Memory is an important skill in any person who always needs to be respected and upheld. With a good memory, you are always able to remember dates, names, currency figures, and many other fine details. However, bad memory is embarrassing and can lead to situations like low self-esteem. We always look for ways in which we can increase our memory so that you can avoid such embarrassing situations. On that note, let us look at these tricks that can improve memory.
1. Eat Right and Stay Healthy
Our modern lifestyle has adverse effects on the power of our memories. From eating habits to heavy stress and avoiding proper comfort - they all play a role in increasing memory. This is the reason why it is most important to live a healthy life with quality food.
It is on record that eating foods and supplements that contain flavonoids, such as berries, grapes, tea leaves, hops, cocoa beans and vitamin D increase the neurons in the brain, in the sense that they create fresh memories. Additionally, these foods are usually associated with enzymes and proteins which are important for memory, and more importantly, in the formation of new neurons and help in the vital flow of oxygen to the brain. Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of vitamin D help in maintaining healthy brain function.
If you are interested in developing your memory, then you should keep away from junk food and alcohol. Also, like the body, the brain also needs sound rest to work at its maximum potential. As far as food is concerned, you need to include fruits and green vegetables in your daily diet, which supply essential antioxidants to protect brain cells from being damaged.
2. Avoid Sugar
Sweet dishes are one of the most common weakness for many people and if you are one of them, then you may be sad to know that consuming sophisticated sugar over the recommended range can be detrimental to your memory. Let's learn how sugar can affect memory.
It is important to indicate that there is a significant amount of data that excessive intake of refined sugar has harmful effects on the brain and memory. Many people consume twice the amount of calories recommended by medical experts in one day. Refined sugar causes difficulties in reducing the work of new memories, depression, and brain. The refined sugar reduces the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is a very important element in learning and creating new memories.
3. Drink caffeine
Caffeine has a positive effect on the storage of other substances. However, to avoid habitual consumption it should be done carefully. After consuming coffee, many cognitive functions are done and drinking caffeine, in the final analysis, increases human memory.
When it comes to improving memory, the role of Green Tea is very positive. It contains polyphenols, which is a powerful antioxidant that prevents free radicals from harming the brain cells. In addition, regular consumption of green tea is the best guide for improving memory and mental alertness and it can slow down the aging process of the brain.
4. Exercise Your Mind
Proper brain exercises can help in keeping your brain active through age. Like our body muscles, our brain also needs food and exercise. There are some exercises that help in developing brain power and memory power. You can consider them because these are the best memory tricks. Apart from this, if you practice these exercises for a long time, then it is going to bring you some miraculous results.
There are many ways that you can exercise to improve your brain. Some of these include reading as much as you can, increasing your vocabulary, learning new languages, writing something, solving a problem and turning off the television. With these activities, you can exercise your brain and more importantly, expand your memory.
6. No multitasking
It's great to have the title of "multitasking" but, would you like to know what effect it has on your brain? When we are discussing how to improve the memory of the brain, it can be frustrating to know that multitasking is not helpful in enhancing your brain's memory.
In many instances, multitasking has been known to be counterproductive. An average and fully functioning mind like to transfer from work to work rather than multitasking. Therefore, the entire nature of multitasking does not improve the nature of your memory.
Various studies have already suggested that this not only causes the lack of concentration: it can slow down the process and cause errors! If you are trying to fulfill 3-4 tasks at a certain time, you pay a lot of attention to personal actions because it will take very little time to complete all tasks together. This is why it is one of the best suggestions to improve memory.
7. Sleep well
After a day's work, our body requires good sleep at night and it is also important to stabilize the brain's function. The brain performs thousands of activities throughout the day and good sleep for 6-8 hours stabilizes the brain and keeps it in the best working position in the morning. On the contrary, not getting proper sleep at night will make you dull all day and you will not be able to focus on anything.
A good amount of quality sleep helps in improving the brain. When you are asleep, the brain functions can be performed with precision and speed and with less worry and pressure. This is basically a recipe to increase your memory capacity.
A study conducted among children shows that when children sleep in between learning lessons and in real life, they are likely to perform better. It helps in the process of brain development (called neuroplasticity) that controls the brain's ability to control learning and memory behavior. So, sleep is well associated with improving the memory of the brain.
8. Reduce stress and laugh more
Stress and depression can really take a toll on the ability to remember things. However, by engaging yourself in laughter, you reduce your stress level and improve your memory's abilities. In short, laughter brings down the cortisol stress hormone.
Occasionally, we put so much stress on ourselves without feeling the bad effect on our health and the brain. It puts more pressure on the heart and when it comes to the brain, you experience a decrease in its memory power. Laughter is actually a great medicine to get rid of this situation! With the help of emotional reactions, only some parts of the brain are active but with laughter, all areas of the brain are engaged. This is the reason that it is helpful to spend time with fun people and laugh every day because it is one of the proven tricks to increase your memory.
9. Chewing gum
Chewing gum helps to remember more. Those who chew gum are known to score better than those who do not as far as memorizing things is concerned. It is difficult to explain the scientific reasons behind it, but over time, it has shown some effective results for those who are interested in knowing "How can I improve my memory?"
10. Learn a new skill
They say that keeping your mind busy in learning new things has a good effect on improving your memory. This is also one of the best memory improvement tricks which everyone should implement. The question here is - does this process involve age? It is seen that keeping your brain engaged in purposeful and meaningful activities improves the neurological system and it promotes your memory. Science has already proved that there is no relevance with age.
It is always true that if you want to increase your memory, then you should work on it. Learning a new skill that you were initially unfamiliar with has a significant impact on improving your brain power. Those who always put their mind into learning new things, always display a better memory function. As a person grows old, trying new things ensures a healthy mind.
11. Try Mememonic Devices
In our everyday life, we come up with many things and we can not really keep them all in our memory. Maybe, we do not want to store them all in memory. But, what about names, events, and dates that you want to keep in your memory but face challenges? You can try Mnemonic devices as one of the best moves to boost your memory.
Mememonic devices are basically memory techniques that help to better encode the brain and importantly, miss some fine but important details. Here are a couple of mnemonic examples
ROY G. BIV = colors of the spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.)
Pvt. Tim Hall = Essential amino acids (Phenylanine, Valine, Threonine, Tryptophan, Isolucine, Histidine, Arginine, Leucine, Lysine.
These are very important in helping many of us remember. Sometimes, it is often difficult to memorize certain things, without a mnemonic device. Regarding the new studies, these techniques make great improvements in your memory.
There are many other tools like that can be applied for this purpose, but the best thing you can do is to make your own techniques to improve the memory. This works excellent!
12. Union
Every information we think is always linked in one way or another to something else. Our recollection basically works by association. For better memory, we always try to create a union between pieces of information. When information of two bits is related to each other, then we have more potential to be creative in connecting both, and as a result, enhance our memories.
13. Poetry/Rhymes
It may look like the pattern of an old school, but sometimes, creating a rhyme really helps keep things in mind. Our brain is not configured to remember many things at the same time, but in a rhythmic structure, it is helpful to form those details and keep them in mind and apply it at the right time. This is the best guide for improving memory. After practicing it for a particular time, it becomes very exciting to remember things as rhymes.
It is always easy to forget the list of 5 items in a shopping list than to forget the lyrics that you have not heard for ages. Basically, our brains easily remember things from rhyme because they are connected to each other. Therefore, a person who knows a poem can easily remember it as compared to remembering random words. This is an excellent way in which you can increase your memory because you can make things exciting and memorable.
14. Flash Card
Flashcards are usually used in schools and institutions to help in learning at school. With flashcards, you are able to remember things like vocabulary and questions about a topic. Flashcards require you to take the time so that you can make the study more useful and more effective. Through the use of flashcards, you can greatly increase your memory.
15. Organize Your Life
It is a fascinating fact to know that the first thing you do when you wake up and the last thing you do before going to bed impacts our memory. The more systematic your life will be, the better your memory. Your regular activities, eating habits, and even your sleep habits - all have a significant effect on memory.
When your life is organized, it basically means that you can distinguish one item from another. An organized life means that the brain works on a certain process. It becomes very important when it comes to remembering a few things. Therefore, organized life is a good recipe for an excellent memory.
In addition, when you work in an organized way, the brain can work in an organized manner and the direct linkage improves your memory.
Conclusion
The above-discussed 15 techniques to improve memory are undoubtedly the best ways to increase your memory. All you need to do is identify the methods that you like best, include them in your life and you will be able to boost your brain's ability to remember.