Five DIY Ways To Keep Your Brain Healthy and Memory Sharp After You Turn 40
You just have to keep your mind sharp, with good memory and continuous learning. If you feed your body right and take care of it, your body and mind will serve you well into your 70s, 80s, and even 90s.
Top Five Ways To Keep Your Memory Sharp
Taking care of yourself means putting good things in and keeping bad things out. We can’t avoid everything that might harm us, but we can take care of many the problems before they even start.
Antioxidants
Oxidated damage is one of the top causes of mental decline and one of the top areas researched in dementia and memory science. Keeping your mind sharp means giving it the foods, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that it needs to function well.
You get the majority of your antioxidants from fruits and vegetables, particularly brightly colored ones.
You can also choose some good supplements that can give you an extra boost. Vitamins A, C, E, and the minerals chromium, selenium, zinc, and magnesium are some of the top ones used in the body. You can add in concentrate from acai berry, cranberry, blueberry, green vegetables, beetroot, and so many more. You can go straight for specific ones such as GABA, lutein, and alpha-lipoic acid.
The variations can be endless. And although supplementation is easy, we do recommend sticking with your fruits and vegetables, particularly in the summertime. That way, you get everything you need naturally.
Exercise
Exercise strengthens your muscles and helps clear your body of waste and toxins. Keeping yourself strong and active means you get out and keep your body fit. This motion and constant activity allows your lymphatic system to keep moving. Your lymphatic system is what clears out wastes and toxins from your body and is an essential part of keeping your immune system healthy.
What we also found out is that there is a secondary system called the glymphatic system. This is a series of passive channels within the brain that help filter out toxins and wastes. It’s only active during periods of restful sleep. However, the more active a person is during the day influences how active the system is at night.
By exercising during the day, you get the glymphatic system to work better. Without all of the build-up waste, toxins, and oxidative free radicals, your brain can retain memory longer and function better during the day.
Just like trying to wade through the fog, if your memories have to wade through toxins and wastes, you’re thinking gets slow.
Intellectual Stimulation
You have to keep your brain active and continuously learning new things. If you’re not expanding your knowledge base, your mind has no reason to create new neural pathways.
But you don’t have to go to a class or take any kind of formal learning. Even watching videos on a new subject stimulates your brain.
Learning music or a foreign language is one of the best ways to keep your mind active and relevant.
The most significant detriment to our brain is social media and TV. Anything mindless is not engaging your brain and helping you preserve your memories. In this case, shutting your brain off really is shutting your brain off.
Healthy Probiotics
Keeping your gut healthy, supporting the probiotics in your gut is like supporting a second brain. More research is coming out every day showing that the connection between our gut and our brain is much more than a connection, they’re almost one unit.
Healthy probiotics can help reduce depression, fatigue, and some research even shows it can reduce dementia and Alzheimer’s disease symptoms.
Good healthy probiotics are supported by eating fermented foods and lots of fruits and vegetables. The opposite is true because sugars feed the harmful bacteria and yeast can make you feel foggy and lethargic.
A diet that’s rich in antioxidants also supports good gut health.
Supplement
We talked a bit about some of the supplements above, but there’s a couple that really stand out.
Any supplement that supports acetylcholine production in the brain will help your memory function well. This neurotransmitter helps facilitate our memory and recall function. The healthier our levels of acetylcholine, the better we remember.
- Alpha-GPC (L-alpha-glycerylphosphorylcholine)
- Citicoline (CDP-choline)
- Choline bitartrate
- Ginkgo biloba
- Bacopa monnieri
- Huperzine A
Nitric oxide is another tiny chemical that floats around our system that helps encourage our blood vessels to dilate. That means more blood, oxygen, and nutrients can get to our brain better. Plus, nitric oxide helps fight free radical damage in the brain. You get that through choosing healthy protein sources, whole cuts of quality meat.
- L-arginine
- L-citrulline
Choose a good quality B complex. We need lots of folate, biotin, choline, and other B vitamins for a healthy mind. What we don’t need is excess B12. Be sure to choose your supplement with at least a full daily dose of B vitamins, without going excessive.