10 Proven Ways to Boost Your Memory from Harvard Medical School
Boosting one's memory is a popular pursuit - from high-tech brain exercises such as Dakim's mPower offered in Ecumen communities to low-tech Suduko. Here are 10 research based do-it-yourself ways from Harvard Medical School to boost your ability to remember:
1. Believe in yourself.
Myths about aging can contribute to a failing memory. Middle-aged and older learners do worse on memory tasks when exposed to negative stereotypes about aging and memory, and better if exposed to messages about memory preservation into old age.
2. Economize your brain use.
Take advantage of calendars and planners, maps, shopping lists, file folders, and address books to keep routine information accessible. Designate a place at home for your glasses, keys, and other items you use frequently.
3. Organize your thoughts.
New information that’s broken into smaller chunks, such as the hyphenated sections of a phone or social security number, is easier to remember than a single long list, such as financial account numbers or the name of everyone in a classroom.
4. Use all your senses.
The more senses you use when you learn something, the more of your brain will be involved in retaining the memory. For example, odors are famous for conjuring memories from the distant past, especially those with strong emotional content, such as visits to a cookie-baking grandparent.
5. Expand your brain.
Widen the brain regions involved in learning by reading aloud, drawing a picture, or writing down the information you want to learn (even if you never look back at your notes). Just forming a visual image of something makes it easier to remember and understand; it forces you to make the information more precise.
6. Repeat after me.
When you want to remember something you have just heard or thought about, repeat it out loud. For example, if you’ve just been told someone’s name, use it when you speak with him or her: “So John, where did you meet Camille?”
7. Space it out.
Instead of repeating something many times in a short period, as if you were cramming for an exam, re-study the essentials after increasingly longer periods of time — once an hour, then every few hours, then every day. Spacing out periods of study is particularly valuable when you are trying to master complicated information.
8. Make a mnemonic.
Mnemonic devices are creative ways to remember lists. They can take the form of acronyms — such as the classic “Every good boy does fine,” to remember the musical notes E, G, B, D, and F on the lines of the treble clef. For older learners, a particularly helpful system is a story mnemonic — that is, a brief narrative in which each item cues you to remember the next one.
9. Challenge yourself.
Engaging in activities that require you to concentrate and tax your memory will help you maintain skills as you age. Discuss books, do crossword puzzles, try new recipes, travel, and undertake projects or hobbies that require skills you aren’t familiar or comfortable with.
10. Take a course.
Memory-improvement courses are becoming more common. Choose one run by health professionals or experts in psychology or cognitive rehabilitation. Stay away from courses that center on computer or concentration games, which generally won’t help you with real-life memory problems. Select a course that focuses on practical ways to manage everyday challenges.
Retired Acrobats Return to the Trapeze and Circus Juventas
Abs of Steel -- at 86! When I read this article I thought surely the performance feats of this 86-year-old were exaggerated. NOT. Circus Juventas' "Sawdust" is playing until the 15th in Saint Paul, and well worth seeing for yourself. (Read more...)
- Andrea Marboe
Jim Klobuchar - The Life of Katharine Wilkes
Jim Klobuchar shares a wonderful remembrance of his step-daughter Katharine Wilkes:
There never had been a mystery about her separate lives. She was a woman of 35, dramatically beautiful and gifted when she was in control of the life urged on her by her doctors, counselors and those who loved her.
There were times when she accepted their wisdom and stayed faithful to the stabilizing prescriptions that were available to her.
When she did she could light up a room with her buoyancy or the deft but harmless satire of her readings, many of which she wrote herself. They didn’t come hard to her, nor did the roles she played in amateur theater, which could easily have blossomed into the professional stage. Her lineage included one America’s pre-eminent theatric families. She could play the piano,strings or reed instruments. She almost certainly could have sold as a painter. She once drew the face of a tiger, first with spare, line sketches that hinted at its strength and then in gripping color that announced the tiger’s maturity, a sequence of images that stopped viewers in their tracks.
But when she would desert the prescriptions, she yielded to the dark and impatient stirrings within her, what medical people today call bipolar disorder and has often been called manic depression. She drifted into a nebulous and chaotic world that would sometimes put her in touch with strange voices and relationships that were pure fantasy.
Her mother, a Minneapolis businesswoman, was her safety net and her hero. But sometimes her mother became her ogre because no one knew her and loved her as much. There were screaming matches in the hospital where her mother took her for care and the medical regimes that would bring her back to the humanity and the safety she regained when she was herself. When she was free of the reckless make-believe, she was a star. She won high grades in her college courses and popularity with fellow workers in an architectural company where her superiors prized her work.
The body of this woman who struggled so long with her torment was found in the Mississippi River In Minneapolis some weeks ago, not far from where she lived alone in her third floor near the Guthrie Theater, where she had friends. She was wearing a bathing suit when she was found and she had been a powerful swimmer, which seemed at odds with a presumption of suicide. So there was no such presumption.
Two weeks later nearly a hundred people who knew her, knew her mother or were related, gathered as witnesses to her life. To her mother’s astonishment they came from as far away as Australia. They came from California, Washington, Arizona and more. If they couldn’t come they called or sent letters, from Florida to France. They spoke and wrote with attitudes that ranged from thanksgiving to hilarity for having been part of her life.
A man from China who had immigrated to America years ago told of meeting her shortly after he had come to Minneapolis, friendless and frankly scared. His tentative efforts to find a community hit a wall. He’d never felt so much an outsider in his life. “She was the first person I met who gave me acceptance,” he said. “We became friends.” It didn’t have to be anything more. “It was a start of a new life for me,” he said. “That was her nature.”
For more than an hour the testimonials streamed from people whose lives had been elevated or altered in some positive and unforgettable way by this young woman who was so often troubled, sometimes absent in an undefined world; but then healthy enough again to answer a call at midnight from somebody who needed nothing more than to talk.
“And she always came,” one of them said.
This was a woman whose lifelong commitment-- at whatever level of health she achieved-- was to the cause of the disadvantaged and the faceless, people ground down and dehumanized by power, whether in Africa, Asia or the America in which she lived.
This was the Katharine they remembered, and their testimony was so strong, warm and earnest that it gave her mother a portrait of her daughter that will outlast the pain.
New Survey: Older Americans Viewing Retirement Positively
Vi, a senior housing company based in Chicago, recently commissioned a poll by Penn Schoen Berland of nearly 800 U.S. adults between the ages of 65 and 80. The Vi Next Chapter study probed attitudes of people 65 and older about aging concerns, expectations and aspirations:
Not Their Father's Retirement
81% of those surveyed have a different vision of retirement from that of their parents. Almost nine out of ten (86%) say they want their retirement to be more exciting and more active than their parents' retirement, while almost all (98%) say retirement "can and should be a fun experience." A scant 6% look to their parents' retirement as a guide for their own future. The majority (96%) say retirement doesn't mean they are ready to stop being productive, and 79% feel productive currently.
Independence Means Freedom
The concept of "independence" in the later years is also undergoing a transformation. Older adults today equate independence with freedom to do what they like (72%) and from the responsibilities of work (42%) and raising a family (26%), from worries about money and bills (43%).
A Little "Me" Time
Nearly half (46%) say they're done taking care of chores - it's time to take care of "myself." Two in five (40%) report they like to frequently treat themselves to new purchases such as shoes or clothes. More than one third (37%) of older Americans surveyed say they go out socially two or more nights each week. Half (50%) say having a healthy and active sex life is important to them.
Great Expectations
Two in five (39%) say that as they've gotten older, they've become more "adventurous." A similar number (38%) say they've never had as much fun as they're having now. Older adults polled say they are most excited about and fully expect to travel (57%) and spend time with family (57%).
Health Trumps Money
Health trumps money by a ratio of 4 to 1 when it comes to things older Americans are worried about. Eight out of 10 older adults (80%) say that "losing my health" concerns them more while only 17% are worried about "not having enough money to get by."
Fitter Not Fatter
Sixty percent of older Americans polled say they are exercising more than 2-3 hours a week with 21% saying they exercise more than 5 hours each week. More than four out of five say they prepare meals from scratch rather than eating frozen, pre-prepared or takeout meals and 97% say the food they eat is very or somewhat healthy.
Research Giant Nielsen Says Advertisers Must Change Thinking on Aging . . . Duh?
Older consumers have generally been viewed by advertisers as useless. But the age wave is beginning to shift that thinking . . .
TV advertising was founded on reaching the demographic of consumers between the ages of 18 and 49, yet the median age of viewers of prime-time broadcast TV is nearing 51 -- two years above that age range. To maintain relevance to advertisers, the big networks need to find a way to establish the relevance of older consumers if they want to continue to draw the marketers that support TV so heavily.
"There isn't a single media-content company that won't face this, and the same is true for mass marketers," Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at NBC Universal recently told AdAge Magazine.
According to Nielsen, baby boomers in 2010 account for approximately 38.5% of all dollars spent on consumer package goods such as toothpaste and laundry detergent. They account for 40% of customers paying for wireless services and 41% of customers paying for Apple personal computers. And while brand alliances are often thought to be established when a consumer is in his or her 20s, changing technology has unleashed a steady spate of new devices and gadgets that are new to all consumers.
And what's also different is that many of these consumers are going to live longer than ever before in history.
Empowering One's Joy of Bingo at Ecumen
One of the great joys of working at Ecumen is colleagues who innovate to empower and honor our customers. More from colleague Merry Kole at Ecumen Lakeview Commons in making one's joy of bingo accessible. Her help didn't just make a fun game accessible, it empowered brain fitness, sociality, pride and community.
Jim Klobuchar - A Chaotic Search for Progress
Jim Klobuchar, Ecumen "Changing Aging" contributor: In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, one of whom is Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator.
A Chaotic Search for Progress
The toast was burning in the kitchen while I thrashed miserably in the dressing room 15 feet away, grappling with the waist buttons of my freshly pressed, going-to-church pants. All the rules of rational behavior told me I should break off this unequal struggle and try to avert a bonfire in the kitchen.
Right about then I remembered one of those homely little axioms from my weekly meeting: “try for progress, not perfection.”
You may be familiar with this summons to civilized behavior. The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have rescued millions of faltering human beings from the roads to self-destruction. Most of its practicing members long ago abandoned any illusions about the strength of raw will power to keep themselves upright and sensible. The language of those 12 steps is a tough catechism of survival. It has now become common currency around the world, along with AA’s taut little aphorisms that make the point unavoidably clear. “If you’re waiting for miracles,” one of them tells us, “God doesn’t drive a parked car. So do something positive.” Or “You’re only as sick as the secrets you keep.”
Generally I accept all of the wisdom there, including the hazards of perfectionism. When I say perfectionism I’m not talking about calling the Geek Squad when you forget your password. One of my problems is Rudyard Kipling, the old poet laureate of the British Empire, whose tutorial on the hallmark of achieving manhood finished with this stirring call to the principle that nothing succeeds like excess:
“If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son!”
In other words, time is precious. I have relentlessly applied myself to this proverb whenever tempted, sometimes with awkward results. The morning after the presidential election of 1960 I was working with the Associated Press in Minneapolis, writing the election stories from the Midwest. The race between John F.Kennedy and Richard Nixon remained tight into dawn. There were no exit polls. The world clamored for a winner. Three states were still out, Minnesota, California and Illinois. At 9 a.m.we decided that Kennedy, with a rush of votes from the north, would carry Minnesota and win the presidency. I began writing furiously, declaring Kennedy the winner, summarizing the historic nature of his victory, fingers flying across the typewriter keyboard, giving myself no time to use carbon paper to track the copy. The bureau chief tore it out of my typewriter one paragraph at a time and raced it to the teletype operator. Midway through I yelled to the teletype man, “Bob, how does that last paragraph end?” He tried to be helpful. “With a period,” he said.
But this is 2010. The world has changed but I still have this sentimental fondness, this obvious delusion, about being able to pack end to end action into those unforgiving minutes. I know for a fact that it takes toast 8 minutes to become toast at our house. So I armed the toaster and knew I had time to shave, take my morning pills, dress for the day and be out into the kitchen in time to harvest the toast. I was virtually dressed and ready to bound into the morning when the last waist button on my trousers refused to work its way though the eyelet. I twisted the button, turned the eyelet, wriggled the button, used brute force. Nothing worked. And now my wife in the kitchen was yelling about smoke from the toaster. The coffee pot was whistling wildly. The alarm was about to sound and my wife was worried about the fire brigade heading to our house with sirens wailing. I rushed in and disarmed the toaster. My wife silently rolled her eyes. It was humiliating. I retreated to finish buttoning my trousers.
Someone talk to me about progress.
CrossFit: Intergenerational fitness at its best
This will change your life. Yeah, who hasn’t heard that before about a fitness regimen? But that’s exactly what older adult participants in CrossFit claim. “I can keep up with people half my age and I like that,” exclaims Theresia Sabayan, a 59 year old grandmother from British Columbia. “I love it and plan on doing CrossFit forever. It's always interesting, always workable. I don't have to spend hours at the gym with very little results. It's quick, it works.”
What is CrossFit? Participants don’t use StairMasters or weight machines. Instead they do brief, high-intensity workouts that mix simple gymnastics, track and field skills and bodybuilding primarily using their own body weight. The program stresses functional fitness, meaning you'll actually be able to do more with your life. Initially, devotees were paramilitary groups such as firefighters & police officers. It’s quickly spreading to other demographics, including the “silvers”. A quick peek at a typical CF workout is intimidating, even for a 20-something. Yet, advocates are quick to point out the scalability of movements that can be performed by anyone, of any age and condition. Dan Hope, a 67 year-old from Athens, Georgia says: “One of the great things about CrossFit is that anyone can participate. It may take some of us well beyond our prime to admit we are no longer able to function at the levels we enjoyed in our youth, but scaling makes it possible to stay active.” Who knew sweat could be an intergenerational, bonding experience? “I am 64 in September and working out along side a fellow who wants to be a Navy Seal”, states Ellen Clifford of Minneapolis. “Now, how awesome is that?!”
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Steve Shaughessy, of Charlotte, North Carolina who recently turned 60, has been practicing for 18 months. He concedes it’s hard work, “but the benefits are well worth it. I’ve lost 30 lbs., improved my strength, have way less pain in my arthritic knee, feel younger and have more energy”. Ellen, who is Steve’s sister, has also seen positive changes in her life such as weight loss, increased confidence, improved strength and energy. “I sleep better and just seem to have more enthusiasm for life in general. My balance has also improved and that’s a big thing when you get older”.
Steve has recruited his wife, high-school & college aged friends as well as folks his own age. “There is great camaraderie with other CrossFit members.” Community is a component that enthusiasts point to as a factor that keeps them coming back for more. “Crossfitters are very special people whether they are young or old – they all encourage each other. There is no discrimination,” Ellen continues. “The esprit de corps among CrossFitters is something incredible. So not only are the physical aspects improving your life but you feel like you have an entire team supporting your efforts. I don’t ever want to stop”. ~Helen Rickman
Why it Pays to Have an Expert Build Senior Housing
Our housing development team posted on their blog an unfortunate story from KSTP-TV about a Minnesota State Government nursing home that has sat empty for a year because of apparent shoddy construction. Not exactly the best use of taxpayer resources.
The Raw Economics of the Nursing Home
Here's another example of why we need a long-term care financing system in America. Charles Schrader wrote a really thoughtful first-person article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about his experience and the closure of Ashton, Care Center in Pipestone, Minnesota:
Whoever said that "life's what happens while you're making other plans" got it right.
We briefly put our evening on hold to give ourselves time to "check our e-mail." My wife's was a real date-killer. Judy carefully handed me our laptop. "Here," she said, "What do you make of this?"
A cryptic but carefully crafted e-mail from the management of Ashton Care Center, Pipestone, Minn., where my 98-year-old mother-in-law had been living the past two years, invited -- no, urged -- our attendance the following Monday evening at a family/ community meeting to discuss the "financial challenges" facing Ashton.
Our calm gave way to angst. What could this mean? Increased fees? Reduced services? Then it hit me: "The place is closing," I suggested.
Last Friday night my wife and I had other plans. A pleasant supper out on the deck, followed by reading in the den, then a movie . . . Read Charle's full article here.