
Memoryzine.com: Five Recommended Lifestyle Changes for Memory — memoryzine.com
