What Are YOU Doing For Your Brain Health?

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Dr. Allison Lamont, Brain and Memory Foundation.

Did you make a New Year's resolution this year that you would be fitter in 2013? or thinner? Or would attend to this or that neglected task around the house? Did you plan to take better care of your health?

What about marvellous brain? There is little doubt that there is a new and exciting emphasis on brain health – after all, a healthy brain is an absolute essential to our well-being and happiness. And memory improvement is the gold-plated bonus.

It's time to do something about it! One of the exciting things about brain health is that it can be fun! An opportunity to try new things, a jolly good reason to enjoy sitting in the sunshine engaged in puzzles, being out and about engaged in new activities, and finding your memory improving in leaps and bounds.

Until relatively recently, it was believed that by the age of 50 we were losing brain cells daily at a prodigious rate – and we were on the gargantuan slide into the abyss.

The good news is that it is now established that whilst brain neurons might be popping off, the dendritic growth – the connections between the cells made when we learn new information and so on, continues into very late life – IF we continue to stimulate it. As we each have around 100 billion brain cells just imagine what a difference it will make to have them stimulated and busily stretching and growing!

How can you start? That's easy – and fun. Have you tried the great games on Grownups? Do you enjoy brain teasers that really make you think? Do you remember starting your school day with '20 Mental' – mental arithmetic to be finished as quickly as you could? These activities are so healthy for your brain and they can be incorporated into everyday life so easily.

Here are a few suggestions to start you off – I am sure you will think of others.

• As you walk down the road, add up the house numbers in your head

• Add and subtract the numbers on the number plates of passing cars

• Sit quietly and reconstruct, in your mind, places from the past: your first school classroom, the first house you remember living in, a favourite painting, an event you enjoyed.

• When you are next out socially, talk to as many people as you can. When you return home bring those conversations to mind – how many can you remember well?

• Try reading your book or newspaper upside down for a few paragraphs. This forces the brain to perceive differently and is a very good brain exercise.

• Find a book of brain teasers. Doing Sudoku, crosswords, Find-a-word etc are good brain exercise, but it is doing something new to you that gives the most benefit.

I am sure you will think of many other ways of exercising your all-important brain. Email me with your suggestions, and I will share them in the column. I would be very interested in your favourite puzzles, online puzzles, or puzzle books. My email is: Dr.Lamont@memoryclinic.co.nz

For an interesting variety of great brain exercises, go to the Brain and Memory Foundation website where you will find (on the right of the screen) a signup for Brain Fit for Life – an absolutely FREE access to a 6-part brain exercise programme. Make use of it and let me know how you get on.

Make 2013 the year to get those brain cells pumping!

**Dr. Allison Lamont is the founder and clinician at the Auckland Memory Clinic. She has presented at conferences in the USA, UK, and New Zealand, and has authored and co-authored (with her sister, Gillian Eadie) numerous books of the prevention and treatment of memory loss.

For further reading, visit the GrownUps Store , and order your copy of Seven Second Memory: Memory techniques that will change our life.

By Allison Lamont