Better Your Memory – Lead a Healthy Lifestyle
As we get older, we feel our memory is getting slow and losing its ability to store information like it used to. While this can be a natural occurrence, there are things once can do and exercises to help so you don’t lose grip to remembering things and better your memory.
Phycologists define memory as the mental ability of an organism to retain, store and recall information when we need it.
Today the study of memory which has evolved over time, is now referred to as cognitive-neuroscience, which is an interdisciplinary area of research that combines measurement of brain activity with a simultaneous performance of cognitive tasks by humans.
So How Does The Memory Work?
There are three stages that form and retrieve information as part of our memory. • First – the information is encoded or registered once it is received by your brain. • Second – Your brain creates a permanent record of the information and stores as much as it can. • Third – Your brain will recall the stored information and retrieve it based on the circumstance that you are in.
Disorders Associated with Memory
One of the most common disorder associated with the loss of memory, is amnesia. There are many types of amnesia and studies are being done continuously to know more about this as well as find a cure. Other disorders that usually occur in older folks is Alzheimer’s. There is also a disorder called hyperthymic syndrome that centres into one’s autobiographical memory.
Better Memory
Now that you know how your brain works, and are aware as to how it stores and retrieves information that comes from various sources, you need to learn how to improve your memory and not wait for any disorder to hit you. Compare your brain’s ability to store information to your computer hard disk.
Your computer hard disk can crash if you do not take certain steps to take care of it. If you overload it with information it will freeze or just crash and you can lose information, so you will do a regular check to ensure it has no virus or potent errors that may lead to its crash. The brain works similarly. You need to take care of your brain to make sure it won’t give in or become weaker over time.
You must treat your brain right to benefit from its superb performance as you age. By leading a healthy lifestyle, you will help your brain retain its usual performance. Even if you think like you are good in remembering things, you must not abuse such ability. You can help your brain to stay at the top of its game by leading a healthy lifestyle. Have you ever heard doctors tell you live a moderate lifestyle and do things in moderation? Well, to have a healthy lifestyle you need moderation. You don’t need to stop drinking alcohol, but you need to drink in moderation. Drugs or any abusive substance can kill you, do refrain from them. You brain needs a healthy supply of oxygen to function well, so do regular exercise and get enough sleep. By restoring to these small techniques, you will better your memory in the long run. Do you know of anyone in their eighties and nineties? Many in this age group, have great memories. Why? Because they lived a moderate healthy lifestyle and continue to do so today. There were no machines or technology back then so they lived a healthy and physical lifestyle.
Take for example, my dad, at 86, he has a fantastic memory that he puts me to shame. He maintains a healthy lifestyle; monitors what he eats, wakes up daily at 5am and begins his day with light exercise, drives himself to do his chores, physically gets on his knees and washes his own clothes, does not believe in washing machines or dish washers or the house staff do his things, reads daily and reads a lot etc. I do not believe that as you grow older memory gets weaker. Age has nothing to do with memory, if we take care of it as we grow older.
There is so much information available today for us to understand how to improve our memory, or double our memory. I found the Memory Professor particularly interesting; http://bit.ly/2KuM2Vm