Seven
Second Memory
Memory techniques that will
change your life
Dr Allison C. Lamont & Gillian M. Eadie
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Dr Allison C.
Lamont & Gillian M. Eadie
Smashwords Edition,
License Notes
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please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re
reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased
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authors.
Edition 3
SPONSORED BY THE BRAIN & MEMORY FOUNDATION
First published, 2009
Edition 2, 2010
Edition 3, 2011
ISBN 978-0-473-18918-1 (ebook)
CONTENTS
PART A: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW YOUR MEMORY WORKS AND WHY YOU SOMETIMES FORGET.
WORRIED YOUR MEMORY ISN’T AS SHARP AS IT USED TO BE?
PART B: SEVEN POWERFUL MEMORY TECHNIQUES
PAY ATTENTION! LEARN TO APPLY THE SEVEN-SECOND RULE
Memory tips for creating strong memory traces
Memory tips for eliminating distraction
Memory Tips for organizing your living spaces
Memory tips for organizing information to remember
Remembering Lists
Exercise your brain - keep your synapses firing
PART C: GROW YOUR YOUTHFUL BRAIN SIX CRITICAL MEMORY SKILLS
Memory tips How to practise verbal memory efficiency:
Memory tips for shape recall
Short Term Memory Tips
Working Memory Tips
Tips for successful prospective remembering
PART D: MASTER YOUR LIFESTYLE AND IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY
1. Increase Your Daily Water Intake
2. Eat in moderation
3. The Fats You Must Have
4. You Need Antioxidants
5. Eat a Balance of Protein, Good Fats, Carbohydrates and Vitamins
6. Create Your Own Brain Food Plan
7. Plan to Have Healthy Snacks on Hand
8. Take Exercise and Breathe Deeply!
YOUR BRAIN-BOOSTING MEAL PLANNER
Breakfast
Morning / Afternoon snack
Lunch
Dinner
Dessert or Supper
DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS AND BRAIN FUNCTION
MANAGING STRESS IMPROVES MEMORY
MEMORY PROBLEMS THAT AREN’T PART OF NORMAL AGEING
BRAIN-BOOSTERS YOU NEED – SHOPPING LIST
Additional choices to add in following weeks: Ó
Introduction
Do you:
• Lose your glasses? The car keys?
• Forget names?
• Forget why you went into another room?
• Forget a name of someone you should have remembered?
• Lose the word you were just going to say?
• Forget whether you have taken medication?
• Go to the supermarket for milk, and buy everything but?
• Have to pay a late fee because you forget to pay the phone bill?
• Have trouble remembering appointments?
• Forget important birthdays and anniversaries?
• Forget whether you turned out the light, turned off the oven?
So, what’s happening?
Are you losing your edge?
Are you getting
Alzheimer’s?
No!
It’s NOT a ‘senior moment’
It’s NOT the
catastrophic loss of brain cells
** If you are really worried, go to the Answers page where the warning signs of dementia are listed. The USA Alzheimer’s Foundation suggest memory loss is now the single greatest health worry of baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 **
It’s NOT your brain shutting down
Your memory is still all there!
Did you pick up this book because you are worried you don’t remember things as well as you used to? Many people are worried about memory, and become afraid that occasional lapses may be the beginning of losing memory altogether.
Attitudes to memory are evident even within our language. How often have you heard someone mutter, as they search for car keys or struggle to find a word, “I’m having a senior moment” or even worse, “Must be my Alzheimer’s!”
Until relatively recently, it was believed that by the age of 50, brain cells were lost daily at a prodigious rate and signalled a rapid slide into senility. In later years, it does become harder to recall names, dates, where keys were left, or what was done two days ago. But science has established that it is more likely your memory powers have dulled simply because your brain (and maybe your body!) is no longer in tip-top shape.
Helping you maintain peak mental fitness is the purpose of this book.
Part A:
What you need to know about how your memory works and why you sometimes forget.
Forgetting and mis-remembering are normal parts of everyday life – at all ages! Scientists are just beginning to understand why people forget. From the age of 40 or 50, many people notice some degree of change in cognitive (or mental) abilities, including memory. But research shows you have the power to improve your memory, regrow brain connections and sharpen your overall brain health.
Every day you are being bombarded with information through the senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. If you remembered it all, there would be overload and chaos. Not everything needs to be remembered and your brain has efficient ways of making sure you remember only what is important to you.
The storing of human memories is a highly dynamic system which is interwoven with your emotions, how you view things, and your actions. From birth through to death the brain files away facts, faces, sounds, names, and events along with the emotions that are connected to them. Your ability to create, store, and recall new memories when you need them allows you to learn and to interact with other people. How you feel about yourself is an important factor in remembering well. Your memory skills, and the memories you have, can be your best friend or, when distorted, your worst enemy.
In Seven Second Memory you will learn skills and tips to make yourself a more self-confident, alert and independent person.
Moments of forgetfulness happen to everyone, usually beginning in the early 40’s. Without regular brain exercise, the number of synapses (meeting points between neurons) diminishes so less information can be transmitted. Occasional memory lapses are caused by these minor brain changes and are perfectly normal.
** They are very different from the changes that cause Altzheimer’s Disease, the progressive dementia that affects some older people. Go to the Appendix for further information, **
Research shows that the degree of normal changes in memory, abstract thinking, reasoning, imagination and insight caused by ageing, varies from person to person.
While my 70 year old friend, Ted, struggles to remember what seeds he planted a week ago, John, a sprightly 92-year-old retired nurseryman not only remembers what he has planted, he remembers all the Latin names, as well.
The type of memory being tested also influences recall. Remembering you have seen a face before is easier, for example, than being able to remember the person’s name. If there are no time constraints, or the information to be remembered has been used over many years, there is little or no memory decline through to your 50’s and 60’s. How you do things, such as driving a car, sensory and short-term memory remain relatively sound until the late 80s or early 90s for most healthy people.
Where your memory lets you down, though, is in other long-term memory types, possibly because retrieving a memory from long-term storage is not as efficient.
When accessing stored memories, the brain uses one of the following four processes, depending upon the retrieval cues (prompts or clues) that are available at the time.
• Recall: When information is accessed in the absence of any clues at all, (you need this skill at exam time).
• Recollection: You reconstruct information using partial memories, narratives or clues (isolated, partial memories are used to structure the rest of the story).
• Recognition: Information is identified after experiencing it again (remembering a face seen before, answering multi-choice forms of questions). This type of retrieval is less affected by ageing than any other.
• Relearning: When revising information that has been learnt previously, and maybe forgotten, it is more easily remembered the second time around.
Unfortunately, retrieval systems don’t always work perfectly.
Have you ever felt as if you knew the answer to a question, but couldn’t quite recall it? This is known as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon and it can be extremely frustrating!
Funnily enough, if someone else offers you a different answer, word or object, which is just as appropriate, you will instantly reject it! Even though you can’t remember your answer, you know it isn’t the one that has been suggested. Actually, the intrusion of an alternative answer or word can make it even more difficult for you to recall the answer you wanted.
When John was struggling to remember the name of a particular company that he had visited the week before, his secretary helpfully suggested Briscoes. It was then very difficult for John to remember any company name except Briscoes!
Some hours later, when John was waxing his car at home, the name ‘Westland Transport’ popped into his mind when he had long ago abandoned any thought of recall.
Such memory lapses are irritating, or even troubling, but they are not signs of dementia. Research has shown that these experiences typically occur at least once a week for most young people, and two to four times a week for older adults. The good news is that this book brings you skills that will enable this frustrating forgetting to be a thing of the past.
People readily devote time to physical exercise, diet and skin care to minimise the chances of cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and facial ageing, but it seldom occurs to them that the brain, too, can be kept agile and healthy.
Our promise to you:
Invest just a few minutes each day to exercise the brain and you will minimise the impact of ageing.