3 neurological strategies to make ageing better

At 80 years of age, I cringe whenever I hear someone say, “Getting old means you’re getting better.” Nonsense! Getting old means you’re getting old.

Greeting card clichés do not come to mind when I drop a bag of groceries, get up after falling down the stairs, forget my granddaughter’s name, or, worst of all, have someone older than me offer their seat on a bus. During these embarrassing moments, I never retrieve a Hallmark card phrase.

Instead, I conjure the image of a “clunker,” my 1964 rusted, temperamental Plymouth that I babied in college. It got me safely from one point to another, rarely on time and usually with an incident or a quart of oil—but it got me to where I needed to go. It is the perfect analogy for an ageing brain.

A 75-year-old client’s philosophy of aging was more direct: “Aging sucks,” she said after a difficult week. My response was, “It doesn’t have to if you use compensatory strategies that are based on neurology.” Three simple ones appear below.

1. Slow Down

Slowing down your motor behaviours and cognitive responses is the simplest strategy to counteract the neurological effects of ageing. Think of your brain as if it were an old-fashioned watch. When new and clean, the teeth of each gear fit smoothly into the slots of an adjacent gear. If you drop it or allow dust to enter the mechanism, the prongs and sockets may no longer align perfectly, resulting in an inaccurate time display.

Ageing acts like dropping a watch in the example above; it can cause a slight processing delay of a few milliseconds. Your out-of-sync movements may lead to dropping a plate in a buffet line or experiencing increased difficulty understanding a speaker because information enters your ear faster than your brain can process it. Slowing your physical movements and asking the other person to speak more slowly can help compensate for age-related processing issues.

Slowing down your movement or the speed of incoming messages presents the best opportunity to restore synchronisation. This strategy is effective even if you aren’t sure what caused the sync problem. Think of it as “babying the Plymouth.”

2. Make It Visual and Lasting

Younger brains tend to have fewer issues dealing with abstractions. An abstraction is anything that represents something else. For example, when I write “two apples,” the number and the word represent simple objects—real apples. The more abstract a concept is, the more difficult it becomes for the ageing brain to process.

For example, if I’m lecturing on the nutritional value of eating two apples every day, that information will be processed more easily than if I’m trying to explain quantum theory while referring to a blackboard full of formulas. The more concrete something is, the easier it will be to process, remember, and recall.

The brain’s ability to remember, make connections, and recall important information diminishes with age. Rather than hoping everything functions as it did when you were younger, make it tangible and lasting. Write down numbers, directions, ideas, and more. A simple spiral notebook or the “Take a Note” app on your cell phone should become your new best friend.

3. Take a Break

A 75-year-old lifelong jogger would be reluctant to run two days in a row. There is an understanding that the body needs to rest after engaging in intensive exercise. However, we are more hesitant to acknowledge the importance of rest for our brains.

There are many ways to give the brain a rest. The most common method is sleep, but other strategies, such as alternating between different tasks, can also be effective. Some examples include pausing a cognitive activity every 30 minutes to engage in a physical activity like walking around the block, shifting from an intensely cognitive task like preparing a legal document to watching television, or taking short meditation breaks three times a day.

In some ways, the brain is like your body’s muscles. Exercise it appropriately, and it will serve you beautifully. Overwork it, and its efficiency and durability will suffer. Conversely, if you feed it mostly passive information, it will wither from disuse, just like a muscle. Nourish it with suitable activities, and your grandchildren will be amazed by your memory of events.

The Takeaway

Few people say, “I can’t wait until I’m old.” The only way to escape ageing is to die young. Given the inevitability of ageing, utilising these neurological strategies should help improve one’s adjustment to ageing. Will aging still suck? Maybe, but not as much.