Enjoy coffee in the morning
Caffeine consumed too late in the day may disturb your sleep, and ultimately harm your brain. But coffee consumed in the morning and perhaps the early afternoon, depending on your personal caffeine sensitivity, may reduce risk. Coffee contains a chemical called eicosanoyl-5-hydroxytryptamide (EHT) that, in studies done on rats, has been shown to protect against Alzheimer’s disease. The caffeine itself may also be protective: Mice developed fewer tau tangles in their brains when their drinking water was infused with caffeine. In humans, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that 200 milligrams of caffeine—the amount in one strong cup of coffee—can help us consolidates memories and more easily memorize new information. Watch out for these early signs of Alzheimer’s.
Play for a cause
Foldit is a multiplayer game designed by computer scientists at the University of Washington, and it enables nonscientists to work with others to solve challenging prediction problems concerning protein folding. One day this game may help us understand how tau proteins misfold in the brain. Another game, Nanocrafter, allows you to build everything from computer circuits to nanoscale machines using pieces of DNA. Other interactive games—ranging from bridge to Chinese checkers to Pictionary to charades—cause us to exercise social smarts along with intellectual ones. In addition to using our brains to strategize and, at times, to do math, such games force us to contemplate what other players are likely to do and likely to think.
Talk to strangers
When we’re seated next to a stranger on a bus, plane, or train, most of us clam up and keep to ourselves. Yet, research from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business has found that many of us overestimate the difficulty of connecting with strangers and underestimate the rewards of doing so. Before engaging in the study, participants predicted that engaging with strangers would reduce their well-being. But when they went ahead and struck up a conversation with the person seated next to them, the opposite happened. They felt better than when they sat in solitude.
Form a dog-walking group
Our pets really are part of our social network. They sleep in our beds, are pictured in our family portraits, and often earn a great deal of space in our holiday letters. They also, in many cases, listen attentively to our problems. Some surveys show that our pets are better listeners than our spouses. Walk your pets together with your neighbors and you will feel less lonely, which helps ward off Alzheimer’s. Learn what’s likely to be the first sign of Alzheimer’s (even before getting lost).
Choose the brightest of the bunch
The pigments that lend bright colors to many fruits and vegetables are especially powerful sources of antioxidants. Higher vegetable consumption was associated with slower rate of cognitive decline in 3,718 people aged 65 years and older who participated in the Chicago Health and Aging Project. All of the study participants scored lower on cognitive tests at the end of the study than they did at the beginning, but those who consumed more than four daily servings of vegetables experienced a 40 percent slower decline in their abilities than people who consumed less than one daily serving
Get a massage
One research review out of University of Miami and Duke University concluded that massage helped to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol while boosting levels of brain chemicals thought to be associated with positive emotions.
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