6 Tips To Keep Memory Heathy

While you’re busy eating right and doing physical exercise, don’t forget to keep your memory healthy too. Scientific research on memory shows that keeping your memory healthy is just as important as keeping your body healthy. 

Researchers and doctors offer these six tips to keep memory healthy:

1. Keep Learning
2. Socialize
3. Be Organized
4. Use All Your Senses
5. Get Enough Sleep
6. Manage Chronic Conditions
7. Keep Learning

No matter what age you are, you can add new memories. A study published by the National Academy of Sciences showed that training your memory through new experiences increases your working memory and keeps it healthy. 

The older you are, the more experiences you have stored in your memory. Mental exercise includes learning new things and using your existing knowledge to understand new concepts, ideas, and processes.

There are a wide variety of ways to keep learning at any age. Doctors and psychologists suggest:

• Taking a class
• Developing a hobby
• Doing crossword puzzles
• Reading
• Play games like chess or bridge
• Volunteer

Learning something new helps connect what you already know to what you are learning. This helps keep your brain active and healthy. Learning can be fun, including reading or playing games. Volunteering allows you to use what you know while learning new ways to do things and work with people.

Socialize

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic suggest staying socially active to keep your memory healthy. Social activities help decrease stress and depression, which can lead to memory loss. Socializing also enables you to practice your conversation skills. Spending time socializing with people is a healthy way to exercise your memory and skills.

Be Organized

In studies done at Texas Tech University and the University of California, researchers found that using more than one way to learn reinforced memory. But trying to learn or do too many things at once led to subjects forgetting things. While reinforcement helps, multi-taking does not help keep memory healthy. 

Being organized can help keep your memory healthy by limiting distractions and multi-tasking while using multiple methods to remember things. 

When you want to remember something, good ways to be organized include:

• Make a list
• Use a calendar
• Say it out loud
• Put things in order

Ideas like making a list and using a calendar connect what your brain wants to remember with the physical act of writing and the visual reminder of seeing what you wrote. Each step in the process helps reinforce what you want to remember. 

When you say something out loud, you are taking action and hearing a reminder. Putting things in order limits distractions. It’s easier to start your day if your clothes, lunch, bag, and keys are in the right spots every morning. If you have to search for one item, you might forget another.

Use all Your Senses

Doctors at Harvard Health suggest that using all your senses helps keep memory healthy. Your senses include:

• Sight
• Smell
• Touch
• Taste
• Hearing

The more senses you use, the more ways you reinforce a memory. Researchers have found that smell is a powerful trigger for memory. A familiar scent often evokes long term memories from years ago. To help remember people’s names, say their name in conversation when you first meet them. Writing things down also uses multiple senses to keep your memory healthy.

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep helps keep memory healthy. A historical perspective published in Psychological Reviews points out that researchers have shown that sleep consolidates stimuli for a healthy memory over the last century. Getting enough sleep helps keep you focused, alert, ad able to use, and processes memories.

Manage Chronic Conditions

Some chronic medical conditions can affect memory. 

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic recommend you manage the following chronic conditions:

• Depression
• High Blood Pressure
• High Cholesterol
• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Hearing Loss

Your physical health is essential to memory health. Eating right and exercising helps both your body and mind.

Schedule a call with a Memory Coach and get personalized support to improve your cognitive function.