You’ve certainly yearned for a relatively good memory if you’ve ever forgotten where you put your keys or forgotten crucial facts on an examination. Luckily, there are a few activities you may engage in to enhance your memory.
The excellent thing is that studies have proven the brain is capable of regrowth, even if our brains reach their optimum size while we are in our early 20s and then gradually drop in volume over time. In actuality, learning and acquiring new knowledge is possible throughout life, especially if you routinely exercise both your body and mind. Hence, it is not difficult to enhance our memory; all we need to do is adhere to a routine.
Memory: What is It?
Our ability to recollect information is defined as memory. Scientists categorize memories into many categories based on the information they contain or how we use them. For instance, recalling your grandma’s kitchen design is different from memorizing the last three digits of a mechanic’s mobile number while gazing at his business card when you dial the phone in terms of both content and function. Long-term and short-term memories are the two primary types of memories.
Information that you need to retrieve for a little period—a few seconds or minutes—is stored in short-term memory. The fact that there weren’t any cars approaching when you looked to the left as you approached a junction to make a turn is significant when doing so, but once you’ve made the turn, you’ll quickly disregard that knowledge because it is no longer pertinent. Your mind would become overly cluttered if you kept it around.
To generate permanent memories, information is moved from short-term memory into long-term storage, which is referred to as long-term memory. This kind of memory has an infinite capacity and is everlasting, lasting for a very long period. However long-lasting, long-term memory is malleable; a memory might change as a result of hearing a narrative again or picking up new knowledge after the fact.
Scientific Methods To Improve Your Memory
You may prevent memory loss and generally improve your memory by doing the following thing.
1. Exercise Your Mind
By the time you reach adulthood, your brain has created millions of synaptic connections that facilitate speedy information processing and memory, familiar problem solving, and the execution of routine tasks with the least amount of mental effort. Yet if you consistently follow these well-traveled roads, your brain won’t receive the stimulation it needs to continue expanding and maturing. You occasionally need to mix things up!
You must “use it or lose it” with memory, much like with muscular power. Your capacity to process and recall information will improve as you exercise your brain more. Yet not all pursuits are created equal. The finest brain games switch up your routine and force you to use and create new neural connections.
2. Include Some Exercise In Your Weekly Routine
Not only does exercise increase our physical fitness, but it also benefits our mental health. You may improve the connections among your brain cells by engaging in any type of exercise you enjoy, whether it’s swimming, riding a bike, or running. Your ability to learn and remember things will likely improve as a result, and you’ll be able to retain more knowledge from your lectures and library books.
It’s advised to exercise for at least 30 minutes, five days a week, but if you’re just getting started, start with a couple of times a week and gradually increase your frequency. If not, you run the risk of becoming disinterested in your new routine before it becomes a habit.
3. Get a Good Night’s Rest
Memory loss is associated with insufficient sleep. Restless sleep and sleep that is frequently interrupted have also been reported to be problems with memory. Prioritize getting adequate restful sleep. People should always get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night. Get a consultation with your doctor if your snoring is keeping you awake at night. A sleeping disorder like sleep apnea may be indicated by snoring.
4. Change Your Behavior Repeatedly
Your brain forms new connections when you do something new regularly, which improves specific cognitive processes and aids in your ability to perform it more quickly and precisely. Consider the time when you were around 3 years old. If you had the strength to do so, you could have easily held a knife and fork. Yet when you dined alone, you created a mess.
You see, it wasn’t a strength issue. It was an issue of developing more favorable neural connections so you could eat independently like an adult. And you achieved that by repeating the same behavior.
5. Have a Laugh
You may have heard that the best medicine is laughing; this is true for both the mind and the body, including memory. Laughter involves numerous brain regions throughout the entire brain, in contrast to emotional responses, which are restricted to particular regions.
Also, practicing punchlines and listening to jokes stimulates the brain’s learning and creative regions. In his book Emotional Intelligence, psychologist Daniel Goleman writes that laughter “seems to help people think more broadly and associate more freely.“
6. Organized
When your home or notes are disorganized, you are more prone to forget important details. A journal, calendar, or electronic planner can be used to keep track of your tasks, appointments, and other events. To assist you to remember each entry, you might even say it aloud as you write it down. Keep your to-do lists current. Mark off the things you’ve completed. Keep your wallet, keys, glasses, and other essentials in a specific spot in your house to make it simple to locate them.
Avoid being distracted. Avoid juggling too many tasks at once. You’re more likely to remember the information later if you concentrate on it while trying to remember it. Connecting what you’re attempting to remember to beloved music, a well-known phrase, or an idea may also be helpful.
7. Consider Elaborative Rehearsal
To remember what you are learning later, you must store it in your long-term memory. One of the best encoding strategies is elaborate rehearsal. This approach could be used, for example, to understand the significance of a key term, study it, and then read a more in-depth explanation of what it means. Once you’ve used this strategy a few times, you’ll surely notice that remembering the knowledge is much easier.
8. Treat Chronic Health Issues
To manage medical issues like high blood pressure, asthma, anxiety, hearing loss, and obesity, heed the counsel of your healthcare practitioner. The better you take care of yourself, the more likely you are to have an excellent memory. Talk to your doctor frequently about the medications you use. Certain drugs may have an impact on memory.
9. Consume Foods High in Flavonoids
To improve your memory over time, incorporate foods strong in flavonoids into your diet, particularly dark-colored berries and cocoa. Plants include anti-inflammatory molecules called flavonoids that, according to a study, may enhance cardiovascular health and potentially contribute to cancer prevention. Studies suggest that increased consumption of foods high in flavonoids, such as blueberries, over several weeks can both slow memory deterioration and enhance recall.
10. Mnemonics Aid In Better Recall
Together with maintaining a healthy lifestyle, learning certain memory tricks will improve your ability to retain information. Any technique or tool intended to improve memory is referred to as a “mnemonic,” typically consisting of patterns of letters, concepts, or relationships, such as ROYGBIV to remember the colors of the rainbow.
You may recall words or phrases more rapidly by using the most popular method of mnemonics. For instance, in elementary school, you might have learned the rhyme “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas,”. Where the first letter of each word stands for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, respectively, to help you remember the order in which the planets orbit the sun.
Conclusion
Just as people are aware they may avoid cardiovascular disease by making certain decisions, they will soon realize they can take steps to protect the health of their brains. You can maintain a healthy and fit mind by keeping in mind the ideas given above. Thus, it’s best to exercise our brains as well so we have sharp memories.
You won’t notice results right away while trying to increase your memory and learning capacity, but with perseverance and commitment to a brain-training regimen, you will undoubtedly see progress. Put this knowledge to use and improve your intelligence.
