Welcome guys to my blog, it’s been quite long we discussed something medical due to the nature of my work, so today I decided to do a comeback.
I am very sure we are all very intelligent set of people, I have learned not to judge a book by its cover until I take the pains to read the whole book. The same way we cannot pass same judgment to every animal because everyone is unique in his/her own ways.
everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.
Albert Einstein
As we all know, the definition of health still remains as..
the state of complete physical, mental and social well being of a human being and not just the mere absence of disease or infirmity.
Have you ever wondered why some people have a higher memory bank than others? Have you also wondered why some people are referred to as dull or mentally retarded? the truth is this! Nobody is a dullard, the dullard is just too lazy to expand the capacity of their brain. They say people perish for lack of knowledge, so today, as usual, I am going to tell you ways to improve your memory in order to be more productive to yourself and to the world at large.
What are you going to learn from my post?
You will (Re)discover 7 ways of improving your memory without medication at no cost if you patiently read to the end.
So let’s get started.
Do you know that humans don’t maximize the use of their brains?
The brain consists of about one billion neurons which form inter-connections with each other bringing about the complex activities produced by the brain.
There is a science myth that postulates that only about 10% of the brain has been used by people with super-intelligent quotients like the likes of Albert Einstein. Meaning that the average humans are averaging on about 4-8% of brain use. This simply means that those using less than 4% of their brain can actually train themselves to maximize their brain capacity
These are some simple ways to boost your memory.
Regular exercise
Do you know that when you exercise, your brain works at optimum capacity by stimulating nerve cells to regenerate promoting the neural health and improving cognition and learning? (This simply means when you exercise, your brain cells reproduce ) I am sure you never saw it this way. Exercising your brain is like going to the gym to build your muscles, the more you work out, the better your retentive capacity. The best type of brain exercise is an aerobic exercise which keeps the blood pumping to the brain at all times. Examples of aerobic exercises include dancing, swimming, playing tennis, cycling etc.
Eating the right diet
Let us take an example, imagine two different kids born at the same time.( Let me call them baby A and baby B).
Baby A is subjected to very healthy baby food e.g. fortified pap with soya bean, crayfish etc, cerelac etc after exclusive 6 months of breastfeeding, the later in life, baby A is exposed to a balanced diet including carbohydrates, proteins, fats and oil, mineral salts, vitamins in their right proportions, compare that with baby B, who wasn’t put on exclusive breastfeeding, later given just pap or maybe custard, and subjected to a carbohydrate-laden life from infancy to adulthood. Do you think they would have the same memory reserve? I leave you to be the judge.
Adequate night sleep
Do you know the recommended sleep time?
- Children 6-12 years need about 8-11 hours of recommended sleep.
- Teenagers 13-18 years need about 8-10 hours of recommended sleep.
- 18years-adults need about 7-9 hours of recommended sleep.
Surprisingly, the sleep pattern has changed drastically, these days adults don’t even sleep again because they are saddled with the responsibilities of trying to make ends meet. They work extra hard, some even doing double jobs. The children are not left out as they could spend the whole day playing games and watching TV series t the expense of sleep.
Sleeping actually enhances memory and helps humans have a higher performance in tasking activities. A single night of sleeping for about 7 hours can improve one's ability to think clearly in a job interview or an examination the next day.
Training your Brain with Brain Games
Another way to boost memory is to frequently task your brain with games that sharpen the brain. These games could be found on the internet eg brain matrix, brain trainer, clever mind, luminosity etc. Investing about 20-30 mins on these games will sharpen your memory and help improve cognition.
Use of Mnemonics aids
Memory tools could help remember events, information or even newly acquired knowledge. A mnemonic is a simple way to remember vital information. The best mnemonics are those that have humor and a positive imagery incorporated into it. There are different mnemonic aids eg acronyms, rhymes, songs visual aids etc.
Acronyms could help to link a task/event/ information to common daily activities in your everyday life. Who remembers “MR NIGER D” an acronym for characteristics of living things.(movement, respiration, nutrition, irritability, growth, excretion, reproduction, and death). Oops... I’m sure most of you reading this just refreshed your knowledge lol.
Visual aids could also help to add more meaning to a concept that looks difficult e.g. added photographs to a newspaper text, graphics, charts or even a short video could help out. Rhymes, songs or a joke could be of help in boosting memory.
Make out time for friends
Quality friendship is the ultimate brain booster. Man is a social animal and our everyday live centers around Interacting with each other. Do you know that everyday interaction with human’s maybe the best way of brain exercise? Because you would always learn something new from every encounter you have in life.
Boosting memory is a personal decision and sacrifice, the ability to relate new information to the things you already know is a gradual process, the more you try, the more you come up with better ideas!!! Sometimes we just have to discover a better way to structure and organize the information made available to us to aid better comprehension. Remember, Good friends could always come in handy when the chips are down.
However, there are some brain conditions that would require a doctors consult, the ability to identify these problems at an early stage and treat them accordingly is the first step to solving any brain-related problems.
I hope this information was useful to you.
Don’t get discouraged, its often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock
It's me your boy
@antigenx
Wonderful post you've got here, it would have been more useful to me last week during my exams, anyways i would start using them in preparation for next semester.
Am full fan of mnemonics, it works all the time.
@iamchijamz thanks for stopping by. I am sure this information can still come in handy someday
Wonderful piece. I shared it with my kid whom I call kerosene because she hardly sleeps. Good to see that exercising is one of the ways to improve our memory too
Wow.. Thanks for going though the write up. Yeah.. Aerobic Exercises do us more good than harm lol.
Those 7 points were all good, probably the better one is the one about Brain Games.
@dedicatedguy so good to have you on my blog. I had to check the comment again, cos I thought I opened @originalworks post lol.
Thanks for the feedback. I hope to be like you someday concerning the way you churn out superb write up that makes you cart away those sbds lol.
Thanks for stopping by sir.
@antigenx
Hey @antigenx,
Such a cool write-up . First image on point! 😎
Mnemonics and imagination helped me survive med school.
We use to call it coding.
😂😂
Overall great write-up bro!
Cheers!
Resteemed for more visibility!
@nairadaddy. Thanks for the compliment. I also wonder how i would have survived med school without mnemonics lol.
Thanks for dropping by bro.it means so much to me.
@antigenx
Good post! Thanks for this piece...its really helpful
I have the memory of a goldfish and I think I seriously need to improve point 1, but I'm working on that.
I'll let you know how it goes :)
Wow, wonderful memory you have got @creepyturtle. Waiting for the other feedback lol. Thanks for stopping by.
@antigenx
Great tips! I am sure lots of people would find them useful. I would say a balanced lifestyle helps as well.
@lymepoet oh yeah.. A balanced lifestyle is like a balanced diet ✌. Thanks for visiting my blog.
@antigenx
Thank you sir for this information. I never knew somethings about this before now. I will start trying them out especially the Brain Games. Gracias
@edwin23 brain games are really helpful. A trial would convince you
Good post...really helpful
@harddeynike nice feedback
Thanks, i really learn new things from your post.
@luciano7e glad you did. Welcome to my blog
I'm a 4th year medical student and i can say that mnemonics have been very helpful in remebering a lot of things i read. I also make use of a memory palace; an imaginary place where you can attach a piece of information to every content of the place for remembrance.
@thagenius96 thats our secret how we survived medical school. Hope you are doing well. More power to your biceps bro
@antigenx
What a fabulous and thorough article. Once upon a time, I took a mega memory class - it was pretty amazing. Much of what was taught is included in your article. These tools really do work!
Wow... Wish I could get the highlights of that class. Thanks for corroborating my article.
@antigenx
Good tips - the tips themselves are actually good - but two things. Saying the person with bad memory is lazy is hurtful and untrue as there are many things that can cause issues with memory. You do state this here: "However, there are some brain conditions that would require a doctors consult, the ability to identify these problems at an early stage and treat them accordingly is the first step to solving any brain-related problems" but if you knew this you probably shouldn't have said early on that it is due to laziness.
People with ADHD aren't lazy and they often have an average to high IQ but the problems ADHD causes include issues with executive functioning and working memory. These people don't have issues with working memory due to laziness. It is part of how their brain is different. Training and medication can sometimes help it to a degree but that's compensating for real issues - a lack of training is not the cause. People with ADHD often get called lazy but that isn't the case. There's also other issues that cause memory issues too and people with those issues shouldn't be called lazy either.
It's good to train your brain but poor memory does not equal laziness.
The other thing I wanted ot point out was simply to tell you that Luminosity has got in trouble before for their claims about how much their exercise benefit people being unsubstantiated and also that even normal non-brain specific games provide some benefit in this regard.
Wow, wonderful contributions from you @birchmark
Well I love your line of argument, but let me give some excerpts from the post I made.
My opening statement was.. Nobody is a dullard.
I'm sure you now understand what I meant when I made the statement. Attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is a psychiatric disorder that needs the input of a psychiatrist. The AHDH wasn't included in the analogy. Remember I also mentioned this.
There are so many other related brain problems which could cause mental impairment. The post I made is actually for people who have normal functional brain and do not make full use of it. I still aver that those who don't maximize their brain are just lazy. Now a days I'm also becoming lazy because I don't maximize my brains full capacity lol.
Thanks for the input about "luminosity", they were only used as an example. I would read more about them.
It was nice reading your comment on my blog. Looking forward to another beautiful one like this in my subsequent posts.
@antigenx
Yes, thank you for your response. I did know you mentioned that but you mentioned it down a lot further than when you said it was laziness whereas ideally it would have preceded that so people didn't get hurt (since in all honesty people do tend to say that stuff like ADHD isn't even real or it is laziness or bad parenting, all of which aren't true, but dealing with those misconceptions regularly may make someone have expectations of how people will view them which will make them expect the worst from your article when they see stuff like people saying "just too lazy to expand the capacity of their brain"). A dullard I don't think is a thing but you also seemed to be saying mental retardation doesn't exist but that's actually a medical term and does exist, but either way, that's not the big thing here.
The thing also is, I just don't see that it is helpful. Your advice on what you can do to boost your brain is helpful, but I don't feel that saying about any issues those who might follow your advice is due to laziness is helpful. For one thing, there are those people out there who have something like anxiety or adhd or depression (all of which affect memory) but they don't know they have those things and they are likely already beating themselves up for not having their shit together, so then they see the bit about laziness and they beat themselves up mentally for it, blaming themselves for their memory and the last bit about brain conditions doesn't stop their now flowing negative self talk because they don't know there is anything (disability or something like depression) there other than the fact (from their eyes) that they "can't get their shit together" or they "mess everything up" or they "never get stuff right". They might be dropping balls left right and centre in their life and not know why, and whenever they see something like a statement about something that applies to them meaning they are lazy etc they just internalise that too and beat themselves up even more than they already are over everything else. That's one point.
The other part is simply that I don't think the negative - "this is caused by laziness" - statement will make many people act. Some people are motivated by negativity, but based on my experience as an individual and working with many different children in OSHC and long day care, I strongly believe those people are in the minority. Most people will likely see that and be like "yeah I am a bit lazy" but they won't do anything. My experience from working with children was that punishment and negative reinforcement was the least effective behavioural management techniques. They were necessary in some circumstances but the opportunities for positive reinforcement and reward worked so much better. I feel if that bit about laziness was cut out and you purely focused on all the good that could come from boosting your memory that more people would read all the way through and they would be more likely to follow your advice. I don't think criticism makes most people (neurotypical or not) act as well as making them feel like they can make a positive change in their life does. Talking about the strategies is the positive change, but you started on a negative footing which I don't think is the best approach when suggesting that people undertake an activity that could make a positive change to their life.
Either way this wasn't a criticism of what you wrote like "omg that is so offensive" but was just more a suggestion that maybe it isn't the best approach to get people to follow your advice. I know I was off-put by the start of your post, but not enough to not read it, but some could be put off enough not to read it and get the valuable information in it. In a worse time, I probably wouldn't have read it when I saw it was blaming problems on laziness, which meant I wouldn't have seen your tips. I think people should feel like they can make this change and it will help them and they can use x and y strategy to make sure they do it on a regular basis, and I feel calling people lazy is counter-intuitive to a goal of making people feel like they can do it. Just a thought. I could be wrong, but I think it would work better without the negative bits.
Still trying to get to the basis of your argument , cos you just picked a line of my post and totally misunderstood it. And you are still laying further foundation based on your previous reply after I had thrown more light in case you were in the dark.
Well everyone has an opinion, that maybe yours. You can make a post about it on your blog to air your view. I only made a harmless post in which you chose to allow it make you feel bad.
The advice I proposed could be rejected if it doesn't go down well with you. Others have picked one or two stuffs from it. You can take my advice with a pinch of salt sir @birchmark if you think it would make your "food" get salted. You weren't coerced to taking my advice.
Lastly, you still chose to dwell on the pathology of memory impairment when that was not the aim of the post, well.. Everyone takes a side in life. If you are still unhappy with my statement, you know what to do in order not to further get upset.
Oops I almost forgot to let you know that You could also make a similar post and get rewarded in SBD and steem. Have a nice day.
@antigenx