Ageing smarter
Since long, it was often believed that our sharpness decreases as we age. This couldn’t be more further from truth. Recent research and advances in brain sciences suggest that we can keep growing our neurons even into our 90s through ‘neuro-genesis’ especially in that part of the brain which is associated with memory – the hippocampus. So, it’s about to do away with the old adage of ‘slow-down and decline’ and replace with the fresh mantra – ‘Age smarter, age intelligent’.
While it is certainly true that modern lifestyle, like exposure to toxins, chemicals, poor diet, stress, poor sleep, play a significant role in cognitive decline, the flipside is also true that a healthy lifestyle encourages your brain to get better as you age. What’s more interesting about this? It’s almost free. We know we’ve got your attention. Go on and read the following tips that aid you in ‘age smarter’:
Lifestyle changes:
- Replace multitasking with mindfulness: Focus is a thing. We simply cannot manage to do multiple things at the same time. It leads to cognitive errors and poor decision-making and even fatigue. The opposite is mindfulness where you complete one task efficiently and quickly move to the next.
- Organize your space: Whether it be your office space or home, it is important to de-clutter and get organized. Some sort of a stable structure adds to your happiness quotient and helps your memory at the same time.
- Exercise, sleep and eat: This has been repeated enough number of times in enough number of places through enough number of channels. But, we still are failing to make this happen! After all, what is the race for? Isn’t it well-being to start with? If so, is it not necessary that we take a step back and treat our body right?
- Increase your happiness quotient: Reduce stress. Laugh more often. Take care of your mood and emotions. Have a healthy release of feelings when necessary. Increase the number of uplifting activities and reduce/manage the daily life’s hassles well.
Tricks and tools for memory:
- Repeat aloud those things you want to remember.
- Take a deep breath when you are adding something important to your memory
- Picture a person with their name written on forehead to remember names
- Quit believing that you have a bad memory. Start convincing yourself that you just have to improve your skill to use it.
- Feed the brain with puzzles, word games, brain teasers. You will find a lot of them for free online.
- Pay attention while forming a memory. Attention is the key to success, not just with memory, but, with anything you want to do in life. Lessen the number of distractions.
- Improve your observation skills by watching a picture and then get to write what you feel about it (the colors, the texture etc.). This process gives you a better memory of faces and names.
- Extend the memorizing process to various parts of the brain by including more senses. Ex: Read out a piece of information you just wrote. That will work your hearing sense along with touch and vision senses (used while typing).
There is a lot more than that you can do but the aforementioned activities are a good place to get started in your mission to ‘age smarter’. We wish you all the best!-Dr Prerna kohli
