Healthy Body, Healthy Memory

Your brain doesn’t operate in total isolation from your body. Taking regular exercise and avoiding getting overweight could help boost your memory as well as your physical health.

Today, with cheap transportation, abundant fatty and sugary foods and very few people doing physically demanding jobs, it’s easier than ever to become physically out of shape. But inactivity can be bad for your brain and, in particular, your memory. And this is especially true the older you are.

Here’s an idea for you…

Get hold of a pedometer. These are small devices which measure how many steps you’ve taken. Try wearing it each day, and whenever possible, try taking the stairs rather than the lift, and try walking rather than driving. Keep a daily or weekly record of how many steps you’ve taken, and aim to constantly improve it. You could even get competitive and ask a friend to wear one too.

Moderate cardiovascular exercise has been found to improve memory abilities, and ward off the development of dementia. The key is that the exercise session needs to be at least thirty minutes long, and you should do it several times a week, ideally every day. There is also growing evidence that obesity may itself impair memory abilities. A hormone called leptin, which help us regulate our appetite, does not reach the brain so well in many obese people. Lack of this hormone in the brains of mice impaired their long-term memory and ability to learn.

“Losing weight will improve how you regulate your glucose, and we have shown that improved glucose regulation is associated with better memory.”

Dr. Antonio Convit, New York University School of Medicine

However, we don’t currently have a complete understanding of the benefits of exercise on memory and more research needs to be done. So far the evidence suggests that its older people particularly older women, who gain the most benefit to their memory from exercising. But it’s possible that the effectiveness may indeed vary from person to person. Nevertheless, given the health benefits of exercise, what do you have to lose? Should you exercise regularly? It’s a no-brainer!

Write is Not Cheating

Geniuses do it, star students do it and the most effective business executives can be almost obsessive about it. Even in the age of computers, old-fashioned note-taking is just as useful as ever.

Jotting things down in a notepad may seem counter- productive if you are trying to boost your memory, but it’s actually complementary to it. The chances are that you already take notes, just not in any organised or systematic way. For this reason, many of us find writing a useful technique in itself. Equally, there are many types of information which you might need to retrieve in the future, but are not so vital to everyday life that you would want to spend the time and effort memorising them.

Here’s an idea for you…

Keep a notepad with you at all times; you never know when you might need to jot down important information. A small pad that fits easily into a pocket is best. Most of the time, for most people, paper is still better than electronic organisers, as it’s quicker to use, and you don’t need to be so worried about it being stolen. Important long-term notes can then be transferred to a digital storage medium later.

Writing up your notes a day or week later will give you a vital review of the information, helping to consolidate it into your long-term memory. At this point you can choose whether to physically write them up using pen and paper, or whether to transfer them onto a computer.

“The palest ink is better than the best memory”

Chinese proverb

By making notes of things to follow up in future, we free up a lot of mental space, allowing us to concentrate better. Similarly, taking notes can be essential in writing to-do lists. Students, in particular, need to take notes in lectures and classes. Even if they have well-trained memories, most will not want or be able to memorise things fast. After your classes, use the left margin to jot down the information in quick form, using key words. Then use the bottom margin to summarise the whole page in a couple of sentences.

By taking notes you don’t lose information, or end up working on things only to realise you’ve repeated something you’ve already worked on. It makes you smarter, and more efficient.

Make a Mental Memory Vault for Passwords

Here’s how to do it in the most secure way; use this technique and within thirty minutes you’ll have memorised all your computer passwords.

You’ll also have tightened up their security, making it less likely that a hacker or identity fraudster could gain access to your accounts.

In order to memorise your passwords we’re going to use the technique of remembering a list of eleven items. There are two version of this

•     The sound systems (which uses images of things which sound like each number)
•     The appearance system (which uses images of things look like each number)

Here’s an idea for you…

There are two golden rules when choosing passwords:-

1. Make them unconnected to you (don’t use your pet’s name or mother’s maiden name). Most hackers are successful simply through assuming your password is something personally related to you. Most people only use something personal to them in order to make it easier to remember, but by using the techniques here that won’t apply to you.
2. Don’t make them just letters, add in at least one number. This adds complexity, making your password harder to hack. To make this memorable, use the same number as its position in your list of eleven. For example, if your password was ‘randomword’, and  it was the third in your list, you would make the third in your list, you would make it ‘randoworld03’

“The big lie of computer security is that security is that security improves by imposing complex passwords on users. In real life, people write down anything they can’t remember”

Jakob Nielsen, computer security expert

Once you’ve worked out your list, take a break for ten minutes and then test yourself. Then take another break for an hour and test yourself again. This will give you an excellent shot at getting those passwords into your long-term memory.

A Schedule For Making Memories Stronger

So if you want to remember something long term, you're probably going to need to review it repeatedly. Follow this time plan to make a memory permanent.

Despite some cases where individuals appear to have retained an extraordinary amount of trivial information from their past, most memory experts believe that we don't remember anything.

There are three factors influencing variation from person to person:

1. The difficulty of the material
2. How meaningful it is to us
3. Our own state of mind at the time

Here's an idea for you...

Whenever you're learning something important, straight away plan to review it at least at intervals of a day, a week and a month later. Use a calendar or diary to plan out when you will  review the material. Feel free to modify the schedule to fit you're revising for an exam in two weeks' time, then the month review will obviously not be needed, but you may want to review more in the early stages. Just use the the general principle of organizing the majority of reviews soon after you first encounter the information.

Here's a suggested schedule for reviewing information you want to store in long-term memory:

• One hour
• One day
• One week
• One month
• One season (three months)
• One year

"Voters quickly forget what a man says."
                                                                                          Richard M. Nixon 

To give a memory the best possible chance to be stored longer term you need to review it at least several times. A review can simply mean reminding yourself of the information, but ideally it involves testing yourself on the information you want to encode long term. 

After learning something new, make it a habit to quickly review the main details, such as the main points that were decided upon. the review the information an hour afterwards, and just before you go to bed that night.

                        

Find The Rhythm

Ever had a tune stuck in your memory all day? Irritating perhaps, but rhythm, rhyme and melody are often overlooked as memory boosters.

People have known for thousands of years that rhythm and melody are natural memory boosters. Epic Poems and songs were encoded using this method. If you think it's amazing that information the length of a whole book could be memorized in verse think about your own ability to remember song lyrics.

Here's an idea for you...

Try remembering one poem per week. Each evening, before you go to bed, repeat the poem several times. Start by learning the first verse, then the second, and so on. Then, each week, test yourself on the whole poem from the previous week. Remember that the rhythm and rhyme within most poems will be a natural aid.

Equally, the advertising industry knows the power of rhythm and melody to put information into our memories. Music has a natural structure to it which, even if we aren't musically trained, makes it easy for us to remember. You can make information easier to remember by injecting some musical qualities into it. 

"In memory everything seems to happen to music."

Tennessee Williams

You could even turn information into a full length poem or song, if you wanted. It helps if the rhyme paints a vivid image. Also, with any of the rhymes you make up to help remember information, repetition is important. 

If you wanted to get really creative, and you had the time, you could devise alternative lyrics to a song you already know. Your new lyrics would encode the information you were trying to memorize, while fitting into the structure of the original tune.

Sleep On It

Do you ever feel deprived of sleep? With busy modern lifestyles, many of us are getting less sleep than we used to. This could be harmful of your memory.

We spend up to a third of our lives asleep, yet scientists still don't quite understand why. What we've learned during the day could be sorted and stored during dreaming at night.

In people who've undergone during severe sleep deprivation, hallucinations are a common side effect. It's almost as thought the brain has to dream regularly in order to stay sane. 

Here's an idea for you...

Try the following to get a good night's sleep: 

1. Avoid caffeinated drinks for at least four hours before bedtime
2. Try to get some exercise during the day and much natural light during the day as you can
3. Don't work or watch TV in your bedroom
4. Dim the lights a short time before bed
5. Do something relaxing, such as taking a hot- bath or drinking a hot (non-caffeinated!) drink.
6. Avoid watching exciting TV shows or concentrating on anything demanding of your attention for an hour before bedtime.

Equally, younger people seem to need more sleep than older people, and the former have more information to lay down into memories. Nevertheless, sleep does seem to help us remember things we had forgotten during the day. It's almost as though, during sleep, our brain searches through the thoughts and memories of the day.

"Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind."

William G. Golding

Many people find that if they go to sleep thinking about a problem, they can often wake up with a solution. If you don't get enough sleep, or sleep poorly. resist the temptation to lie in bed in the morning, and instead, if possible, have a fifteen-minute nap, mid-afternoon.