How do we keep our brain healthy? Healthy so that it’s bright and agile when we’re young and so it continues to serve us well in to our old age?
You can pick something up off the floor because you unconsciously you remember how to co-ordinate your limbs; when you phone a friend you remember their phone number, name and the history of experiences that are your relationship.
Memory is the basis of conscious life and dulling it or even losing it to dementia or Alzheimer’s in old age is crippling
Majid Fotuhi M.D. Ph.D. book does two things – it educates you about what actually causes memory loss and more serious issues like dementia and, the bit that everyone should read, ten steps to keep your brain healthy.
The biggest risk factor for memory issues is age... that is the older we get the higher our risk. There is however a big difference between age related memory impairment which is a normal part of aging, and of something more serious. So, Majid spends the first third of the book explaining the differences and the specific medical issues that can lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s (the latter is one possible cause dementia).
Now, Majid is not just a keen hobbyist with this memory cure thing. Straight from his biography:
Majid Fotuhi obtained his MD from Harvard Medical School and his PhD in neurosciences at Johns Hopkins. He completed his residency training in neurology at Hopkins and then joined Sinai hospital's neurology team in 2003. He currently heads the Center for Memory and Brain Health at LifeBridge Health Brain & Spine Institute. He is also an assistant professor of neurology at Hopkins and teaches at the Harvard-MIT program in Boston.
He has spent his professional career studying the brain and working with patients with memory problems and disease. So the ten recommendations for a healthy brain that he includes in the book are really worth noting.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the things we would do ‘stay healthy’ and care for our heart are also good for your brain. Things like a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, a little wine, exercise, and if you have them dealing with issues like high blood pressure, cholesterol and one I hadn’t heard of high homocysteine, are key.
A little more surprising was the suggestion to get regular eye & hearing checks and keep the prescriptions up to date. The theory is straight forward, you can only remember the things that your senses, sense! If you can’t see or hear well, you won’t remember the things you don’t see or hear!
My favourite was that the old adage for your physical body- ‘use it or lose it’, works for your brain too. Exercise your memory through socialising, doing puzzles and quizzes and generally making an effort to use your head! (I’m going straight back to my Pocket PC brain training program.)
In the closing part of the book Majid uses his knowledge of the brain to suggest a few techniques for improving your memory.
I’m going to recommend this book to everyone I care about.
Format: Audio book and book
Author : Majid Fotuhi M.D. Ph.D.
-Mark