Question
Dr.Braccio: I am a forty-nine karatay genç kızlar year old who married late and has two teenage children. My concern is my memory. I’m busier than ever, always running here and there and can’t seem to remember like I did before. The problem is I need my memory more now than ever. My doctor evaluated me and said I was fine and to just slow down and be healthy. Nothing seems to help and my wife and children kid me when I lose my keys, cell phone or forgot a password to get into a system I may use a lot. What’s wrong with me and can I improve my memory?
Answer
The first answer is that there is apparently nothing wrong with you except you are overextended and need to slow down and be healthy as your doctor said. The second answer is that you can improve your memory.
Before you do anything, recognize you are constantly traveling on a speeding out of control treadmill that you must control. One’s memory will always be poor when daily responsibilities are overwhelming.
There are various things you can do to improve your memory. They would include the following:
- Eat three balanced meals day. Good memory requires a healthy and well-nourished body/brain. 2. Get enough rest. Fatigue will blunt the best of memories. 3. Write down passwords and remember where the book is you put them in. 4. When not on you, have specific places you always put things you commonly forget. Examples would be car keys always go in the basket on top of the refrigerator or the cell phone is always on or near the charger in your den. 5. Appropriate use of vitamins and supplements. 6. Eliminate or reduce alcohol consumption. Exercising. 7. Learn to relax by deep breathing, self-hypnosis, yoga, medication, or any other techniques to help you relax and clear your mind. One cannot think clearly when the short term memory is cluttered with unimportant information and is under constant bombardment by information coming from all directions. 8. Slow down your life and take on a manageable work and life load. As a minimum, learn to focus on one thing at a time. To focus on too many things at one time means you will not be completing any of them or will complete them erratically. As goes the famous quote, “One cannot serve two masters at one time”. 9. Believe your efforts to improve your memory will succeed and it will occur. 10. Try various techniques called mnemonics to improve your memory. A few examples would be as follows:
A. Associations. Probably the most common relates to time change: “Spring forward and Fall back”. B. Pegs used to help you remember something. For example, us rhyming word pairs: One with Ton, Two with Rule, Three with Tree. Further examples could be with letters: LSJ for Lansing State Journal, MPA for Michigan Psychological Association. C. A visual image in your mind of your uncle preparing and cooking Paella when you go shopping to buy ingredients to make the delicious Spanish meal. This helps you remember what you must buy and how to make it.
If you try the above suggestions with confidence, you will see improvement in your memory. You can even have fun at home and enlist the family in activities to improve the memories of everyone. I know of cases where this has been done with much success.