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Stay Mentally Active

The document provides tips to maintain brain health and memory as one ages. It recommends a healthy diet, exercise, social interaction, sleep, and mental stimulation. It also discusses seven normal types of memory problems including forgetting over time, absentmindedness, temporary retrieval issues, detail errors, suggestibility, biases, and persistent unpleasant memories.

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Shafiq Upal
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45 views5 pages

Stay Mentally Active

The document provides tips to maintain brain health and memory as one ages. It recommends a healthy diet, exercise, social interaction, sleep, and mental stimulation. It also discusses seven normal types of memory problems including forgetting over time, absentmindedness, temporary retrieval issues, detail errors, suggestibility, biases, and persistent unpleasant memories.

Uploaded by

Shafiq Upal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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 Balance your blood sugar with a whole foods, low glycemic diet

 Exercise daily — even a 30-minute walk can help


 Deeply relax daily with yoga, meditation, biofeedback, or just deep breathing
 Take a multivitamin and mineral supplement
 Take an omega-3 fat supplement
 Take extra vitamin B6, B12, and folate
 Take vitamin D
 Treat thyroid or low sex hormones
 Get rid of mercury through a medical detoxification program

Stay Mentally Active


 Physical activity
 Do crossword puzzles
 Read a section of the newspaper
 Take alternate routes when driving
 Learn to play a musical instrument
 Volunteer at a local school or community organization.

2. Socialize Regularly
 Social interaction
 Look for opportunities to get together with loved ones
 When you're invited to share a meal or attend an event, go!

3. Get organized
 Jot down tasks, appointments and other
 Keep to-do lists current and check off items you've completed
 Set aside a certain place for your wallet, keys and other
essentials.
 Limit distractions and don't try to do too many things at once

4. Sleep well
 Make getting enough sleep a priority. Seven to eight hours of
sleep a day.

5. Eat a healthy diet


 Eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains
 Choose low-fat protein sources
 Not enough water or too much alcohol can lead to confusion and
memory loss.

6. Include physical activity in your daily routine


Physical activity increases blood flow to your whole body, including
your brain. This might help keep your memory sharp. For most healthy
adults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends at
least 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity (think brisk
walking) or 75 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic activity (such as
jogging) — preferably spread throughout the week. If you don't have
time for a full workout, squeeze in a few 10-minute walks throughout
the day.

7. Manage chronic conditions


Follow your doctor's treatment recommendations for any chronic
conditions, such as depression or kidney or thyroid problems. The
better you take care of yourself, the better your memory is likely to be.
In addition, review your medications with your doctor regularly.
Various medications can impact memory.

When to seek help for memory loss


If you're worried about memory loss — especially if memory loss
affects your ability to complete your usual daily activities — consult
your doctor. He or she will likely do a physical exam, as well as check
your memory and problem-solving skills. Sometimes other tests are
needed as well. Treatment will depend on what's contributing to the
memory loss.

Seven normal memory problems


1. Transience

This is the tendency to forget facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget
information soon after you learn it. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality:
memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be forgotten. Although
transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain scientists regard it as
beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making way for newer, more
useful ones.
2. Absentmindedness

This type of forgetting occurs when you don’t pay close enough attention. You forget where
you just put your pen because you didn’t focus on where you put it in the first place. You
were thinking of something else (or, perhaps, nothing in particular), so your brain didn’t
encode the information securely. Absentmindedness also involves forgetting to do
something at a prescribed time, like taking your medicine or keeping an appointment.

3. Blocking

Someone asks you a question and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue — you know
that you know it, but you just can’t think of it. This is perhaps the most familiar example of
blocking, the temporary inability to retrieve a memory. In many cases, the barrier is a
memory similar to the one you’re looking for, and you retrieve the wrong one. This
competing memory is so intrusive that you can’t think of the memory you want.

Scientists think that memory blocks become more common with age and that they account
for the trouble older people have remembering other people’s names. Research shows that
people are able to retrieve about half of the blocked memories within just a minute.

4. Misattribution

Misattribution occurs when you remember something accurately in part, but misattribute
some detail, like the time, place, or person involved. Another kind of misattribution occurs
when you believe a thought you had was totally original when, in fact, it came from
something you had previously read or heard but had forgotten about. This sort of
misattribution explains cases of unintentional plagiarism, in which a writer passes off some
information as original when he or she actually read it somewhere before.

As with several other kinds of memory lapses, misattribution becomes more common with
age. As you age, you absorb fewer details when acquiring information because you have
somewhat more trouble concentrating and processing information rapidly. And as you grow
older, your memories grow older as well. And old memories are especially prone
to misattribution.

5. Suggestibility

Suggestibility is the vulnerability of your memory to the power of suggestion — information


that you learn about an occurrence after the fact becomes incorporated into your memory of
the incident, even though you did not experience these details. Although little is known
about exactly how suggestibility works in the brain, the suggestion fools your mind into
thinking it’s a real memory.

6. Bias

Even the sharpest memory isn’t a flawless snapshot of reality. In your memory, your
perceptions are filtered by your personal biases — experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge,
and even your mood at the moment. Your biases affect your perceptions and experiences
when they’re being encoded in your brain. And when you retrieve a memory, your mood
and other biases at that moment can influence what information you actually recall.

Although everyone’s attitudes and preconceived notions bias their memories, there’s been
virtually no research on the brain mechanisms behind memory bias or whether it becomes
more common with age.

7. Persistence

Most people worry about forgetting things. But in some cases people are tormented by
memories they wish they could forget, but can’t. The persistence of memories of traumatic
events, negative feelings, and ongoing fears is another form of memory problem. Some of
these memories accurately reflect horrifying events, while others may be negative
distortions of reality.

People suffering from depression are particularly prone to having persistent, disturbing
memories. So are people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD can result from
many different forms of traumatic exposure — for example, sexual abuse or wartime
experiences. Flashbacks, which are persistent, intrusive memories of the traumatic event,
are a core feature of PTSD.

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