Keeping your elderly family member’s brain strong is one of the best ways to help her to avoid memory problems and cognitive difficulties. But can you really do that?
Use Calendars and Reminders
Calendars and reminders are a fantastic way to help bolster your elderly family member’s memory. They’re always right there and your senior doesn’t have to keep those facts and dates clogging up her brain. When she knows where to look for the information she needs, she’s always got it at hand.
Set up a Home Base for Specific Items
Some items are just determined to get lost. For your aging adult, those items might be her keys, her glasses, or her ID. If you can set up a specific location for those items that tend to go on walkabout, you can reduce the likelihood that you have to go on a big hunt for them. Pick a basket on the kitchen counter or a key rack near the door.
Keep Her Active
Staying physically and socially active is an amazingly easy way to help keep your senior’s brain and memory strong. She might want to visit friends, volunteer at various events, or any number of other ideas. But the very act of keeping herself going and involved is going to keep her brain going.
Assess Her Diet and Her Resting Habits
What your senior eats and how much rest she gets is also going to factor into her brain health. If she’s relying on lots of packaged foods, she’s getting empty calories that don’t do her as much good as you’d like. Likewise, without the rest that she needs, her brain gets tired more easily. It’s worth looking deeper at both of these factors and starting to make small improvements as you can.
Help Her to Find New Skills to Learn
Nothing fires someone’s brain up like learning a new skill of some sort. Your senior might enjoy playing a new game or taking a class. The new skill itself doesn’t really matter as much as the act of learning something new does. Try a variety of different ideas until she finds the one that she likes best.
Trouble with memory doesn’t automatically mean that your senior is destined to develop dementia. Helping her to use tools that bolster her memory and keeping her active in all sorts of areas in her life are all excellent solutions. You might also want to hire senior care providers to take over some of the more mundane tasks in your senior’s life. That way she can focus on the fun aspects of strengthening her memory.
