The Bad Habits That Are Damaging Your Memory

The Bad Habits That Are Damaging Your Memory

The state of your memory is directly related to your daily habits. Whether or not you remember names of new people easily, forget about deadlines and to look at your to-do list, can’t recall an event from the past in details, and have a hard time retaining new information – all this is a result of the way you live.

Luckily, your lifestyle is in your hands and with a few adjustments you can improve your memory in no time.

In this article, you’ll find out the habits damaging your precious memory. Stopping them will immediately lead to progress and you will feel like your mind is clearer, remembering things becomes easier and learning new skills and information isn’t that challenging anymore.

1. Bad sleep

Turns out, both too little and too much sleep can affect your memory. That means you should find the right number of hours for your body (usually 8) and stick to it every night.

This requires fixing your sleeping schedule. Start by waking up earlier over the course of a few days so you can also start going to sleep earlier. Soon, that will become the norm and you will be naturally tired at the same time each evening and will wake up refreshed and ready to be productive the whole day.

Make sure you don’t do too exciting activities before bedtime, such as working out, worrying about problems at work, having arguments with a loved one, watching a horror movie, having a big meal, drinking alcohol or caffeine.

All these keep your brain activated and cause discomfort in your stomach, which doesn’t allow you to fall asleep. So you end up staying awake in bed for hours, after which your sleep is interrupted and not deep enough.

2. Bad diet

The next thing worsening your memory is your diet. Not giving your body and mind the vitamins and nutrients they need affects your ability to learn new things and memorize information. It slows down your thinking skills and ruins your ability to concentrate when doing important work.

To change that, start removing the bad foods from your diet and replacing them with better ones. You need fruits and veggies, proteins, the good fats, nuts, and more.

Don’t make too many changes at once, though, as it might feel stressful. Instead, take this diet transformation one step at a time.

Vitamin deficiency can lead to many side effects. And most often we don’t even consider this a possibility until we start suffering from some of them.

Give your brain what it needs by consuming the right groups of food and it will reward you tenfold.

3. Inactive lifestyle

Lack of any exercise is also bad for your memory. Working out boosts blood flow to your brain which helps you in multiple ways. This is proven to affect your thinking skills, mental health and memory positively.

Add some activity to your day starting now. It might be hard to fit it into your schedule, but waking up earlier gives you an extra 30 minutes to an hour which you can invest in something like that.

4. Too much stress

Stress has become one of the worst habits people have these days. Most often, they are so used to it that they keep stressing over little problems from daily life even though they have no control over them.

But in moments of stress, the body blocks some of its functions and instead gets into survival mode. When worry takes over, your nervous system is activated. This is the fight-or-flight response and every cell of your body is then convinced that you are in danger. Even if it’s something like money or relationship problems, the body reacts as if your life is at stake.

When that happens too often, it might turn into chronic stress, which leads to multiple mental, emotional or physical issues.

Whenever you feel like you’re stressed out, do what you can to bring your stress levels down. Breathing deeply, analyzing the cause of your stress and avoiding it, taking a break and just doing nothing for a while, taking a soothing bath, going for a walk, talking to a friend, or else, are all things that can help.

By tackling these 4 areas of your lifestyle you can improve not just your memory but your overall health.