Aging: Let's Slow It Straight down

There are numerous things you can do to slow aging down, and in some circumstances, even reverse it. Just as much as the body changes, your diet, activity level, and intellectual hobbies can have a significant effect how "old" you get.

Limited Numbers

Put it to use or lose it is the typical rule when it comes to the body, and the brain is no exception. At a certain point, we can no longer produce new neurons (brain cells), of course, if we don't constantly use the ones we have, they will essentially atrophy. We lose the cells we do not use. Even as get elderly, and can no much longer produce new neurons, we create more connections between existing ones. We can also create new contacts between existing neurons, or reinforce existing connections.

Really like taking a look at a map of new hiking trails. There is a web of those, with some connecting and others not, spread out all over the mountains. Since the years go by, hikers usually use certain trails more than others, so these become more defined, with the backpackers sometimes making smaller tracks connecting the large ones. The original trails used less often (or not at all) slowly get overtaken by the trees and shrubs and bushes until they are not any more usable.

Productivity Expert

Your head is precisely that: a productivity expert. Having a multitude of untouched neurons serves no goal. Everything from the links you build to the disappearance of unused neurons is your brain's way to becoming more useful. To continue the backpacking trail analogy, why begin a new trail when another already exists? This is also why the rede wen dung, "Can't teach an old dog new tricks" is available... there's a reason why, stereotypically, people become more set in their ways, habits, and routines as they get older, particularly in conditions of ways of thinking.

Change occurs when we are brought to something new, and then a process occurs by which we continue as we have, or we learn something new.

What You Can Do

Just how do we protect our brains from the consequences of increasing age? We learn. The greater we learn, the more beautifully our brain will time. This is especially true for memory. Read, play chess, learn to play a musical instrument or speak a new language, teach your kids and grandkids, take a different route home one day, and try new pleasures. Your brain will thank you.