Page Twenty:

AGEING MEMORY

 Ageing Memory can be improved by as much as 50%

'Window Six' into the Study Guide

It is said that Ageing Memory begins from about age 25.

This is not usually noticed until later in life. Much of the cause of ageing memory is due to ‘sins’ of commission or omission that start early – largely because few people understand how memory works. Most of us let our ‘Memory’ deteriorate almost from the time we left school or university.

Of course, I am not referring here to those with a medical problem such as Alzheimer’s, or have to take drugs that cause memory loss. 

Stage Five of the Study Guide gives the reasons for ageing memory, much of which is due to carelessness, lack of attention, or not exercising your brain and mind - as is frequently remarked, 'use it or lose it!'. It may include temporary loss of memory, or memory blocks. Everything you do in day-to-day living requires memory – even the ability to walk and talk is based on memory; you learned those skills as an infant, and have practiced them ever since. 

It may be only 5% of your memory that is causing you frustration, and you can do something about it.

 While you will never regain the ‘Memory-Skills’ that you had in your youth, using the techniques I have suggested can improve your aging memory by as much as 50%.

Scroll to the bottom of this page for the index and link to all the other pages in this web.

Lip Reading: Sometimes as we age we develop hearing difficulties. If that turns out to be the case then it may be time for the student to consider the benefits of learning to lip read. I can recommend the following website by Dr Mary Allen, who is a teacher of lip reading. http://www.lipread.com.au 

Memory training aims to keep lapses in check

A promising development helps seniors overcome memory lapses. Trainees, on average, improved fourteen-fold on memory tests after only a few days. The method of 'spaced learning' is almost identical to that given on page 18 of the Study Guide, which also has  the additional benefit of explaining why it works.

Sweating Makes You Smart 

In May/June, 2004,  Psychology Today, reported that: ‘A good workout may be as good for your mind as it is for your muscles.’ 

Research has shown the brain-body connection is stronger than previously realised. That physical exercise makes the brain stronger, and denser; it can process information better, and is smarter. It postpones the effects of ageing - which for the brain and memory starts as early as 30. Even a moderate program can boost brain health and cognition, even planning and attention skills.  This applies particularly to older persons, say 55 plus, but it will also sharpen the brains of young people so they can handle more complex tasks. 

Positive Reinforcement can boost older adults' confidence in their memory

Assistant Professor of Psychology Dayna Touron (Appalachian State University), says, 'When older adults assume that their memory is declining, they tend not to rely on it as much as when they did when they were younger. Instead, they may follow time-consuming  steps to complete the task. Positive feedback can make a difference in older adults' willingness to trust their memory.' She suggests that by challenging, or testing your memory, and finding that, while learning and memory may be slower than a younger person, it still works well, and will provide positive feedback that can have a profound effect on performance, and will help pick up learning speed. Touron says, 'Even if it takes them longer to acquire a new skill, they can learn new things'.

[footnote - this is why organizations such as University of the Third Age can be so important for seniors]

Don't Lose you Mind: Dr Connie Lynch PhD.  Pay close attention to your surroundings and objects with which you come in contact, by observing them with all your five senses - the more information you accumulate about any situation the better you will remember it. Communication skills are an extremely important detail to address for memory improvement. How well do you listen? Be careful to understand things said to you; ask questions if you have not understood. Ask yourself 'why' or 'how'. The brain grows when it is stimulated by learning something new.

Recent research suggests that aging which causes dementia and Alzheimer's disease is not caused by plaques in the brain, but by lack of blood flow due to artery and vein blockages. This confirms why exercise improves memory, because anything that improves the physical health of the body also improves the brain. Also why brain activity and exercises improve memory - these also stimulate the flow of blood to the brain.

Rote learning improves memory in seniors - A new study at the School of Medicine at University College in Dublin has found that an intensive period of rote memorization followed by an equal period of rest (6 weeks in each case) resulted in changes in the brain, and improvement in memory and recall. It could be used as defense against dementia, and memory failure.

[physorg.com - 28/11/2006]

Baroness Susan Greenfield, a leading  neuroscientist - suggests one way to stop the brain aging is by challenging it - making it learn something new on a regular basis - making it solve puzzles -

I suggest - as does the Author Ian Rankin (Rebus series) - that you practice learning poetry. A good one to start with is that great poem 'Ulysses'  by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Not only excellent memory practice, but a great philosophy as you grow older.  I have typed it in below - learn to recite it, by slow degrees a few lines at a time.

If Tennyson seems rather daunting to start with, choose some shorter simpler verse, and gradually work your way up to Tennyson. Practice learning a few lines every day until you can recite it from start to finish without referring to your hard copy. You'll find it does  wonders for your memory.

Self-Hypnosis - The method given in the supplementary notes to the Study Manual is also an excellent method of improving memory - recall is a process that is affected by the attitude, confidence, and other programs stored in the subconscious

               ULYSSES

It little profits that an idle king

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

   This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle –

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

   There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil’d. and wrought, and thought with

        Me –

That ever with a folic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the

    deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now the strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we

      are:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

                                                  Lord Tennyson

Updated May 2008

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