Winter: My brain needs a rest, not a boost
By Mary Winter, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Originally published 03:00 p.m., May 16, 2008
Updated 07:23 p.m., May 16, 2008
Apparently, it's not enough to simply torture your body at the gym seven days a week.
Today, you're supposed to make your brain miserable, too.
At least that's what health experts advise the legions of baby boomers worried about losing their marbles.
In fact, there's a whole new industry of so-called brain-health products - memory boosters for the generation that would motor back to Woodstock if they could just remember where they put the keys.
Nintendo, for example, offers to make you smarter with Brain Age 2, a $19.99 video game filled with math and memory exercises. MindFit, for $149, tests you on more than a dozen skills and then tailors a personal brain-building program, according to a recent New York Times article.
Even Web sites are cashing in. At Luminosity.net and Happy-Neuron.com, for about $10 a month you can log on and do cortex crunches until the cows come home.
Personally, I'd rather walk into an open furnace.
At my age, I think my brain is entitled to coast for a while. After a career of crushing deadlines and knotty personnel situations that would try Houdini, I think I've earned the right to a few victory laps.
Granted, the old noodle isn't the steel trap it once was. Sometimes I forget my PIN, and two cell phones have vanished under my care. Not too long ago, I forgot where I parked my car at the mall and I had to be ferried around the lot in a little golf cart with a flashing light on top.
After that humiliation, I started taking ginkgo biloba, an herbal supplement reputed to boost memory. For one brief and shining moment, my recall of phone numbers and faces actually improved. But not too long after, my memory returned to its state of butter-knife sharpness.
I later read that laboratory mice given ginkgo biloba enjoyed an initial burst of improved mental acuity, only to plateau and then cruelly deteriorate, reminding me of one of literature's all-time great characters, Charlie from the '60s sci-fi classic Flowers for Algernon.
How do we know the new brain-boosting software won't end as badly?
For all we know, the purveyors of memory-boosting games and herbal IQ enhancers are preying on an aging population's insecurities, taking advantage of the poor soul who dissolves into DEFCON 1 every time she finds her cell phone in the freezer.
No, for advice on how to age gracefully, I rely on my old friend and former Rocky Mountain News Capitol Bureau Chief John Sanko. He keeps me apprised of enlightened thinking on aging. Below is his latest e-mail dispatch, which I've excerpted:
Subject: Have you noticed?
"Have you noticed that stairs are getting steeper? Groceries are heavier? And everything is farther away?
"And, you know, people are less considerate now, especially the young ones? They speak in whispers all the time.
"I also think they are much younger than I was at the same age. On the other hand, people my own age are so much older than I am. I ran into an old friend the other day and she has aged so much that she didn't even recognize me.
"Clothing manufacturers are acting oddly, too. Why else would they suddenly start labeling a size 10 or 12 dress as 18 or 20? Do they think no one notices?
"I'd like to call up someone in authority to report what's going on - but the telephone company is in on the conspiracy, too. They've printed the phone books in such small type that no one could ever find a number in there!
"All I can do is pass along this warning: WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!
"P.S.: I am sending this to you in a larger font size because something has happened to my computer's fonts - they are smaller than they once were."
So go ahead, wrap your brain in Spandex and see if it can do 15 Sudoku puzzles in less than 30 minutes.
I'm treating mine to a day at the spa.
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May 18, 2008
7:56 a.m.
Suggest removal
arby writes:
Mary,
You need to check out www.alz.org/co There is a lot of info there to enable you to tell the difference between normal ageing and alzheimer's disease. Putting your phone in the freezer is not a good sign.
20% of us will exhibit signs of Alzehimers by the age of 65, 50% by the age of 85. There are about 65,000 people in the US in their 40's who exhibit signs. So, if you can find your laptop (let's hope it isn't in the linen closet) Check it out.