Royane Real
Keep Your Mind Sharp As You Age
Are you looking for a way to keep your mind sharp as you age? We all want to live a long time, but we also want to avoid as much as possible the problems of aging. One of the problems associated with aging that we want to avoid the most is the possibility that as we grow older, our mind will stop working.
We worry that we will lose our mind's ability to think and to remember.
If you have ever had to spend much time visiting someone in a nursing home, you have probably thought to yourself how sad it is that so many residents have lost much of their alertness and their sense of self. This seems to happen no matter how excellent the nursing home facility may be, and no matter how much the staff tries to interact with their residents. Is there anything you can that can keep your mind sharp as you get older?
My mother has recently gone into a nursing home near where I live, so I have a chance to see a lot of elderly people every day. Although my mother is fortunate that her brain is still working so well, she finds it frustrating that among the other residents there is almost no one she can talk with. Most of the other residents have dwindled mentally so much that that they can barely say much beyond “hello” and “good bye”.
Yet, in my mother’s nursing home there is one resident who is an astonishing exception. When I first met this lady, she was 107. A few months ago, she did something that almost no human being gets to do. She celebrated her 108th birthday!
This lady has a lot of trouble walking and she can’t hear very well, but even at the age of 108, her brain is amazingly sharp. She still makes funny jokes about herself everyday, and she notices which of the staff are happy and which are not.
This is especially astounding when you consider that she is mentally outperforming other residents in the same nursing home who are thirty years younger than she is!
What can possibly account for the fact that one person can survive to the age of 108 with her brain and her sense of humor intact, while other people seem to mentally fade away by the seventh decade? I don't know very much about how she lived her life, so I cannot really answer this question.
Still, it is very encouraging to actually see someone who has lived to a very advanced age with her mind intact.
Many scientists are currently trying to tackle the question of why some of us are able to get to very advanced years with our minds working well, while others start to lose a lot of their brain function quite early. What accounts for the fact that some of us can age successfully while others quickly decline?
There are many theories being investigated to account for why our brains age.
One of the theories that scientists have come up with suggests that free radical damage and inflammation may be behind a lot of the cellular destruction in the brain that causes mental deterioration.
What are free radicals? Free radicals are molecules produced as a result of chemical interactions. Free radicals are created by living.
We can’t really stop free radical damage. We create free radicals in our bodies even when we breathe.
We get a lot more free radical damage when we are exposed to pollutions and toxins. To fight free radical damage on the molecular level we need to have a good supply of compounds called antioxidants.
Where can we find antioxidants? Brightly colored fruits, berries and vegetables are excellent sources of many of the antioxidants we need. Unfortunately, many people today don't include vegetables and fruits in their diets. This means that their body is much less able to fight free radical damage when it occurs.
Our brains are especially vulnerable to damage by free radicals.
Our body tries to repair the free radical damage to our cells as quickly as it occurs, but it can’t always keep up.
To fight free radical damage, we need to take in a good supply of antioxidants in our diets. Unfortunately, many people today don't food supply. Many fruits and vegetables have been found to be fantastic sources of the antioxidant compounds that fight free radical damage.
Although eating brightly colored fruits and vegetables to increase our antioxidant supply is only a small part of the fight against the aging process,, it is an important piece of the puzzle.
The above article was written by Royane Real. If you want to learn more ways to get more productivity out of your brain, get my book: "How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative " at http://www.lulu.com/real )
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