Keeping your brain healthy and your head together!

From your mid twenties your brain starts to deteriorate. This is a great shame. Just when you start to realise what life’s all about and begin to get a handle on things, some experience, wisdom and some control over your rampant hormones your hardware starts to go soft.

Your brain cells die off, cortex thins, neurones get in a tangle, brain chemistry goes haywire, endorphins dwindle, protein plaques and metabolites build up and instead of fizzing it futters.

Words do not zip seamlessly into place, names and memories disappear, and all those smart, off-the-cuff responses turn up a day late and are all the more frustrating for it!

However life’s rich tapestry of adventure and serendipity brings perspective and wisdom and a slower pace enables better evaluation. Us oldies may be not quite so fast and our creative processes may not be quite as radiant but what we’ve lost is compensated for by experience.

My brain is my most valued possession. I am very close to it. I want to preserve it and protect it from harm.

Fortunately we have billions of cells and trillions of connections and there are lots of redundant parts that can take up the slack. We can learn and create well into old age. There are things we can do to keep our brains functioning at their most efficient:

a. We can take regular exercise

b. Drink in moderation (Not too little and not too much – I am the arbiter of what is just right!)

c. We can practice using it (In my experience most people exercise the muscles of their mandibles more than the axons of their grey matter!)

d. We can be creative and inventive

e. We can eat fish, fruit and veg and follow a Mediterranean diet with all those olives, tomatoes and red wine.

f. We can listen to music

g. You can love someone and be emotionally secure, sexually replete and hormonally adjusted

h. You can have stimulating friends that you talk about complex and thought provoking philosophies with

I. You can travel and widen your experience

j. You can read good literature

k. You can go for walks in the countryside

That’ll do for me!!!  That sounds like a good life any way you look at it!!

Let me see if I’ve got it right – plenty of sex, red wine, good food, stimulating company, creative outlet, good reading, travel, friends to laugh with, walks to soak up the beauty and music to enjoy.

I’m already relishing looking after my brain!