WE’VE all had the occasional ‘senior’s moment’. Maybe you’ve gone into the kitchen and can’t remember why, or can’t recall a familiar name during a conversation. Memory lapses can occur at any age, but aging alone is generally not a cause of cognitive decline. When significant memory loss occurs among older people, it’s generally not due to aging but to organic disorders, brain injury, or neurological illness.
Studies have shown that you can help prevent cognitive decline and reduce the risk of dementia with some basic good health habits:
Staying physically active and maintaining a healthy diet
Getting enough sleep
Not smoking
Having good social connections
Limiting alcohol to no more than one drink a day
Memory and other cognitive changes can be frustrating, but the good news is that, thanks to decades of research, you can learn how to get your mind active. There are various strategies we can use to help maintain cognitive fitness. Here are some you might try:
1. Keep learning: Challenging your brain with mental exercise is believed to activate processes that help maintain individual brain cells and stimulate communication among them.
2. Use all your senses: The more senses you use in learning something, the more of your brain that will be involved in retaining the memory.
3. Believe in yourself: People who believe that they are not in control of their memory function are less likely to work at maintaining or improving their memory skills and therefore are more likely to experience cognitive decline. If you believe you can improve and you translate that belief into practice, you have a better chance of keeping your mind sharp.
4. Prioritize your brain use
If you don’t need to use mental energy remembering where you laid your keys or the time of your granddaughter’s birthday party, you’ll be better able to concentrate on learning and remembering new and important things.
5. Repeat what you want to know
When you want to remember something you’ve just heard, read, or thought about, repeat it out loud or write it down.
6. Space it out
Repetition is most potent as a learning tool when it’s properly timed. It’s best not to repeat something many times in a short period, as if you were cramming for an exam.
