THE BRAIN: USE IT OR LOSE IT

Energy may be in increasingly short supply as we get older. This is entirely natural, but to keep your brain at its peak it is important to try to maintain your skills and interests and even to develop new ones. All the skills you have acquired remain stored in the brain, but retrieving them becomes increasingly difficult the longer they are left unused. As you learn a skill for the first time, circuits are established in the brain and the ability to perform it is maintained and enhanced with use.

Maintaining skills and interests takes a little time, but through regular practice you can avoid losing them altogether.

Take some risks in your life and do not be afraid to try new ventures.

Maintaing A Sharp Mind

• Challenge yourself: don't just accept other people's opinion if you believe they are misconceived or illogical. Challenge them by issuing your own opinion.
• Add and subtract mentally, checking with a calculator if you must. Play card games, do crosswords and play other word games.
• Plan one project at a time: mature minds work better this way.
• Avoid negative criticism, both of yourself and of others. Avoid developing a habitually negative attitude by cultivating ways of encouraging both yourself and other people to look positively at situations and events.
• Avoid striving for impossibly high standards. Try to enjoy what you are doing. Remember, you can derive pleasure from playing a game even if you don't win.
• Seek out new experiences. Make plans to visit new places and make the most of your visit by reading about them in advancve. Keep a diary or write an account of your visit later when you get home: re-reading it will refresh your memories.
• Long-term friendships can be a great boon at 50+, but it is also very important to make new friends.
• Take some risks. You may fail from time to time, but you will gain from the experience.

Long-term friendships can be great, but it is a mistake not to make new friends, too.

Learning New Things
At 50+ reaction time, memory, learning ability, problem solving and decision making may slow down. However, this simply reflects the fact that, if your brain is healthy, it processes, stores and uses informatiuon in different ways than it previously did, and this may alter the way you do things. It is known that large numbers of brain cells are lost during a lifetime, but these have been likened to the spare marble that is discarded during the carving of a statue. In the brain, the complex connections between the cells are more important than the existence of large numbers of cells, and these connections thrive on frequent stimulation. At least one scientific study has demonstrated that mental function can improve between the ages of 65 and 75. It is possible that new brain cells, and therefore new connections, may develop in older people: this is known to occur in some animals.

It has also shown that older people can learn a new language or to play a musical instrument as effectively as younger people. But the way in which matrial is learned differs. Older brains appear to lump information together in chunks, and this may reflect techniques acquired from previous experience of learning new material. But experience can also be useful in other ways. Another study showed that the speeds at which older typists completed a task were roughly the same as those of young, competent college graduates. However, closer analysis revealed that the typing speeds of the older typists were slower, but that they compensated for this by using some timesaving strategies that they had developed over the years.

Experience Yields Better Judgement
At 50+ decisions may take longer because the brain has a greater body of experience to sort through before a reasonable decision can be made. This same experience of life also leads older people to seek adequate time in which to consider a situation or come to a conclusion rather than trusting blindly that everything will go well. In general, older people are safer drivers, but they can cause hazardous situations if they drive too slowly, and they are more prone to loss of concentration. Older drivers should allow time for breaks more frequently than when they were younger.

Brains And Oxygen
Physical exercise is another way to keep the brain working well. The circulation of blood to the brain may not be as efficient as it once was, but it can be improved with regular exercise. Indeed, the physical and mental reaction times in older people who have remained physically active have been measured and shown to be comparable to people many years younger.

Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease is probably the most feared of all brain diseases. People dread its onset because of the resulting loss of independence and dignity. Families dread the isolation and burden of caring for a loved one who has loss of memory, disorientation, paranoia and hallucinations.

Can Alzheimer's Disease Be Avoided?
We still know too little about Azheimer's disease to be able to avert it. However, once you have passed 40 or so, there is little likelihood that you will develop the relatively rare inherited forms of the disease that start at a young age, and there is then little reason to examine your family history with dread.

Here are some simple steps you can take that may reduce the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease in later years:

• Get regular physical exercises.
• Take measures to avoid repeated head injury.
• Maintain lifelong learning and mental exercise: these keep the brain connections active and, just possibly, may stimulate the production of more brain cells.
• Take positive measures to manage stress.
• Eat well, including plenty of antioxidants, such as vitamin E.
• Keep up-to-date with research in medication and alternative therapies. Possible medication includes oestrogen and phyto-oestrogens, ibuprofen and Ginkgo biloba.

Brain tissue showing Alzheimer's disease.

Ginkgo Biloba
The world's oldest tree species, Ginkgo biloba, survived the ice Ages in China, where its leaves have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for nearly 5,000 years. Improved circulation and brain function are included among its medicinal properties. It appears to help prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease, but research is continuing. Ginkgo biloba seems to be very safe, but you should consult your doctor before taking it if you are also prescribed medication, especially for high blood pressure. An average dose cannot be recommended because each brand has greatly varying concentrations of the active ingredients. Look for products that are standardized to contain 22-27 per cent flavone glycosides and 5-7 per cent terpene lactones.