Healthy Living
Brain Clutter: A New Spring Cleaning Imperative? By Ajla Basic , Categories: Aging & Wellness
The Importance of Staying Hydrated By Marty Twichell , EnhanceFitness Program Coordinator, PCOA’s Healthy Living Department Are you well hydrated? Do you experience any of these conditions — constipation, nausea, joint pain, stiffness, dry mouth, sore gums, headache, dizziness, fatigue, muscle weakness? You might simply be experiencing low-grade dehydration. Most of us do walk around with low-grade dehydration because so much in our lives contributes to it. Air conditioning, processed foods, fluorescent lighting, and some medications, are all very dehydrating. Then remember, we do live in a desert, which really can dehydrate us quickly. Also, for some reason, there is resistance to going to the bathroom often. But think of peeing every couple of hours as a great healthy choice for yourself. You get to move & stretch your body, rest your eyes, adjust your posture, socialize a minute, and move fluid. It is a great thing! The other thing I hear is that some people don’t like water. You are still able to hydrate by drinking diluted juices, flavored water, tea, and coffee (less than 24oz), smoothies, and food high in water content (think watermelon & other melons, cucumber, citrus fruits, berries, lettuces, tomatoes). Avoid drinking soda regardless of diet or regular soda. If you still love your soda and resist giving it up, try different drinks like coconut water, sparkly water with flavoring, even flavored nut milks. Sometimes it is necessary to wean yourself off soda… so maybe start by cutting back and aim to be soda-free in 4-6 weeks. Don’t see it as a treat! It’s actually a killer in disguise. Okay, a bit extreme… but it is not your friend. So, remember your water bottle. • Drink about ½ of your body weight in ounces of non- alcoholic liquid daily. • Pee every few hours. • Track your water consumption to make sure you are getting enough. • Enjoy your healthy skin & hair, increased energy, and better sleep. • Brag about your water consumption to your friends. • Feel good about this simple, easy, important, healthy habit in your life! • And, of course, if symptoms do not change, check with your doctor.
Can we run out of brain space? Scientists now say it is likely for our brain to accumulate “clutter,” thereby making it challenging, especially for older adults with more memories, to filter through all that information. Researchers at Columbia University presented their findings on a review of memories studies. They say the traditional view that “as older adults grow older, they lose memories” may be incorrect. Instead, older adults form too many associations between information, which makes it difficult to sift through all that information, resulting in what researchers consider clutter. In this review article, researchers analyzed literature on memory decline that generally fell into three categories: age differences in memory encoding, age differences in retrieval, and the third aspect, that gains very little empirical attention, differences in the contents of memory representations . Researchers believe this third point is central to understanding age differences in memory-related cognitive functions. The researchers suggested that, compared to younger adults, healthy older adults store too much information because of the greater difficulty of suppressing irrelevant information (a cognitive action that declines with age). Those memories then become bound together with meaningful and unmeaningful information, which then creates clutter. Researchers believe this is especially relevant when trying to recall similar memories, where memory recall to select the correct information may be even more challenging. This review paper seems to be making a bold claim on memory in older adults, (1) that they have greater knowledge of the world, and (2) that the information is never lost, but just cluttered. This turns what we may know about memory on its head (so to speak!) by suggesting that we do not run out of space in our brains as we age, but instead we just remember too many things, creating more clutter in our brains. A compelling case, to be sure, and researchers now want to investigate the outcomes of this cluttered memory hypothesis, and how it affects functional behavior in everyday life. Source: Amer, T., Wynn, J. S., & Hasher, L. (2022). Cluttered memory representations shape cognition in old age. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364- 6613(21)00310-7
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Pima Council on Aging
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