March 31, 2008

Healthy Brain - Tips On Keeping A Healthy Brain While You Age

An active mind is a healthy mind, so keeping your mind sharp is a good portion of aging well and living a better life as you grow older. If you continue to challenge and engage your brain with activities such as continued learning and healthy dieting you can maintain your healthy brain. Some activities like completing daily crossword puzzles or learning a hobby, or maybe exploring a new language will add content and continued exercise of the brain. Expanding your horizons daily and engaging in activities that require you to think on your feet and assess information quickly and accurately will make a world of difference as you grow older. Sometimes it may take a little more effort than it used to require, but continuing to stretch your brain muscles will definitely pay off in good memory and cognitive skills.

If you intend to keep a healthy brain in the later years of your life, and continue to have sharp mind, you need to pay attention. It is known that brain masses decrease a little as you get older and into your sixties, with some areas decreasing more than the others, like frontal lobe the area of the brain that handles mental abilities, and the hippocampus where memories are formed. Weakening of the brain in the area of the cortex, and a decrease in white matter are reasons while brain disorders occur in the elderly. Changes in these areas slows down the cognitive processing which handle decision making, problem solving, and attention.

All of which have a tendency to fade as you grow older, unless…you continue to exercise these areas by forming new memories daily and allowing for a good intake of new information. With this said, aging is not a decline of brain activity. In fact the brain grows stronger and sharper as long as you continue to use it. For example; if you were an avid reader in your younger years and you continue to be a voracious reader into your golden years the rate of speed that you read and the amount of information that you are able to process as you read will increase as in “practice makes perfect,” you are actually getting better with time. Most of our abilities normally get better with time, including wisdom and problem solving skills. Keep in mind that other illnesses and ailments may contribute to any decline in the normal activity in the brain.

Basic things like having more formal education can add to intellectual stimulation of the brain and may even strengthen the brain cell networks to help in preventing mental functional damage. Physical activity has been known to have a positive effects on the brain and brain functioning. Having regular aerobic regime is the best for continued brain health as oxygen is flowing freely throughout the body, which is particularly beneficial to the brains proper functioning. Having a good sense of oneself and knowing that the things that you do in life is making a difference, believing that you are contributing to the common good has shown to reduce cognitive decline in older adults.

So to slow down the effects of the degenerative parts of the brain it would be wise to learn to concentrate and make honest effort to pay attention. Stay organized and don’t rush, to able to focus on the tasks that you are attempting. The all time favorite is repetition. Also, try your best to stay stress free as possible as tension causes some types of memory lapses. Those senior moments of your life can turn into senior memories if you continually to exercising your brain. So do whatever it requires to preserve your mental agility, and keep happy even as you enter your older years. When you look at the attitudes of older people, you would either see depressed people, or extremely happy and satisfied people. Try to leave yourself in the latter category.

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February 3, 2008

Three Useful Techniques for Improving Your Memory Skills

Improving your memory can be equated to improving your abs. They both require a kind of exercise. It’s true, without using your memory it will only go through the atrophy process and deteriorate over time.

In fact, I bet you didn’t even think that your memory could be analogized with your stomach muscles. But the simple truth is your entire mind and body needs exercise to remain healthy. There are a few different ways you can go about improving your memory skills.

Read, Write, and Think

One way you can work on improving your memory skills is to start writing things down. Do a daily to do list, or just take more thorough notes. The act of writing engages your mind on a more active level than just passively listening does. Even if you are paying close attention while listening, you still aren’t as engaged as you would be if you were writing something down.

When you read, slow down. Allow yourself the time to soak up the information presented to you and don’t rush through just to finish the reading. Improving your memory skills means improving your reading comprehension. The more practice you get the faster you will eventually be able to read and comprehend, but start out slow. Just reading helps engage your mind similarly to writing, and that’s going to help you remember things in the long run.   

One more thing you can do that will help with improving your memory skills is reflect on what you’ve learned. Whether it be the sentimental “Today I learned that people….blah blah blah.” Or “I learned about Pythagoras’ Theorem and it involves.” Both will get your brain working on the day’s events. Simply reviewing can lead to long term memory commitment.

Conclusions

If none of these techniques for improving your memory skills work, well, there are a ton of other tips that may work for you. In fact there are entire websites dedicated to improving memory. Most of them do require some small sign up fee, but they offer fun activities that break up the monotony that some memory exercises have.

Ultimately finding what works for you will be entirely your responsibility. We just don’t learn in the same manner as everyone else. So just find the tips that work for you and don’t worry about the ones that don’t. Improving your memory skills is just like improving your stamina. There’s a basic outline but the program should be customized to meet your needs.

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January 13, 2008

How To Improve Short Term Memory In Children And Make It Enjoyable

When trying to teach anything to children, you can’t go wrong by making it fun and enjoyable. Turning activities into games will cause them to look forward to each and every lesson and will actually help ingrain the information into their brains. For that reason, if you’re wondering how to improve the short term memory in children, just make it a game and they will pick up whatever you’re trying to teach them in no time at all.

The Memory Game

Remember that memory game we all played as kids? You have a series of cards all faced down. You turn two of them up and if they match, you leave them up. You keep going until you turn up two non matching cards. This teaches you to try and remember where certain cards are so that you can win the game. This is a great activity for increasing short term memory and it’s a lot of fun. So if you’re wondering how to improve the short term memory in children, why not have them play the memory game? You can pick up the memory game at any children’s or toy store, or you can make your own with a little bit of artistic ability and set of index cards. Once the kids are continuously selecting the right cards, you know they’re picking up the lesson and increasing their short term memory.

Auditory Cues

If you’re wondering how to improve the short term memory in children, you shouldn’t forget about the auditory part of that short term memory. This is an easy game you can play with children. Simply repeat a list of items, such as a series of names, a series of animal names or whatever else you can think of. Have the children listen closely. At the end, have them write down the list as best as they can remember. As time goes on, increase the size of the list until they can repeat the list no problem. This is a great way when wondering how to improve the short term memory in children and it’s also a lot of fun.

Remember, whenever you’re playing a game with children, such as when you’re wondering how to improve the short term memory in children, make sure you have some sort of reward system in place. When the children think they’re going to be rewarded for winning these games, they will try that much harder and will pick up the information in no time. The rewards don’t have to be big or expensive, but they should be enough to make them want to increase their short term memories and compete against others to see who is best at these little games you’re playing with them when wondering how to improve the short term memory in children.

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January 4, 2008

Some Fun Strategies For Improving Visual Memory in Students

When you want to teach a child anything, the best thing you can do is make it fun. When you make an exercise fun, and essentially make it a game, the students are more likely to retain the information. Not only that but they’ll look forward to the next lesson. The same goes for strategies for improving visual memory in students. You want to make these strategies for improving visual memory in students fun so that they’ll look forward to learning and they will even compete with each other to increase their odds of grasping the information even more. Make it a game and they will look forward to it each and every time and pretty soon they’ll remember everything you ask them to.

The Picture Game

A great strategy for improving visual memory in students is to play the picture game. Show them a picture involving many aspects. A great one to work with will be one with a foreground and a background. Don’t make it too difficult but make it so that they must remember what they’re looking at. Let them view the picture for a few moments and then hide it. After the picture is hidden, begin asking them details about the picture. What color shirt was the woman wearing, for example. What color was the balloon? How many balloons was the little boy holding? These types of questions will cause the students to want to remember as much as possible about the picture, which makes this a terrific strategy for improving visual memory in students.

Rewards

The best strategy for improving visual memory in students is to use the above game but include rewards for the students who get them all right. The rewards don’t have to be much, they can get a piece of candy, or a star next to their name, or anything else that will cause them to really try and get all the details correct. This strategy for improving visual memory in students is a great way to get them to learn and it will make learning fun for them. That will also make their schooling more successful as they will begin to remember more and more, and that’s what learning is all about. After all, if they’re not learning, they won’t do well in school because the information will go in one ear and other the other. When you incorporate strategies for improving visual memory in students, you are doing them a favor that will last their entire lives.

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December 26, 2007

Improve Memory By Self Hypnosis: First You Must Believe

When you think of hypnosis, you probably think of a stage act where the hypnotist makes willing participants cluck like a chicken or shiver when he tells them it’s getting cold in the room. However, did you know that you can improve your life by engaging in self hypnosis? That’s right. Self hypnosis can help you quit smoking, it can help you get rid of depression and it can even help you improve your memory. You can improve your memory by self hypnosis by getting rid of any mental blocks that are preventing you from adequately remembering things. First, you must learn how to engage in self hypnosis. Then, once you have the process down, you can do all sorts of things, including improving your memory by self hypnosis.

Close Your Eyes And Relax

To begin improving your memory by self hypnosis, you must first close your eyes and completely relax your body. Breathe deeply and methodically until your heart beat begins to slow. If you are having trouble relaxing, mentally imagine each body part and tell it to relax beginning with your toes all the way to your head. Once you are relaxed, count down backwards from ten. Imagine you are on a staircase and each time you count a number, imagine you are walking down that staircase. Once you hit the bottom, you should be in a deep enough trance to begin working on improving your memory with self hypnosis.

Commanding Yourself

You can improve your memory by self hypnosis by merely repeating to yourself, once you are in a completely relaxed and hypnotic state, that you want to improve your memory. Whenever you hear anything, or read anything, you will have no problem retrieving that information when you need to. When you engage in self hypnosis and you begin speaking to yourself, you are speaking to your subconscious. This is how hypnotists get you to do things you normally wouldn’t do; by speaking to your subconscious mind. This gets your ego out of the way so that the instructions you give to yourself aren’t interrupted or blocked. You can also tell yourself that all mental blocks you have that are keeping you from remembering things will dissolve away. This is a great way to improve your memory and it really works. But first you must believe that it works. That is the most important step in this entire process.

There are also video and audio tapes you can buy that will help you improve your memory by self hypnosis. They will give you step by step instructions to help you relax and then will command your subconscious to improve your memory. Again, however, you must believe that it will work if you want it to. In no time at all, as long as you do this again and again, you will begin to remember more than you ever imagined possible.

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