 "Stay brain fit")
The bank account number. The net banking password. The personal identification, or PIN, number to access the ATM. The personal email user name and password. The office email user name and password. The user name to recharge the cable subscription. The password to pay the property tax. Or, the phone bill. Or, the electricity bill. The date the car insurance expires. The date the life insurance premium is due.
The lives we lead today are governed by a maze of numbers, codes and passwords, many of which only we know or have access to. Now, imagine one day the memory begins to fail. The numbers begin to slip out. And the passwords become elusive. It's a terrifying thought.
With so much riding on memory, the fear of losing it is very real. "A lot of people today, even younger ones, complain that they have memory loss," says P P Ashok, head of neurology at P D Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Mumbai. While he says this might not necessarily mean that more people are now suffering from memory loss, "there is a possibility that a lot of young people today feel they need more and better memory to deal with the fast lives they lead."
Like the body, the brain needs a workout to stay fit. Yet, the reality is that we don't use our brains the way we did, say, 20 or 30 years ago. Back then, we memorised telephone numbers because there was no mobile contact list. Or, we used our heads for calculation because calculators weren't readily accessible all the time.
So, there is a greater risk of the brain aging faster. And with that increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease or dementia. The World Alzheimer Report 2015 found that almost 47 million people around the world suffer from dementia. Of them, 4.1 million are in India. The report also found that by 2050, Asia will be home to nearly half of the world's population suffering from dementia.
It is not known what causes Alzheimer's, says Ashok. In some patients it can be traced to a genetic link, but not in all. "There is, however, some evidence to suggest that people who do not use the brain have a higher chance of getting it," adds Sameer Malhotra, director of the mental health and behavioural sciences department at Max Hospital in Delhi.
A majority of people with Alzheimer's are more than 65 years of age. "It then keeps on increasing exponentially and from the age of 80 or 85, there are the highest incidents of dementia," says Ashok.
We usually talk of Alzheimer's as an end stage disease. But there is no one point from where Alzheimer's or dementia begins. The fall or journey towards the mental condition is gradual and it can have varying scales.
So the sooner we start stimulating the brain, the better it is.
Keep it alive make it sharp
Like standing on one leg, as in yoga, or Tai Chi. These help improve balance and stimulate certain neurons in the brain that help keep the memory fit.
Learn something new
"You have a Point A to Point B in the nerve track in the brain," says Ashok. "If that gets clogged due to some degenerative reason, the information must know how to bypass the clogged route and travel through another channel. These new channels open only if you encourage new learning." Learn a new language, a musical instrument or how to cook new dishes. Or, try to give people who think they are at the risk of losing their memory some sort of visual images. Ask them to capture all the details in that visual image and keep looking for more and more details. "Keep your neurons fired all the time," says Ashok.
Take new routes
"Form a mental map of the new route you have taken," says Malhotra. And an hour later, recreate that map in your head.
Turn to mental gyms
Solve crossword puzzles or Sudoku. Memorise what acronyms (like Vibyor) stand for. Bridge and card games, too, stimulate the mind, says Malhotra who also recommends "alphabet encircling". In any given paragraph, filter out one alphabet over others and keep encircling it. Or, try "serial subtraction" like, say, subtracting 7 from 100 to get 93 and then 7 from 93 to get 86 and so on. "Reserve skip counting" - for example 200, 197, 194, 191 and so on - is another brain toning exercise.
Be socially active
Engage yourself. Join a club or go on a camp. Know more people; that will give you new ideas. Meet people from other professions and engage them. "What happens is if you are a doctor, you only meet doctors and talk only medicine," says Ashok. And the mind doesn't open up to new thoughts.
Exercise
Regular exercise, both cardiovascular and weight training, seems to have some beneficial effects in clearing the substances that contribute to the amyloid deposit in the brain, says Ashok. Amyloid deposits injure the brain cells.
Prevent falls or injuries to avoid head trauma
This is the common thing that predisposes people to Alzheimer's, dementia or memory loss. "Legendary boxer Muhammad Ali is a standing example of somebody who suffered repeated head injuries - small punches to the head - leading to dementia," says Ashok.
Dietary recommendations
Food that is strong on vegetables, beans, whole grain or fish, particularly tuna fish, blueberries and ones that have omega acid are "brain food". They act as antioxidants for the brain. "There is, however, no 1:1 ratio for a sharp memory," says Ashok. You will find people doing all this and still getting dementia, he adds, but there is evidence to suggest that these reduce the chances of memory loss. "In any case, my standard recommendation to people who even remotely suspect that they might be losing their memory is to do all of this. Even otherwise, for a healthy life, this is what I would recommend."
The good thing is that most of this overlaps with the good things you need to do for the heart, blood pressure or blood sugar. And so, all that works for the brain also works for comprehensive good living.
