As we age, we often start to feel as if our memory isn’t as sharp as it once was. This can be due to a number of factors, many of them having little to do with our advancing years. It could be as simple as not relying so heavily on your recall as you did during your university years, or as a result of stress at work or the brain fog that can accompany mental illnesses such as depression.
Irrespective of the cause, lots of us question whether there’s some way to remedy our seemingly foggy recall, and the answer is ‘yes’. Here are three simple yet effective methods you might want to try.
Meditate
Lots of people find that meditation can help them to relax and unwind at the end of a difficult day, but did you know that it could also help to support your working memory? Working memory is the area of our brains where new information is held, and it is continually in use. When it’s not functioning to its full potential, you’ll often find that the bits and pieces of learning you pick up over the course of a day fail to find their way into your long-term memory and end up being forgotten. This is where meditation comes in. Shown to improve recall in a mere eight weeks, it gives our brains a chance to slow down and better take on-board our daily experiences.
Game
Gaming, whether video, casino, or board, is the ultimate pleasurable pastime. Designed with the sole purpose of providing entertainment and enjoyment, it seems unlikely on the surface that it could help us to remember, but this is not the case. We’ll use online gambling as an example. Trying to grasp the intricacies of a game such as poker requires us to remember the rules and tactics we need to use, and in doing so, stimulates our brains and gives our recall a boost without us realising. This means that playing card and/or slot games online at a casino like Betway – you can click to see the full review here if you’re interested in learning more – could actually make remembering easier.
Drink more coffee
Last but not least, why not experiment with drinking more coffee? According to a study conducted in 2014, taking a single caffeine pill after completing a memory task can improve recall up to 24 hours later. This means that if, for example, you had a major presentation to prepare for, it could be the case that drinking an extra cup of coffee would not only help with the late night and early morning, but with retaining the information you’d been revising as well. The theory goes that this is because caffeine helps us to strengthen the memories we’ve created and more efficiently move them from our working memory to its long-term equivalent.
If you find that you sometimes struggle with forgetfulness or memory retention and recall, don’t just accept it as an inevitable part of ageing: give these three simple tips a go today and see how they help!
