20 natural ways to boost your memory

Memory loss - the facts

Your memory can, experts now agree, be largely what you make it. "The average person's memory deteriorates as they get older, but that's not due to the ageing process - it's because they are unwittingly training their memories to become worse," explains world-renowned memory expert Tony Buzan. "The decline of memory with age is not inevitable - it's just that we tend to neglect it, as we do our bodies. We feed it the wrong foods and don't exercise it, then wonder why it's going wrong. We have to learn to expand our memory powers."

Ian Robertson, professor of psychology at the University of Dublin Trinity College, says that giving the brain new challenges helps build better connections between brain cells and improve function. " ‘Use it or lose it' is a fact," he says.

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