The Girl is pretty low-maintenance when it comes to homework. She pretty much takes care of business, which is a good thing, because the other day, I peered over her shoulder at her homework, and was like WHAT?! Am I getting dumber or is school getting harder?
Now, I know it’s been a long, long time awhile since I was in school, but the stuff she is working on is crazy hard. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’ve never actually used any of that stuff in real life–partly because I wonder if she is going to live a different world than I did, and actually use it, and partly because I started to wonder if maybe I’d let myself go in the old keepin’ it sharp department.
Apparently, brain function starts to decline in the mid-twenties {which means I only have a few years left – ha!}, with the highest impact being on memory. They say that exercising the melon is a great way to keep your mind active well into old age–a use it or lose it mentality. So, in the interest of boring all of my grandkids with stories I actually can remember, here are 10 ways to keep your mind sharp and functioning:
- Learn something new. Try to learn something–anything new each day. It’s never too late to take up the piano or learn Spanish. Even trying to cook a new dish helps improve brain function.
- Get chatty. Having friends and family that you socialize with regularly improves over all language skills and memory.
- Add Sage to your diet. Apparently Sage is associated with memory–so sprinkle it liberally on your taters and I am sure you’ll be thinking more clearly in no time.
- Meditate. Apparently scientists have studied the effects of mediation on the brain and found that people who sat quietly for 40 minutes a day had a denser cerebral cortex. {Maybe that’s why I love gardening so much, it’s my meditation?}
- Vary your routine. Go the opposite way through the grocery store {I tried this one, it is actually trickier than you’d think}. It causes your brain to process familiar information in a new way.
- Play games. I’m not talking just crossword puzzles here–all games that require strategy or spatial orientation keep the mind sharp.
- Unplug the phone. A study commissioned by Hewlett Packard found that the constant interruptions of phone calls, texts and emails can drop your IQ by 10 points. {Yikes, that’s a hit I can’t afford, I better cancel my plan altogether.}
- Eat healthy, whole foods. Studies have found that people who eat plenty of vegetables and fish have better overall brain function.
- Exercise. Enough said.
- Drink more tea. {yes, please!} Peppermint, lemon, green and black teas have all been shown to improve concentration and prevent memory loss.
How about you, what do you do to make sure you stay sharp as you age?
~Mavis
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Leanna says
Ha ha! My 13 year old was just saying last night that he was sure he would never use solving quadratic equations by completeing the square in his adult life.
KC says
I’ve had to solve quadratics in adult life (and I’m not even a mech. engineer!), but admittedly not often. Definitely not often (and there’s always google, now – although one of the points of learning things is to know when to use them and what they’re called and how to look them up, even if you can’t remember exactly how the formula goes…).
At this point, I’ve used *something* from every single college class I took, even the super-obscure ones, which I think is a pretty good record (counting things like “being able to intelligently converse with someone in a social situation that would otherwise have been super-awkward” as a “use”). But if you don’t know something, then you can’t use it when you come across the appropriate situation (and you may not even recognize something as the appropriate situation) For geometry, for instance, figuring out how large of a cake you need for a wedding, or whether a piece of furniture will fit through your front door if tipped on the diagonal (before buying the thing!), or how much seed you need for a weird-shaped garden are very practical applications, but a lot of people just throw their hands in the air and give up or guess instead of doing the math… which also often works well enough. So there’s that. Learn what you can – use what you have – and look it up online if you can’t quite remember it. 🙂
Kendra says
Algebra can be used for couponing – if a store has item x on sale for Buy 2 get 1 free and you have a coupon for buy one get one how many of item x should you buy to maximize the savings?
I love these types of scenarios…I’m also a giant math nerd (and an engineer) so I’m weird like that.
Mavis says
🙂
alyssa says
Here’s one more to the list, actually more in line with #5. It is believed that it challenges the brain when you take a different route to your destination, like driving to your work or a favorite grocery shop instead of the boring same old familiar route. Throw in some one way lanes only and you’ve got a real challenge on hand 🙂
Also you could try doing things differently by switching your right hand for the left if you are a right-hand dominant person and vice versa. It not only challenges the brain but also makes you ambidextrous while helping you build muscles along the way, a real win-win deal.
Mavis says
Awesome! 🙂 Thanks Alyssa.
PamZ says
Puzzles didn’t make the list? My mom always did all the crosswords in the paper every day, plus the word search ones and the scrabble type of games. Crosswords are great for building vocabulary and you’ll learn something new if you have to look up the clue somewhere to find the answer! I enjoy Sudoku on my tablet when I’m on the bus. I find I can see patterns much better in other things now.