Making Memories

As most of us are aware, as we get older we are at higher risk of getting alzheimers disease. This is a disease where you have severe memory loss. Its not a disease that is contagious, but it is possible to get it through your families gene pool. According to The Economist Newspaper, “It can be diagnosed with certainty only post mortem, because its defining characteristics are microscopic plaques and tangles in the nerve cells of the brain.” 

Alzheimers is an not-so-well-known-disease, i mean we know about it but its nots a whole lot. There is no way of getting rid of it they just know some things that might help prevent it. One of them is sleeping right. Pretty much sleeping fixes everything. Especially with the brain. Also eating certain foods such as fruits, vegitables, fatty fish, and whole grain food. But like i said they think this helps but its not a for sure thing.

The student life, what a job it is. We all have so much going on in our lives. Overall a lot of us have a hard time remember everything that our teachers are trying to jam into our heads and after doing a little bit of research this is what i have come up with to help with that problem. So you know how on the news you always hear them talking about how if you get more sleep you will remember more things, well thats part of it.

Everything i have found has probably been heard by us a million times. But for the sake of saying it a million and one time, if you eat, sleep, and excersise right you will do better all around. Your probably thinking to yourselfs, yeah we know, we know. Well its true. So im just going to give you some easy study habits that will help you remember the important things in class.

First off taking notes while listening is a big one. According to Focus of Exceptional Children it says “it must be kept activated to be retained.” So if you keep your brain active while trying to learn the stuff you are more likely to keep it for a longer period of time. So by taking notes, your brain has to focus in on what the teacher is saying, process it, dig through it and find the important stuff, and then translate it into your own words. I would assume after going through all of this your brain would definitely remember the lecture.

Another big studying strategic is flash cards. This is a good way to study because to your brain its like a game and  if your brain is thinking its a game you are more likely to stay interested in it and continue to study.

Interesting picture huh?

Every section of the brain in this picture represents a different study of psychology. Theres, romance, injury, “super powers”, death, crazy, and paranoid(to put it simply of coarse).

In our eyes, these portraits seem weird and unrealistic. But to most people this is a reality they have to deal with everyday of there lives. For most psychological problems there is no help. All they can hope for is to keep it under control.

People with “problems” are usual looked down on and are treated differently than everybody else. Which doesnt help their condition any. Even though I believe that everybody has a mental disorder, just not to that extreme. Then again that is just my thinking, and I am deffinitely not a major in this subject.

One of the most common disorders today is anxiety. So where does it come from? According to U.S. News & World Report it comes from everyday things such as stressing or worrying a lot.

What would life be with out memories? Seriously, we wouldn’t have those good laughs to look back at or past experiences to reminisce in. If we didn’t study the brain we wouldn’t know how to help prevent diseases.

Its in our best interest to keep our brain “healthy” so that we can use it to its full extent.  In  Prevention magazine it says “Genes determine 30% of your risk… the other 70% comes from factors you can control-diet, fitness, and stress levels.” So pretty much if you can learn to manage this your more likely to have a better memory than the person who is a huge couch potato that eats deep fried twinkies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m sure most of us aren’t that extreme but hey it got it across right?

First off you need to eat the right food or as the magazine calls it “Eat more brain food.” One of the foods recommended are blueberries, studies show they contain compounds that improve short-term memory. Some more helpful insights are increase your fruit, vegetable, and fatty-fish intake. Also instead of eating refined grains eat whole.

This is one we probably all know but never follow; sleep. Yes you have heard it a million times but i will say it just once more, 8 hours every night will help. Your brain needs sleep to help function. Its like the weekend for us; a break from school and what not. The brain needs a break from all the work we make it do. Also while sleeping it helps to cut down on fluids and keep your bedroom cool, quiet, and dark.

So you’ve heard it from the experts doing these things can help improve you memories. Just do it.

Various things come to mind when i think of the word “help”. We all use it in different ways, some in frustsration others in fear, what ever it is, it comes from us all eventually. Most of us try but sometimes the memories create a barrier of fear, fear we will be rejected or fear from the pain caused in the past. Overall, the main person everybody is concerned for is themselves. They think that everybody is this way, which is true, so why not change it? What do we have to lose? Oh yeah, thats right, our popularity, our dignity, our friends, our life as we know it. So what. None of those matter in a world where nobody cares about anything but themselves. If everybody wasnt so concerned with things that would benefit them personally the world could possibly be a better place.

Can you remember high school? What about middle schoool? Elementry? It all starts when we are too young to know better, when all we live for is playing outside on a nice sunny day, not a care in the world. But for most of us that is too far back to remember, funny thing is, those days dont seem so long ago for me. Back in the days of recess and nap time, the cool thing to do was to help the teacher pass out the crayons. The cool thing to do was help clean up. The cool thing to do was to  help classmates be nice to eachother. We were so innocent and willing, now we just try to make it through the day with out getting critisized about everything we do. Everything we do is to help our image look better, we put others down, we hide in the back of the class room, we stick with the people we know. To help somebody you need to be bold, daring, and willing to put yourself out there. You shouldnt expect anything in return, just the knowledge of you doing something out of the ordinary should be enough payment in  itself.

Most of us help the needy to get some of our taxes written off, others think they need to do it for their religion, others do it for attention; whatever your cause of helping out somebody in need it creates memories. Depending on your reasoning for doing so, will decide on the type of memory you will have. If you do community service selflessly then you will probably have good thoughts about it but if you do it for greedy reasons you are most likely to have bad memories of it. Funny how that works huh? Another thing if you are doing it for your own personal reasons you probably wont even remember it in a few years or even months.

In this blog I am going to learn where and how the brain stores memories.

While being a student there are many things that intrest me, but just recently my latest home work assignment is to create a blog that i am passionate about, something i would enjoy studying in college. To tell you the truth i have no clue what that could possibly be. So i chose a topic that one of my following peers and i talked about in class, the brain. At the moment he is taking a psychology class ( the one i will be taking next year) and well we got into the topic of memories and how we can only remember the certain ones. We started to wonder whether we really do forget or if they are stored in so far that it is too hard to recover them. Then that got us going on why?

I would love to remember everything that has happened in the past. I think that if you could remember everything new inventions we would be appearing everyday. Although not everybody would like to remember what has happened due to bad home lives or other tramatic experiences, I think that if we were able to tap into them you would be able to tap out of them too.  If everything could be remembered people would be super smart and more people would make a difference in the world.

Unique. That is what I plan on this blog being. I mean there are probably other blogs similar but i am a young adult with my own thoughts and different insites on things. Everything you see or read or hear are very formal to make it scholarly but i am here to make something scholarly sound “normal”. Something we all can understand and relate to.