In the United States, 40% of people over 65 suffer from a memory impairment condition.
If you’ve noticed your memory is not what it used to be, you’re not alone. Lucky for you, there’s still time to improve your memory and re-gain your focus with these tips.
Read on to learn how to achieve improvement of the mind.
1. Make the Time to Exercise Your Brain
We all know the importance of staying active to help our bodies stay strong and take care of our cardiovascular health. As we get older, it is also important that we focus on exercising our minds.
By adulthood, our brains have developed neural pathways that help us process and recall information. However, these neural paths might be used to processing familiar problems, but they struggle with new information.
Similar to any other muscle in our bodies, if you don’t use it, you lose it. If you want to maintain your brain young and healthy, you need to challenge it and create new neural pathways.
It’s important your brain never stops learning and continues to feel challenged to keep it young longer. To help boost your brain, you should learn a new language, play a new instrument, play a sport, etc.
2. Physical Exercise
Taking care of your body and your mind go hand in hand. Even if you make more of an effort to take care of your mind, you cannot neglect your physical health.
There are many benefits to physical exercise to keep your brain sharp.
When you take the time for physical activity, you lower the risk of disorders that cause memory loss, such as diabetes. If you workout even for a few minutes a day, more oxygen reaches your brain and reduces your risk of disease.
Our brains also release a chemical called endorphins when we exercise, which helps manage stress and stimulate neural connections.
Try to perform an aerobic exercise a few times a week to get your blood pumping to your brain.
3. Get More Sleep
Lack of sleep can take a toll on your brain’s health and ability to physically functions. Just because you get enough sleep to get by, it doesn’t mean that it’s not hurting your body and mind.
If you’re someone who gets a decent amount of sleep, you might notice negative changes when you lose a few hours of sleep. You might find yourself unable to think, feel irritable, and even have problems with your memory.
Getting enough sleep will have some of the most positive effects on your memory.
If you want to try to get more sleep, you should try to stick to a sleeping schedule. Try to go to bed at the same time and set your alarm at the same time in the morning. You should also avoid breaking your routine on the weekends.
Because your mind can be overly stimulated, you should turn off any electronics at least an hour before bed.
4. Manage Your Stress
It’s a fact that stress has many negative effects on your overall health, especially on your brain. Chronic stress directly attacks brain cells and the hippocampus, which is an area of the brain that forms new memories and retrieves your old ones.
To manage your stress, it’s essential that you manage daily stressors. Take a few minutes out of the day to focus on you and do activities that relax you, such as taking a bath, reading a book, playing a sport, paint your nails, etc.
Establish a work-life balance and set boundaries so you don’t have to bring work home. You should try to focus on completing one task at a time instead of always having to multitask.
Also, make sure you learn to say no when you feel you’re spread too thin.
5. Laugh Your Heart Out
Laughter is great medicine for the brain because it engages several brain regions, which helps keep your brain sharp.
You don’t have to listen to jokes all day to add more laughter into your life. To add more laughter into your life, you can start by surrounding yourself with people who love to laugh. It’s also important you don’t take everything too seriously and learn to laugh at yourself.
6. Engage in Social Activities
Humans are social beings that thrive in a community and not in isolation. Maintaining social interactions and healthy relationships also stimulate our brains.
When you interact with others, you expose your brains to new facts and interesting conversations. Having a diverse group of friends also exposes you to other cultures, points of view, or different outlooks on life.
If you feel like you haven’t socialized as much recently, this is the perfect time to reach out to old friends. Healthy relationships also play a vital role in supporting your emotional health, which leads to a healthy brain.
7. Brain-Boosting Nutrition
We know that food is the body’s fuel, but if you want to focus on fueling your brain, you need to focus on brain-boosting foods.
When it comes to brain fuel, omega-3 fatty acids are king and excellent for brain health. You can find omega-3 fatty acids in salmon, tuna, trout, halibut, flaxseed, spinach, and more.
Limiting saturated fat, drinking green tea, fruits, and vegetables will also help improve your brain health.
If you feel you’re not getting enough brain-boosting nutrients from the foods you consume, take Euro-Fer iron supplements.
8. Manage Other Health Conditions
If you feel like no matter what you do, your brain health is not what it used to be; there might be an underlying medical condition.
Talk to your doctor about possible factors that might be causing your memory loss. Some of the most common conditions that affect memory include diabetes, hormone imbalances, heart disease, dementia, and some medications.
Take the Time for Improvement of the Mind
Now that you have all of the information you need, the improvement of the mind will follow. If you want to boost your brain and improve your memory, you should look at your nutrition, manage stress, get more sleep, exercise your mind, and more.
If you enjoyed these tips and would like to learn more, check out the rest of our blog.
