7 Tips to Improve Your Memory

How often have you found yourself in this situation: you’ve needed to remember something really important, so important that you are certain you will remember it and don’t need to write it down, only to later realise that you can’t for the life of you remember what it was…
According to popular source of health advice, Mercola, you could have less of that, with more of this:
1. Eat right
The foods you eat (and don’t eat) have a crucial effect on your memory. Of the foods believed to provide the best brain power, popular favourites include: turmeric-based curries, celery, broccoli and cauliflower, walnuts, crab, garbanzo beans/chickpeas, red meat, blueberries, and healthy fats including organic butter, olives, salmon, avocado and nuts.
2. Exercise
Exercise stimulates the brain’s nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage. The recommended exercise for improved memory is high-intensity interval exercise, strength training, stretching and core work alongside intermittent movement.
3. Stop multi-tasking
Research shows you need roughly eight seconds to commit a piece of information to your memory, so if you’re talking on your phone and carrying groceries when you put down your car keys, you’re unlikely to remember where you left them.
4. Get a good night’s sleep
Perhaps stating the obvious here, but nonetheless – a Harvard study found that people are 33 percent more likely to infer connections among distantly related ideas after sleeping. Certain forms of long-term potentiation, a neural process associated with the laying down of learning and memory, can be elicited in sleep, suggesting synaptic connections are strengthened while you slumber.
5.Play brain games 
If you don’t sufficiently challenge your brain with new, surprising information, it eventually begins to deteriorate and by providing your brain with appropriate stimulus, you can counteract this degeneration. Ideally you’d dedicate at least 20 minutes a day to brain games, but spend no more than five to seven minutes on a specific task.
6. Master a new skill
Engaging in “purposeful and meaningful activities” stimulates your neurological system, counters the effects of stress-related diseases, reduces the risk of dementia and enhances health and wellbeing. The skill can be anything from craft activates to learning a new language.
7. Try mnemonic devices
Mnemonic devices are memory tools to help you remember words, information or concepts. They help you to organize information into an easier-to-remember format, for example, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Did you know? 
It’s not your fault that you forget what you’re doing when you enter a room! Well, not really. Blame it on genetics.
According to Scientific American, the “doorway effect” happens to every single one of us.
A team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame established that walking through a doorway makes your brain ‘purge’ the information it absorbed in the previous room, ergo making room for relevant information from a new setting to be absorbed.
Obviously we can’t keep everything ready to hand, and Radvansky and colleagues found that, “some forms of memory seem to be optimised to keep information ready-to-hand until its shelf life expires, and then purge that information in favour of new stuff.”
 
By Lydia Truesdale