Many suffer from forgetting names, places, and events, and some forgetfulness may begin at the age of 20, until the mind deteriorates at the age of 40, and it loses its skills in remembering, thinking, and planning, or what is known as “dementia.”
Stanford Medical Center defines "dementia" as damage or changes in the brain, the chances of which increase with age, and the majority of its victims are still over 65 years old.
This does not mean that everyone is at risk of dementia, or that it only targets the elderly, but the reasons are absent in many cases, so the aging centers advise you to follow some easy changes to improve your brain health.
Avoid watching TV
Researchers at University College London warned against watching TV for more than 3 hours a day, and linked this to memory loss. The brain's concentration in front of the TV screen decreases, and it does not participate in the scene, despite many bright, fast-moving images that may put the mind in a state of heightened alertness, but less focus.
And the researchers did not know the long-term consequences of that cognitive decline that might affect TV addicts, until the year 2022 came as a surprise to everyone.
In August 2022, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study by the American Institutes of Health and the University of Southern California, which reported an increased risk of dementia when spending a lot of time on the couch, watching TV, or other negative behaviors.
The researchers did not attack lying on the couch per se, but called for activities during periods of prolonged sitting, such as reading, searching on the Internet, or making a phone call to a friend.
The researchers explained the result by a decrease in muscle activity and blood flow during prolonged sitting, which makes intellectual stimulation a necessity. The results also showed that high physical activity did not positively affect the mental health of the individual, as long as he spends his free time in front of the TV.
Memory boost in two weeks.
The University of California established a research center with the goal of early detection and prevention of age-related diseases, including memory loss and cognitive decline.
The team of researchers at the center showed an ability to enhance the volunteers' memory, ease of learning and information retrieval, after only two weeks of mental and physical exercises, adherence to a healthy diet, and stress reduction.
Gary Small, director of the center and professor of mental health for the elderly at the University of California, published examples of mental exercises in the newspaper "The Guardian", and how to apply them, if you dream of a strong brain, and they included:
Exercise your basic memory by writing 8 unrelated words, such as “pen, shop, phone, shoe, ad, ball, guitar, nose.” Set the timer for 1 minute to read and memorize the words, then set it for another 10 minutes doing something else, and going back to writing down as many words as you can remember. Look at the words for a minute again and turn them into pictures in your imagination, and turn the pictures into a story in which the words all have a meaning, like a scene of a shoe store hanging an ad of a football player playing the guitar. Write the words again and you will see how much your memory has improved on the first try.
If you complain of forgetting names and faces, you need to activate the left hemisphere of the brain, through a simple exercise, such as "Create the largest number of words using those letters (b, n, r, a, t)". You can progress from beginner to advanced level by solving the crossword game.
But if you want to enhance your visual and spatial memory, and improve the skills of the right hemisphere, you can arrange a jigsaw puzzle, and it requires you to install small pieces to get a large picture, and it is easy to buy or download applications with the same name on your phone.
 Playing Sudoku once a day helps increase attention and concentration (Pixels)
Love numbers
It's time to turn over a new page with mathematics, to regain your lost attention. Researchers at the University of Exeter, Britain, conducted a study on a large sample of adults via the Internet, numbering 19 thousand and 78 volunteers, who did not suffer from any diseases.
The study lasted for 10 years, and ended in 2019, and tested the relationship between digital puzzles and the basic cognitive functions of the brain, such as focus, thinking, information processing and remembering, in which volunteers reported daily about their solution to digital puzzles.
The results showed major and high effects of the number of times solving digital puzzles on all cognitive functions of the brain, and those who played "Sudoku" once a day showed an ability to pay attention and focus, 10 times more than those who solved it from time to time.
This was not the first study to delve into the benefits of "Sudoku", so the British did not forget to invite the BBC and the Alzheimer's Society, in 2014, for all adults over 18 years of age, from around the world, to volunteer to solve digital puzzles online, and fill out a questionnaire about their lifestyle. .
More than 65,000 adults, between the ages of 18 and 90, volunteered, and despite the high number of young people who participated and were committed to filling out the daily questionnaire, younger age was not associated with better memory performance. Rather, solving Sudoku puzzles daily was associated with improved mental
skills, regardless of category. age