Alzheimer’s disease and dementia aren’t guaranteed to happen when someone gets old. However, many people that develop these conditions are old. In most cases, it takes many years for Alzheimer’s to develop, though.
This is why taking care of your body throughout your life is an essential part of minimizing the chances of developing dementia. Things like reading and a healthy diet are two great ways of taking care of your body. But doing memory exercises is also a great way to keep your mind sharp as you age.
Exercises to Help With Memory Recall
In a memory care community, there’s a good chance that you will have people who can walk you through many exercises and activities to help improve your memory recall. Let’s look at a couple of specific exercises.
Passive Memory Training
Also known as the 4-details observation exercise, passive memory training is simple. As you’re going about your daily life, pay attention to the people you meet in public, and recall 4 details about them after seeing them.
For example, if you walk by a man in the mall, you recall that he was wearing a white shirt, blue jeans, black shoes, and black-rimmed glasses. The more you do this, the easier it gets, and it is a great way to exercise your memory recall skills.
Repeat and Recall Conversations
While conversing with someone, pay attention to the other person and what they’re saying. Then repeat it back to yourself in your head. This helps improve your recall, and it will also help with your comprehension during the conversation.
Learn a New Skill
Just because a person is getting older is no reason to stop learning new things. In fact, the opposite is true. By learning new skills, you’re helping your brain stay strong—memory recall is one of the things that will benefit from this.
The new skills could be any number of things. For example, you could take dance lessons or learn a new language. Even if the things you’re learning aren’t exactly related to memory, simply the act of learning requires your brain to recall information.
Other Things to Improve Memory
Exercises aren’t the only thing that will help improve your memory recall.
Games
Who would have thought that having fun could be a way to improve your memory? Doing brain-engaging games is a great way to improve memory and your general cognitive function. Things like crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, or word searches can help with memory and slow cognitive decline.
Healthy Diet
There’s no scientific evidence that a particular diet or anything else can prevent Alzheimer’s or dementia. However, there is evidence that suggests a healthy lifestyle (including a healthy, balanced diet) is linked to lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s
Tell Stories
Again, there’s a fun way to help improve your memory recall—telling stories. These can be either real or fictional stories. If the stories happened, try to recall and tell them in as much detail as you can. And if they are fictional stories, focus on the detail to work those recall muscles.
Benefits of an Improved Memory
There are quite a few benefits to having a good memory as you age; let’s look at a few of them:
- Lower chances of becoming depressed: Many times, when people start having memory loss and developing dementia, it can lead to depression. Even if it doesn’t turn into depression. Many begin not finding joy in things they used to and pushing friends and family away.
- Easier time staying social with other residents and friends: When you’re in a good mood and not feeling self-conscious about your memory, it’s much easier to keep friendships solid.
- A longer time of being able to live without assistance in daily activities: Eventually, memory recall issues become problems in an aging adult’s daily life. It can lead to things like forgetting to eat, taking medications, or to not checking the weather before leaving the house. Once it gets to this point, an assisted living community or live-in caregiver are common solutions.
- Able to stay safe: Our memories protect us from so many things by informing our decisions. Unfortunately, as memory recall worsens, it can lead to the inability to stay safe alone. So, the longer a person can maintain good memory, the longer before they will need assistance.
Is Foxtrail in Cresskill Right for You?
If you or a loved one are getting to the age where memory problems are prone to developing, and you want to plan for the future, give us a call at Fox Trail Senior Living in Cresskill. Our staff is happy to answer any questions you might have and schedule a tour of the community.
This way, you can see how our memory care services can help you or your loved one thrive, even when the mind doesn’t want to cooperate.
