Don’t make this mistake if you want to take care of your memory

Contrary to what one might believe, memory loss is not always associated with a serious accident or a neurodegenerative disease. Over the course of our lives and, especially, with old age, memory can be altered. “With age, the likelihood of developing memory loss increases,” writes Gary W. Small, psychiatrist, in the British Medical Journal.

“Approximately 40% of people aged 65 or over suffer from age-related memory problems,” he adds. Only about 1% of them will progress to dementia each year. » But, apart from neurodegenerative diseases, there are ways to preserve your memory as much as possible and, above all, mistakes to avoid at the risk of speeding up the process.

Boredom, the enemy of memory?

Pour CNBCDr. Richard Restak, neurologist, neuropsychiatrist and author of numerous books on memory, revealed one of his secrets to preserve his memory. “I try to avoid boredom. I try to stay active, he explains. I learn new words, practice memory exercises and make them fun. » For his part, the expert uses his morning walks with his dog to work on his memory rather than giving in to boredom. To do this, he writes ten words on a sheet of paper before going for a walk and challenges himself to remember the list when he returns from his walk. Because memories work best when linked to images, he creates a story out of all those words. “Avoid boredom, stay stimulated,” he advises.

It is not only because the time spent being bored could be used to do memorization exercises that boredom is considered harmful to the brain by the neuropsychiatrist. Indeed, several studies on the subject confirm his statements on boredom and what we call wandering or mental wandering. “Mind wandering, defined as focusing attention on task-irrelevant thoughts, is a common mental state known to impair memory encoding,” write the researchers behind a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Another study, published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviewshad supported this phenomenon. “Overall, stimulus-independent mind wandering appears to be a reliable negative factor influencing the encoding of words and audiovisual stimuli,” the researchers wrote. At the same time, they also noted that this link was not verified when mental wandering was linked to the information to be encoded in memory.

These habits to adopt to preserve your memory

If boredom can indeed be an obstacle to the preservation of memory, there are other habits to adopt to take care of it. “Lifestyle choices can protect people with mild forms of age-related memory loss from future decline: essentially, what is healthy for the body is healthy for the brain », summarizes Gary W. Small.

For example, physical exercise should be good for your memory. “Exercise can increase cerebral blood flow, which in turn promotes nerve cell growth,” he writes. This is also the case with a healthy diet. A diet that is too rich and being overweight can be risk factors for diseases which in turn impact memory. Furthermore, certain foods can help preserve memory. “Nutritionists have developed methods to determine the level of antioxidant potency of various foods, and these antioxidant effects may protect brain health as we age,” he reports. Fruits like blueberries, strawberries and tomatoes, as well as vegetables like broccoli, have relatively high antioxidant capacity. »