[Five easy ways to improve memory]
Quick! What day of the week is it? When is your best friend’s birthday? How many times did you answer the phone yesterday? Where have you parked your car?
Got you stumped, eh?
Does your brain buzz and hum along like a power saw? Or do you feel like your life resembles the memoirs of the absent-minded professor?
Not to worry, you’re about to learn some easy ways to boost your brain into hyper-drive.
Don’t take your body for granted, especially not your brain. This super organ will see you through life and needs to be juiced up and kept running all the time. Here’s what you can do to rev up your brain, today.
Table of Contents
Visualize
One of the first ways to improve memory is to visualize your plan for the day. Say, you have to pay the phone bill and pick up pineapples for a fruit salad and meet your colleague for lunch at 2. Make a story. Imagine you’re holding a pineapple shaped phone and calling your colleague while standing under a huge clock that is chiming two ‘o clock. Or, whatever!
Before you move on to a new task, take a look at what you have achieved. This means… You take a look at the place where your car is parked before you walk away. You pause for a second and see where you’ve placed you key. You turn back and see that the geyser is really switched off, before you get out of the bathroom.
When you enter a room full of people you have to talk with, let your eyes move across their face, from left to right, then right to left. Moving your eyes horizontally activates the brain, and British researchers have found that this exercise even helps you retain information you’ll hear. The secret is in the horizontal movement that spurs the brain’s hemispheres to interact, which also helps in memory retrieval.
Recharge With Meditation
Got an important and long meeting lined up right after lunch, can’t keep from drifting off? Well, first, it’s a good idea not to eat rice for lunch. Second, snatch a few minutes before the meeting, shut yourself in your cubicle, and meditate. Sit still, close you eyes and focus on your breathing. You will feel your tiredness lift off you.
With as little as 20 minutes of meditation, you’ll feel as if you have slept for eight refreshing hours. Once you are alert, you’ll be better able to commit information to your memory.
Challenge Your Brain
Brush your teeth with your left hand. Take a new route to your office. Try to remember the phone numbers you are supposed to dial.
Once you slip into a routine, you stop thinking about simple tasks, and spend time worrying about the day ahead. This time will be more productively spent, by challenging your brain.
Change the way you normally do things, pick up new tasks or hobbies, multi task. By pushing your brain, you’ll create new pathways to carry information that will help you later in life.
Recharge It With Oxygen
Your brain needs to breathe too. The more oxygen you give it, the easier it will be for you to stave off age-related memory loss. Exercise is the best way to do this. If you can’t go to the gym, walk briskly for at least 30 minutes, as often in the week as you can.
Eat Brain Super-Foods
The Journal of Neuroscience published a report recently that spinach, strawberries and blueberries are literally food for thought. Research by the USDA has found that eating blueberries every day dramatically slows the impairment of memory associated with old age. Polyphenols in blueberries prompt the signals that help brain cells communicate with each other.
Spinach is a storehouse of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds that also slow brain aging and protect your memory. Spinach is also well known as one of the very few food sources of alpha lipoic acid – a powerful antioxidant.
Ginkgo is another super food. Not only does ginkgo extract reduce the progress of dementia, but it also helps you retain your memories for longer and boosts the speed of thinking. It does this is by increasing circulation to the brain. And because it’s an antioxidant it protects the brain from cell damage.
There you have it, five ways to boost your memory. Can you remember what they are?
