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Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Alzheimer's

16 Actions You Can Do to Improve Your Memory

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Be the Butterfly – Enjoy life and remember

I’ve been studying memory and what I can do to maintain and improve my own. My mother and father-in-law have both suffered from Alzheimer’s related dementia and memory loss. It has been heartbreaking. What has been even more an issue is the effort those around them go to looking for ways to hold back or even turn back the loss of memory our loved ones suffer.

My father-in-law’s memory of all children, grandchildren, friends and even his wife was completely gone in the last year, and his death in late last year was gut-wrenching. For all of that loss, we kept reminding each other that it was his last three years that were the most troubling. Not such a long period of time when we remembered that he lived to 93 in good health and gleeful about life and family.

What did he do that probably helped stave off a disease that had been diagnose early in his 70’s?

  1. He was active all his life and played competitive tennis into his 70s, practicing daily when not competing in seniors tennis.
  2. He played tennis into his 80s. Then played vicariously via watching the US Open and other major tennis meets. Did you know your muscles will actually be stimulated if you watch a sporting activity with interest and interaction?
  3. He watched his diet, eating balanced meals and taking appropriate levels of vitamins, minerals and herbs.
  4. He treated everyone respectfully and with kindness.
  5. He was strongly involved in his church and spent many years with his wife as a marriage-encounter teacher.
  6. He wrote his children letters often (not typing or email).
  7. He maintained a positive attitude and encouraged others to as well.

But as I said I’ve been studying memory. And there are numerous ways to maintain memory even against debilitating diseases.

  1. Stay active – tennis, walking, indoor skydiving, yoga, jogging, jumping rope, ping pong – get your heart rate up and move around. Physical activity and Risk of Cognitive Impairment and Dementia in Elderly Persons
  2. Eat intelligently and selectively. There are numerous foods that are said to help your body combat illness and disease – blueberries, cranberries, cherries, coconut oil, olive oil, fish, garlic, oatmeal, broccoli (I’m one of those people who think broccoli is nasty tasting, but broccoli spears don’t seem to bother me) Can blueberries assist in maintaining memory?
  3. Listen to music, classical, instrumental, music from your favorite memories, jazz, new age, etc.
  4. Learn to play a musical instrument – kazoo, harmonica, guitar, flute, piano – anything that forces you to learn the musical language and reproduce it with sound. Heck, play your armpit. How Music Affects the Brain for the Better
  5. Reduce stress in your life and develop ways to combat and deal with it when it arrives – exercising maybe or the next suggestion Chronic Stress Can Hurt Your Memory
  6. Get enough sleep, not too much nor too little too often. Routine sleep habits that provide the amount of sleep your body needs can help deal with stress, reduce stress and even help you not approach stressful situations as stress inducing Too Little Sleep, and Too Much Sleep, Affect Memory
  7. Hang around positive people who care about you and enjoy your positive company Optimism and Your Health
  8. Marry the person that makes your life complete and whose life you bring happiness and security to
  9. Take vitamins (cautiously, of course. Do your research) Vitamin Bible
  10. Challenge yourself daily to recall memories important to you The Effects of Aging on Memory
  11. Write a book – you’d be surprised how demanding it is to create lives for several other people, plot out the difficulties they are going through and figure out how to get them out of the inescapable corners you back them into. Write flash fiction if you want the same challenge but on a much tighter scale
  12. Meditate – you don’t have to turn your legs into a pretzel. Lay down on the couch and decompress for fifteen minutes. Meditation Benefits
  13. Simplify – I don’t mean sell everything and move into a tiny house. Just remove some of the complications in your life
  14. Research your family history – keeping track of all those ancestral lines is going to work your mind and give you an alternative to think about when life is handing you tough stuff.They got through it; you will too.
  15. Garden, keep a bonzai or raise koi – being involved with something that takes time, and takes it slowly will give you time to reflect and gain strength in watching your efforts create beauty in nature
  16. Don’t do everything listed above – pick out a few to add to your life (activity) and a few to alter your life (diet)

#memory
#meditation

Creativity: Using your own experiences to authenticate your writing

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 My last post was about brainstorming with my writer pal Marcy on a novel idea involving dementia and Alzheimer’s.  Much of what is going into the book is based on my experience with my mother and my father-in-law who are both suffering from this kind of memory loss.  Every phone call I have with them or chat with my mother-in-law or my sister, who also keeps contact with our mom, is a source of inspiration and information. But it is also disheartening because it will only get worse.

I tell myself that as painful as it is to watch and keep up with the changes they are going through, it is part of life, part of loving someone and part of the truth that must be in what I write. What we experience is our greatest source of originality and authenticity.

I know this book is going to tax me and pull hard at my heart, for every wall my character must climb will echo a difficulty my mother is going through. I have long since given up having those chats with my mom that always left us laughing. For many years I would unload my disappointments through the receiver of my phone, and my mother would be on the other end listening.  But it was never a sad event for I would find myself giggling over those troubles because she brought that out in me.  They were fodder for humor instead of tears or anger when I shared them with her.

But I cannot do that any more. She cannot hold onto the same conversation for more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes she thinks she is talking to my daughter or worse me back when I was in high school.  It is much harder to make her giggle and much harder for me to find the humor in the troubles that come with the changes she is going through.  Nowadays, she is sharing with me her difficulties, and I am the one hoping to bring humor rather than sorrow to her experience.

What life experiences feed your writing and give you hope that you will find peace in the effort?

#creativity
#Alzheimer’s

Creativity: Research your way to inspired writing

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Sometimes hitting the books (internet, encyclopedia, local expert) is the best way to galvanize creativity. Immerse yourself in something that interests you. The information may not become useful right away, but then an internal click will sound and that knowledge will have a place.

An unplanned immersion for me has been Alzheimer’s and Dementia. My father-in-law and my step-mother are quickly declining as these two age-generated illnesses take over and take from their lives. I wish I didn’t have to know how this is effecting these two lovely and important people in my life.  I wish I wasn’t learning how it will continue to progress, destroying who they are and who is important to them. I wish I was not aware of how my mother-in-law is trying everything she can to slow the loss of what makes her husband unique, even knowing it is snowballing, just infinitesimally slower than it would have had she not made the effort.  I wish that when I call my mom I don’t feel as if some stranger has answered the phone and I am trying to make a good impression. But all this new knowledge is attaching itself to a novel idea which came out of another area of unanticipated knowledge gain.

building creativity

My family is building a house completely by ourselves. And as I write this, my husband is laying Zip System sheeting on the roof rafters.  I have learned about digging a trench for the foundation, setting up concrete forms for that foundation, making everything square, rebar bending and placement, concrete pouring, stem wall bolts, window and door headers, floor and ceiling joists, window framing, and rafter tying. Those are just terms.  But I know how they fit together now, the many different types of nails and screws used, the back-cramping effort of smoothing quickly drying concrete, how to use wall jacks to raise long spans; it is more than I anticipated knowing when I joined my husband’s dream of building our own house for our retirement years (still far in the future).  I have become a champion hole digger, perfectly square, and I think holes can actually be described as beautiful; who’d have thought?

What I didn’t expect from these two forced gains in knowledge, experience and understanding (we might add torture, but I want to keep this positive) is that the two would link up and inspire me to write a contemporary novel.  I write science fiction, folks!

The moral of this story is use the knowledge you have gained in life and extend it through research, conversation and attention to the details around you. It will inspire you and take you to new areas of creativity and written expression. That’s after all what writers are all about, taking today (with all that came before) and turning it into words tomorrow.

What knowledge base has brought inspiration to you and found its way into your writing?  What interest could you pursue greater understanding of and use to provide specificity and inspiration to your writing?

#creativity
#writing
#research