Sharpening Your Memory

July 27, 2011

Interview with Douglas Powell, author of the book The Aging Intellect

________________

Mike Carruthers:
People often worry about their ability to remember, particularly as they get older and sometimes the worry is unnecessary.

Douglas Powell:
Memory problems are often caused by distractibility, it’s not that we don’t  remember it’s that we weren’t paying attention.
 

Douglas Powell, author of the book The Aging Intellect

We’re introduced to some new people and we’re really not focusing on their names when we’re introduced.  And we don’t remember their names and we blame it on our memory when we should be blaming it on our inability to concentrate or focus our attention.

Although there are lots of individual variations mental function does seem to decline as you get older but, Doug says, if you challenge yourself you can fight it off.

If you press yourself to learn new things, and it doesn’t have to be just mental things – you can for example, learn how to draw or paint and you will find yourself better able to find your car in the parking lot.

In research the people whose minds perform best as they get older are people who are best described as vigorous.

They were very much on the go all of the time, very passionate about the activities they were involved in, in the community. And we discovered some other things, they were medically compliant, they had a long history of getting regular checkups and taking their prescription medication where a number of people aging normally did not.