Improve Your Memory

To many peopleadvancing age means losing your hair,your waistline and your memory.But is itan inescapable fact that the older you get,the less you remember? Well,as

time goes by,we tendto blame age for problems that are not necessarily age-related.

When a teenagercan't find her keys,she thinks it's because she's distracted or disorganized,but a 70-year-old blames her memory. In fact,the 70-year-old may have been

misplacing thingsfor decades一like we all dofrom time to time.

In healthypeople,memory doesn't deteriorate as quickly as many of us think. According topsychologists,as we age,our memory mechanism isn't broken,it's justdifferent.The

brain's processingtime slows down over the years,though no one knows exactly why.Recent researchsuggests that nerve cells lose efficiency and that there's less activity in

the part of thebrain that decides whether to store information or not.But it's not clear thatless activity is worse.A beginning athlete is winded. more easily than atrained

athlete.In the sameway,as the brain gets more skilled at a task,it spends less energy on it.

There are steps youcan take to improve your memory,though you have to work to keep your brain inshape.It's like having a good body. You can't go to the gym once a year

and expect to stayin top form.

Some memoryenhancement experts suggest using the AM principle.Pay attention to what youwant to remember. Then give some meaning to it. We remember things when

we focus on them,whether we intend to or not. That helps explain why jingles stick in ourminds.They are played on loud,flashy TV commercials.They also use rhyme and

music to help usremember better.

Basic organizationhelps us remember the boring stuff. For example,rather than trying to recall arandom list of groceries,we can divide them into categories,such as

dairy,meat andproduce. For important things like keys and money,we can set upa"forget-me-not"spot where we always keep them.

We can also eat toaid our memory power. Whole grains,fruits and vegetables are excellent sourcesof glucose,the brain's preferred fuel. Another low-tech way to improve

memory is to getadequate rest. Sleep may allow our brain time to encode memories.

Interest infriends,family and hobbies does wonders for our memory.A sense of passion orpurpose helps us remember. Memory requires us to pay attention to our

lives,allowing us todiscover in them everything worth remembering.

It is not alwaystrue that the older you get,the less you remember.

A.Right

B.Wrong

C.Not mentioned