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Tips to boost your memory

by Jessica Goulburn | 16 Sep 2013

memory tipsIf you can just never remember where you left their keys, wallet or phone, these nine easy tips will help you boost your memory.

1. Laugh

Laughter truly is the best medicine and this applies for your memory as well as your overall mental health. Laughter engages multiple regions across the whole brain and activates areas of the brain vital to learning and creativity. Plus, if you’re happy about something and use that happiness as a trigger, you’ll most likely remember more about the situation than if it upset you.

2. Eat well

The brain needs fuel, but it needs to be the right fuel. A diet full of fruits, vegetables and wholegrains is fantastic for improving memory. It’s also important to get your omega-3s. This means eating plenty of fish, especially cold-water fatty fish such as salmon, trout and herring.

Limiting calories and saturated fat also helps stimulate memory function, as does limiting alcohol consumption. It’s best to talk to your doctor or a dietician when it comes to developing a healthy eating plan.

3. Get moving

Exercise works the body as well as the brain, and obesity can have a direct correlation to brain function. Without regular exercise, the arteries and blood vessels lose the ability to pump effectively. To keep the blood pumping and moving to the brain, get up off your chair and take a walk around the block daily. Alternatively, check out these tips for exercising at home. 

4. Visualise and associate

If you’re a visual person, sometimes it’s easier to remember things when you associate an image with that particular word or action. For example, when you place your reading glasses on the kitchen table, take a moment to visualise your reading glasses eating a snack. Later when you need to find them again, your brain will trigger that visual memory.

A terrific technique is to trick your brain into remembering something by changing your surroundings. This is where the technique of tying a string around your finger comes from. When you tie a string around your finger, you’re creating a strange occurrence. When you wonder why that string is tied around your finger, this will trigger the memory.

Another technique is to change your watch or your ring onto the other hand. When you move to change it back, you’ll remember why you swapped it over in the first place.

If you often wake up in the middle of the night with a sudden thought, and then you wake up in the morning unable to recall what it was, try moving something close by the bed when you wake with the thought. Put your alarm clock on the floor or face your book upside down, and hopefully in the morning seeing the changed item will trigger the memory for you, all without having to rustle about trying to write it down.

5. Be in the moment

When you’re trying to savour a moment so you’ll remember it forever, the key is to use all of your senses. Take note of the smells around you, the sounds you’re hearing and the colours you're seeing.

Smells are known to conjure memories, as is hearing. Read your appointments aloud and you’ll often remember them better than if you had just read it in your head.

6. 'Chunk'

When you have to remember a lot of things, categorising them can often be a key to success. This is often what we do with phone numbers or credit card numbers when we’re trying to memorise them.

For example, it would be a lot more difficult to remember 95887841 than 9588 7841.

You can also do this with your shopping list. Group the dairy together, the meat together, the fruit and vegetables together, and so on. If you can put a numerical value on the number of vegetables you need to buy, you’re more likely to remember what they are.

7. Rhyme

This doesn’t always apply for everything you need to remember but if you can find something to correlate your errand to and a word to use for rhyming, it will be a lot easier to remember. For example, ‘the dentist at three, needs to see me’ is a lot easier to recall than ‘dentist appointment at three’. This is because it sticks in your mind.  

8. Play games

It’s true when they say the more you use your brain the better it will age. Make sure you’re constantly reading and constantly engaging with activities that challenge your brain.

Crosswords, Sudoku and find-a-words are a wonderful source of brain training, no matter how easy they may seem. Alternatively, try learning something completely new. Challenge yourself to learns a new language or a tough board game.

9. Ask for help

There's no point beating around the bush – Alzheimer's Disease is one of the leading causes of death in Australia. 

While we all have those moments when we can't remember where we left the keys or we mix up our children's names, forgetfulness is not just a normal part of ageing. If you notice your memory worsen, it's important to see your doctor, and the same goes if you notice behavioural changes in a loved one.

People often don't seek help so as to avoid being a burden, but the symptoms of dementia and other degenerative brain conditions are far more simple to deal with when appropriate treatments and support are sought. 

Put simply, the final tip: see your doctor.