10 years younger in less than an hour

By the time you read this article and do the things listed here, you will have spent 60 minutes or less on the total task at hand. You will also be on your way to feeling ten years younger. If you ask me, that’s what I’d call a power hour.

MEMORY MISBEHAVIOR

You forgot where you put your keys for the hundredth time. You can’t remember where you parked the car. You get up from your home computer without sending a promised email (again). Normal aging shrinks the brain. Less real estate up top means less room to keep important brain notes.

Aging drains the neurotransmitters in your noggen and the messages that your brain is sending from end to end become muffled and mostly lost – Just like your keys. One of the most powerful ways to prevent brain age loss is to up the pump of blood flow to the brain. This will not only improve your memory but give your heart a stroke of goodness as well. Arthur Kramer, PhD, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Illinois says, “We examined brain structure before and after fitness training, and we found increases of brain volume in a number of areas.” You can find more about the study here.

The American College of Sports Medicine says 30 minutes of moderately intense cardio every day, five days a week, should do the trick. In Kramer’s study, patients improved 10 – 15% on a variety of memory and attention tasks after exercise. I’ll settle for key-finding ease.

LEARN HOW TO SAY QUERCETIN

And you immediately ask, “What’s quercetin?” So glad you did. Quercetin is commonly found in apples. It is also commonly found to resist damage in the brain from free-flying radicals. Very good. Researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, recently discovered that animal brain cells treated with the antioxidant quercetin were power fighters against dis-ease in the brain. The principal study author and chair of the department of food science and technology at Cornell, Chang Lee, PhD, claims quercetin as having positive potential to protect against chronic diseases, such as Alzheinmer’s. An apple a day does keep the doctor away. Find more about the study here.

CHANGE YOUR WALLPAPER

Since I did say this would take an hour or less, you can guess that by “wallpaper”, I mean the one on your desktop. Recent studies show that every time the brain processes abstract images, it’s like doing a mental mania workout. “Like 10 push-ups,” writes Women’s Health Magazine. “Set up a Kandinsky painting as your desktop wallpaper.” Researchers from the University of California at Davis found that the brain first detects recognizable patters, such as shapes, lines and icons, and then starts to break down new and different elements. “Ultimately,” says Scott Murray, PhD, a researcher at the University of Washington, “Taking in an eyeful of complex images may help slow natural brain deterioration.”

TREK THE MALL

While the image of gray-hairs in sweatbands probably just crossed your mind, take the last chunk of time on your stop watch to take time shopping. In a recent study by brain powerhouses, Guy McKhann and Marilyn Albert, the duo took 1,000 participants and examined why 75-year-old women tend to maintain better brain function than 75-year-old men. The tie that binds? They shop. Shopping requires not just physical activity but mental activity as well. And you thought bargains were good buys. Turns out they can be good brain juice, too.

More information about the benefits of shopping on the brain and more tips, tricks and study results can be found on The Dana Foundation website. The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropy with principal interests in brain science, immunology and arts education. Additional resources can also be found in the article, How Manolos Can Save Your Life, published by Women's Health Mag (November 2008).