A Bit More About A Healthy Brain…
After a bit more digging, here are some more tips you can use to keep your brain, and memory, working in top form…
I mentioned the value of word puzzles for keeping your brain active and your memory sharp…I thought about Sudoku number puzzles too, but couldn’t remember that name. So, you can add them to the beneficial puzzles list. Also, jigsaw puzzles are recommended, if they’re challenging enough.
You might also want to look in to supplements, Omega-3 (specifically from fish sources) and GIngko are recommended quite widely.
My Dad, as a footnote, used to do a lot of volunteer work with an Alzheimer’s support and research group. He commented a few times that Gingko was one of the supplements the researchers were most interested in. Their position, as of mid-2005, was that “we can’t absolutely say that it DOES help ward off dementia, but based on what we’ve found so far, we’re all taking it.”
Also, because your long term memory is usually better than your short term, you’ll want to “move” new information from your short term (conscious) memory to the long term (subconscious) storage facility as quickly as you can. Repetition is the key here. You can write out the new things you’ve learned, either in paragraph/essay form or as facts on flashcards, and go over them repeatedly until they’ve thoroughly sunk in.
The last thing to look at is maintaining a good working connection beween your left and right brain hemispheres. Basically, the idea is to picture a dividing line from your head to your toes that creates a left and right side, corresponding with the 2 hemispheres, and then doing “crossing over” exercises. These can be pretty much anything you can think up, as long as the body part you’re working with crosses repeatedly over that centre line, and back again.
Head/neck rolls, arm swings, trunk rotations, standing on one foot while doing wide, side-to-side sweeps with the other leg…anything. Even moving your eyes from side to side, as far as you can in both directions, is said to work. In any case, give it about 5 minutes at a time, and there’s no “daily limit” to how often you can go through your routine.
