Recharging your batteries — both mental and lithium

Other types of batteries also need attention, like the one that powers our brains. One of the lesser-known parts of that organ is norepinephrine, also known as the “stress transmitter.” It is described in a ScienceDaily.com article, “Stress Transmitter Wakes Up Your Brain Over 100 Times a Night and It’s Perfectly Normal.” That’s right, norepinephrine, which is related to adrenaline, drives our “fight or flight” response and briefly wakes up our brain while we sleep. “There is much more to sleep than meets the eye”, and the influence of norepinephrine on sleep is something we share with all other mammals. “Although norepinephrine technically causes the brain to wake up more than 100 times a night, we don’t think of it as waking up. Neurologically, you wake up, because your brain activity during these brief moments is the same as when you are awake. But the moment is so brief that the sleeper will not notice it.” In fact, “the refreshing part of sleep is driven by waves of norepinephrine… Brief awakenings could be said to reset the brain so it’s ready to store memory when you drift back into sleep.”

Albert Schweitzer stated that “happiness is nothing more than good health and bad memory”, but a healthy memory is essential for human well-being. Napping in the afternoon has been shown to improve memory, but not for everyone. Napping makes me feel bad, but my roommate of 49 years has turned her 15- to 20-minute power naps into an art, according to the National Sleep Foundation. According to “Benefits of Napping,” an NSF article from last year, “A 20-minute nap is the best length. A short nap like this allows your mind and body to rest without entering the deeper stages of sleep. If you have time and need a longer nap, a 60- to 90-minute nap is enough time to get into deep, slow-wave sleep, but it ends in the lighter stages of sleep so you feel alert when you wake up. Average length naps of around 45 minutes can be problematic because you’re likely to wake up during slow-wave sleep, the deepest stage, which can leave you with that groggy feeling, called sleep inertia, when you wake up.”

“Scientists found that when people napped for around 30 minutes, they had better memory recall and higher overall cognition than those who didn’t nap and those who slept longer.” The NSF recommended several steps to a productive nap: Take a nap before 2 p.m. so your normal nighttime sleep patterns aren’t interrupted, drink “a small amount of coffee” just before your nap, as coffee will help to wake up in half an hour. at that time, and nap in cool, quiet, dark places. Siesta is not for me, but its benefits for others are evident; As one of my heroes, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, noted, “Think of the better world it would be if everyone, the entire world, had cookies and milk around 3:00 p.m. every afternoon and then lay on our blankets for a while. nap.”

Another well-established fact is that our memory declines as we age, and with sieve-like memory from infancy, “Tips from a Neurologist to Protect Your Memory,” a recent New York Times article written by Hope Reese, told me It caught your eye, especially when you read that, according to neurologist Dr. Richard Restak of the George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health, and author of more than 20 books on memory, “deterioration is not inevitable.” Restak said that our working memory, “which sits between immediate recall and long-term memory, and is tied to intelligence, concentration, and achievement…this is the most critical type of memory, and exercises to strengthen it they must be practiced daily. ” Restak “points out 10 ‘sins’ or ‘stumbling blocks’ that can erode memory skills.

“Inattention is the main cause of memory difficulties, Restak said. “It means you didn’t encode the memory correctly.” Regular memory exercises, such as adding without calculators, memorizing shopping lists instead of relying on a written list, or playing memory-enhancement games such as Restak’s Favorite 20 Questions, are important because “the questioner must have in memory all the answers above. to guess the correct answer. Restak also warned against technology-related practices that distract our focus, such as smartphones; “the greatest impediment to memory is distraction…many of these tools have been designed with the goal of making the person who uses them addictive, and as a result, we often get distracted by them…this impedes our ability to focus on the present moment, which is critical for encoding memories.

A good way to counter this is to read more novels. “An early indicator of memory problems, according to Dr. Restak, is giving up fiction. “People, when they start having memory difficulties, tend to switch to nonfiction reading,” he said. “Fiction requires active engagement with the text, starting at the beginning and working through to the end. You have to remember what the character did on page 3 by the time you get to page 11.” The boost that reading novels provides is described in “7 Ways Reading Benefits Your Brain,” an article by TheBestPossibleBrain.com.” “When you read, your brain does much more than decipher words on a page. Reading is more neurobiologically demanding than processing images or speaking. It is neural training. As you read, disparate parts of your brain, such as vision, language, and associative learning, work together…reading can help protect memory and thinking skills, especially as you age.” Reading also reduces levels of beta-amyloid, a brain protein involved in Alzheimer’s, by keeping the mind cognitively stimulated.”

Some reading can lead to memory loss, such as “Straub’s Mixed Drink Handbook.” Compiled in 1913 by Jacques Straub, the leading bartender of New York’s Golden Age, his 700 recipes include sodas, cobblers, margaritas, sodas, flips, highballs, sours, slings, smashes, toddies and cocktails, including his “Cocktail de Alaska” (2.25 ounces gin, 0.75 ounces yellow Chartreuse, a dash of orange bitters, and a twist of lemon). A careful reading revealed only one other state so honored: Nebraska, a disgusting concoction made with black pepper, ginger beer, fresh corn on the cob, vodka, salt, cayenne, and simple corn syrup. Straub was also known for Diarrhea Mixture: 3 dashes of Jamaican ginger, 1 dash of peppermint, 1 pony (1 ounce) of blackberry brandy, 1 pony of “good” brandy, and “a little nutmeg on top.” Surprisingly, Straub was also a teetotaler. To settle my stomach and protect my memory, I prefer the advice of “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”