When we do the following personal questions and we don’t know how to answer them appropriately is because the memory starts to fail. These are very common questions: Where is my diary? Did I close the key of the gas? Whom did I have to call? These daily oblivions seem inevitable and many people resign themselves to suffer them. But recent studies demonstrate that memory lost doesn’t form a part of the normal ageing. One persona can keep the memory in good state during all life. It does, it can be trained the mind to keep it fit.

A) COGNITIVE TRAINING:
Other studies demonstrate that exercising and stimulation cognitive can delay the appearance of the memory disorders and intellectual functions in healthy people. And today there are programs of cognitive training, because through individual exercises or grouped workshops, which allow keeping the mind fit.
Maria Del Carmen, 55 years, works in an international organism and a year ago she assisted to a training workshop of the memory. “I did it to stimulate areas of thought that I don’t use habitually” – she tells. The workshops served me to discover other tools, like the parallel thought, which it helps me to face the problems from different approaches and to find them several solutions.”
“I started to lose the keys, the glasses and to forget I had to go somewhere – says Teresa, 66 years, housewife-. This started worrying me and I decided to do a memory evaluation. The test helps me, but equally I start to participate in a program of cognitive training, with games, readings, and talent tests that are given me excellent results. I no longer lose the things and I organize better,” she says.

B)  ADVICES TO EXERCISE THE COGNITIVE SKILLS:
To keep mental skills (memory, attention, and planning) fit is an objective that can be achieved respecting the following rules:

1. From 50 years, you have to control periodically your mental skills doing a systematic evaluation.
2. To take a healthy life style, avoiding alcohol, and tobacco.
3. To do physical exercise periodically, 20 minutes daily minimum.
4. To try to avoid situations of emotional stress and to enjoy of recreational activities.
5. To keep a wide range of interests and hobbies.
6. To try to keep a socially active life without alcohol.
7. To exchange moments and opinions with people of minor age.
8. To realize exercises periodically to keep your mind active.
9. To take seat baths in cold water (not for asthmatic) and very hot, alternately.
10. To take feet baths with hot water with mustard.

 

C)  MENTAL EXERCISES:

1. You have to watch a movie and explain the plot to who hasn’t seen it.
2. You have to do sums mentally in the supermarket and then compare them with the result to pay.
3. You have to clean your teeth with the hand not dominant.
4. When you answer the telephone, try to recognize whose calling before he’s identified. Then to try to memorize it. At the end of the day, you write the name of all the people who call.
5. When you enter in a room full of people, try to stimulate quickly how many people there are at your right and how many are at your left.
6. When you eat dinner in a restaurant or in the house of a friend, try to identify the ingredients used in the dish you are eating. To focus in the subtle flavors. Then to verify your perceptions with the waiter or with your friend.
7. You have to do lists.
8. You have to follow a routine.
9. You have to do associations (connect things in your mind) such as using outstanding sites that help you to find places.
10. You have to carry a detail calendar.
11. You have to put the important articles, such as your keys, always in the same place.
12. You have to repeat the names each time you met new people.
13. You have to do things that keep your mind and your body busy.
14. You have to repeat the alphabet in your mind to help you to think in words that you are having difficulty to remember. You must listen the first letter of a word can help you to refresh your memory.

D)  Tricks that avoid the “gaps”:
Do the little oblivions form a part of your daily life? Here there is a group of tricks that can be useful to you:

• The work memory is of short term and it only serves to keep 6 or 7 data. A trick to extend it is to split up the information. To remember a number of 9 digits, you have to divide it in groups of 3.
• You have to know what type of memory is more developed in you. If it’s the visual, support yourself in images. If it’s the auditory, you have to repeat for yourself what you want to remember.
• You have to use several vias to recover the information. When you forget a word, turn to a synonym. The crosswords and games of letters help to speed up the mind.
• You have to do one thing once. This helps to focus the attention.
• You have to be organized. You must have a single place for the keys, one for the glasses, and another for the cellular. You must decide if you are going to take the diary or if you are going to leave it in home, this way you don’t have to remember if you took it or not.