How To Improve Your Memory Part2

Sleep and Memory Are Related

You have probably heard that sleep and memory are interconnected. It’s true. Many studies have shown that not getting enough quality rest can directly hurt your memory.

I have certainly noticed this in my own life. Whenever I have a poor night due to stress, allergies, back pain, or other reasons, my mind almost always feels foggier the next day.

At night, your brain organizes what you learned during the day. As a memory study in the November 2006 issue of the journal Nature said, “… sleep contributes to the long-term consolidation of new memories.”

According to another study, getting too few hours hurts memorization ability as much as no sleep at all! So to strengthen your memory, it is vital to get enough quality sleep each night.

A poor night’s sleep hurts your memory in two big ways:

1. Being sleepy hurts your concentration. When you can’t focus on things clearly, you can’t remember well.
2. Sleeping poorly means the things you learned the previous day are not fully recorded in the memory parts of your brain.

According to Howard Nusbaum, a sleep researcher at the University of Chicago, a good night’s rest not only helps retention but can even help you recall thoughts forgotten during the day. As he says in Psychology Today magazine,

Sleep might strengthen relevant associations and weaken irrelevant associations, improving access to memories.

Sleep and Memory: Getting More Sleep

Here are some ideas for finding more time for sleep. Sleep experts believe that most people need seven to eight hours of sleep a night to be fully rested.

See if you can get closer to the mark by trying some of these suggestions.

• Log your sleep hours.

If your schedule varies a lot, you may not actually know how much sleep you are getting. In a journal or notebook, each morning write down the number of hours of sleep you got the night before. (If you wake up for a midnight snack, for example, subtract that time.) At the end of the week, average the daily sleep hours to see how much sleep you are getting in an average night. That will give you some indication of how sleep deficient you really are.

• Kick the late-night TV habit. In my view, TV-watching can be almost like an addiction for some people. They have to see their shows or else. But you have to decide which is more important – seeing all those episodes, or getting your brain in top shape for the next day.
• Go easy on the late-night video games. Many students these days stay up too late just to play their favorite games. You have to be the judge on how much is reasonable, though. Don’t overdo it – you’ll pay the price the next day. If you have to play games at night, at least make them low-key, relaxing games. (Several are available for free right on this website.)
• Take naps. Naps aren’t just for kids anymore. If you are lucky enough to have 20 minutes of free time in the afternoon, consider taking a nap to supplement the sleep you may be missing at night.
• Cut back on hobbies. This is an individual choice, but be realistic – if your hobby is keeping you up too late at night, find ways of cutting back.

Exercise and Memory

Regular aerobic exercise can improve your memory. Your brain is your tool for remembering, so you have to make sure the brain has enough oxygen and other nutrients.Daily physical activity is one way to increase blood flow to your brain. It has been proven that building your aerobic capacity (through aerobic activity like running or cycling) increases oxygen not only to your brain but to all your other organs.

Oxygenate Your Brain

When your oxygen is low, your ability to concentrate is hurt. When you can’t concentrate, you can’t learn new information easily or recall information you studied in the past. Many studies have shown that physical activity increases the flow of oxygen to your brain.

As fitness expert Robert Sweetgall, who has walked over 70,000 miles in his lifetime, explains:

“Exercise helps oxygenate (supply oxygen to) the brain. This supply makes it function better. Even walking 15 minutes a day will help you focus better.”

 

Aerobic Exercise Builds New Brain Cells

Research done in the last ten years shows that intense aerobic activity actually grows new brain cells (neurons) in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is one part of the brain responsible for – you guessed it – MEMORY.

A March 2007 study by the Scott Small of the National Academy of Sciences showed that “a three-month program of vigorous aerobic exercise seemed to produce new neurons in this area, as well as improvements on tests of mental recall.” This study found a 30 percent increase in the number of brain cells in the human participants. For the study, the participants were exercising intensely one to two hours a day, four days a week, on a treadmill or stationary bicycle.

Aerobic activity is something I can do that actually grows neurons in the memory section of my brain, and which is also proven to have tremendous benefits for other reasons (keeps me fit, increases lifespan, energy, fights diseases, and so on). Gee, should I, or shouldn’t I do it? Duh!

Since this is a memory site and not a fitness site, I’m not going into every theory of physical fitness. I’m just going to tell you what I do, and then you can decide if that would work for you or if you need to find something else.

The main thing is getting some aerobic activity as many days of the week as possible. At least three days a week. Six days a week is probably even better.

Running Is a Good Option

I used to hate running. I always did, ever since 8th grade when my parents signed me up for the track team at school. I always came in last because I didn’t practice like the other kids and because I have short wind (naturally low stamina). But you know what? I run now. I’ve gotten used to it, and it isn’t that bad. Running is a very simple, no-fancy-equipment-needed way to get in my 20 minutes a day.

It makes a huge difference. If I stop running for a week or two, which sometimes happens, I start feeling like crud within just a few days. Face it – we were not made to be sedentary couch potatoes. We were meant to move our limbs and get the blood flowing. The brain is highly sensitive to this. Just try an exercise program for six weeks or so and just see if you don’t notice a tremendous difference in your energy level and the quickness of your mind.

For those who already do aerobic exercise regularly – Bravo!

The Next Level of Exercise

I actually lift weights in addition to running. I find that when I stick to a reasonable weight routine, I have fewer aches and pains (especially lower back and neck), and I just feel better in general. Plus the overall increase in strength just makes all kinds of every day tasks easier. However, I have not seen any evidence (yet) that lifting weights strengthens your memory.

Several years back there was a great article in Men’s Fitness magazine that listed 44 benefits of eating right, lifting weights, and doing aerobic exercise. Let me point out just one of the reasons:

12. You’ll stay mentally sharp. In a study of older men and women, fit subjects scored higher on tests of reasoning, working memory and reaction time than sedentary subjects did. This may be because exercise improves blood supply to the brain.

Keeping a Journal to Remember Events

Some people, like me, have trouble recalling events. So I started keeping a journal to preserve the precious details of these memories.Recollection of your life’s events will probably fade as the years go by. My advice is to write these events down in a journal as they happen. You may have heard of journaling before; it’s similar to keeping a diary.

In some dictionaries, such as at wordnet.princeton.edu, there is virtually no distinction between keeping a journal and a diary:

Definition of “journal”: a diary; a daily written record of (usually personal) experiences and observations.

Young people may be tuning me out at this point, but I hope they don’t. Now that I am getting older, I wish I had started my journaling at a younger age. I did start my journal over fourteen years ago, on January 1, 1996 as part of a New Year’s Resolution.

I think journaling is different from keeping a diary in terms of focus. I imagine a diary as something a teenager keeps to write down private thoughts about feelings and relationships. A journal can have some of that, but the focus (at least for me) is more toward the world around me.

For example, if I travel to visit the Great Meteor Crater in Arizona, I’ll write down the things I did there, what my impressions of the place was like, and my thoughts about the significance of the trip, and so on. Much of my journal is internal, but much external too. I haven’t really recorded much that would embarrass anyone. No gossip, for example.

The purpose of keeping a journal is to write down the things that I want to be able to remember 10, 20, 30, or more years from now. The special experiences of a lifetime, preserved on those pages. I’d like to think that some day my grandchildren or great-grandchildren might like to read it.

Of course, having written hundreds of pages over the years, I have developed a certain style and pattern, even in the materials I use, that seems to work well. Here’s a page from my journal as an example:

Example of Journal Layout/StructureAs time permits, I will begin sharing my journaling techniques with you on this website to help give you leapfrog ahead and avoid some of the pitfalls.

Meditation and Memory

Surprisingly, meditation and memory are linked. New research shows that regular meditation changes the physical structure of your brain in powerful ways – including ways that improve memory. So what is the connection between meditation and memory?

Studies at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have shown that regular meditation causes the brain’s cerebral cortex to thicken. This happens through an increase in the size of blood vessels and the amount of blood flow to the region.

The cortex is the area of the brain responsible for the higher mental functions, so this is an amazing discovery. (I suppose long-time devotees of meditation are saying “I told you so” right about now.)

Before you skeptics tune out, read this Time Magazine article about meditation and brain improvement. Walter Zimmermann is paid up to $3,000 per month by his 200+ clients to analyze energy futures. Zimmermann claims that his secret weapon to staying sharp is, you guessed it, meditation.

From the Time article,

…meditation directly affects the function and structure of the brain, changing it in ways that appear to increase attention span, sharpen focus, and improve memory.

Meditation sharpens your focus and memoryYou don’t need to be a monk on a mountaintop to experience for yourself the link between meditation and memory improvement. The basic type of meditation practiced in many Western countries was shown in the research to be very effective in causing the cortex to thicken. This type of meditation is called mindfulness meditation (also known as “awareness” or “insight” meditation).

If you want to read more about the discovery that the brain can be remolded (a new science called “neuroplasticity”, concerning how the brain can change itself), check out the book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, by Sharon Begley, science writer for the Wall Street Journal.

From Begley’s book:

But as we learn from studies performed on Buddhist monks, an important component in changing the brain is to tap the power of mind and, in particular, focused attention. This is the classic Buddhist practice of mindfulness, a technique that has become popular in the West and that is immediately available to everyone.

I find this new brain, meditation and memory research very exciting. It is becoming clear that personal transformation – especially transformation that makes your brain more powerful and focused – is really possible.