What keeps your memory sharp in later life?
Getting good sleep, eating mindfully according to the MIND diet and engaging in targeted cognitive training have the strongest support for protecting your memory in later life. Some factors, such as the UV-skin link, are still too preliminary to act on.
Not everything in memory declines with age. Processing speed, working memory and attention show the steepest drops, but language, general knowledge and visual perception remain largely intact. The difficulty older adults have with remembering usually lies in retrieving information, not in storing it. What is more, older adults recall positive and personally meaningful things remarkably well. If you want to learn something new, make it relevant to yourself.
Sleep is one of the most concrete levers available. During deep sleep, memories are consolidated. As we age, that deep sleep gradually diminishes, and this is associated with poorer memory consolidation for certain procedural tasks, such as motor-sequence learning, while consolidation of declarative memory remains intact. Sleep disorders also increase the risk of dementia. Getting good sleep is therefore not a luxury, but an active memory tool.
Diet has a modest but measurable effect. People who follow the MIND diet, a combination of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet, focused on vegetables, berries, nuts, fish and little red meat, showed a lower risk of dementia and better overall cognition in several large population studies. However, the effect on decline over time is less clear: only a minority of long-running studies found a benefit. The evidence also comes primarily from observational research, and many of the studies showing a favourable association come from North America, so certainty about cause and effect is lacking.
Targeted cognitive training can also help. Adults aged 60 to 85 who trained with a specially designed multitask video game subsequently outperformed untrained twenty-year-olds on a dual-task test, and also improved in working memory and attention. That gain lasted six months. This is not evidence that every brain game works, but it does show that targeted, adaptive training can measurably improve the brain in later life.
Finally, research into so-called 'superagers', people in their eighties with the memory of a fifty-year-old, shows that memory decline at an advanced age is not inevitable. Their brains are structurally younger, with greater volume and fewer signs of Alzheimer's-related damage. Which factors provide that protection has not yet been established. Alongside this, there is preliminary evidence that chronic exposure to UV radiation may suppress the formation of new brain cells via stress hormones. This has been little studied in humans and should not be treated as settled fact at this point.
The claims are based on a combination of observational cohort studies, RCTs (video game training), sleep research and autopsy/imaging studies in superagers. The UV/skin-cognition mechanism is predominantly laboratory research with limited human evidence. No commercial interests were reported in the supplied studies.
How do you train your memory effectively?
Memory can be trained, but the smartest investment is regular exercise: that has the strongest and broadest support for cognition and memory. Targeted memory training helps, but less spectacularly than is often assumed.
Why does your memory work less well as you get older?
Memory loss with ageing is a normal biological process with multiple clearly demonstrated causes, but you can slow it down: regular exercise and mental activity have the strongest evidence base.
What can I do to keep my brain healthy as I age?
Combining more exercise with staying mentally active and eating a diet low in sugar and higher in omega-3 fatty acids currently gives you the best chance of a healthy brain. Spermidine and new insights into how the brain cleans itself are, for now, only interesting to follow.
Does a daily multivitamin help protect memory in older age?
A daily multivitamin appears to offer modest memory protection in older people who are at risk of nutritional deficiencies or have a history of cardiovascular disease, but for well-nourished older adults the benefit has not been convincingly demonstrated.
When should I be concerned about memory problems?
Not every instance of memory loss is worrying, but certain signs deserve prompt medical attention: sudden deterioration, the combination of memory and smell problems, or complaints that are already affecting daily life are reasons to call your general practitioner.
Does exercise keep my brain sharp?
Regular exercise demonstrably keeps your brain sharper, as long as serious cognitive decline has not yet set in. The best-supported approach: 45 to 60 minutes of moderate exertion per session, several times a week.