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SENIOR Health Fair - September 26, 2018 - 13 If Travel is on your Bucket List, AAA is here to help! AAA members must make advance reservations through AAA Travel to obtain Member Benefits and savings. Not responsible for errors or omissions. Your local AAA club acts only as an agent for its travel vendors and is a motor club with a principal place of business at 12901 N. Forty Drive, St. Louis, MO 63141. Copyright ©2018 Automobile Club of Missouri. All Rights Reserved If you can dream it, we can send you there. Make this your year to try European river cruising, Canadian rail journeys, the islands of the Caribbean or an Alaska land-and-sea adventure. Make your travel dreams come true and SAVE BIG with AAA Travel. Call or visit AAA Travel in Bentonville today! CALL: 479-254-9223 VISIT: 1501 SE Walton Boulevard Bentonville, AR 72712 HAWAII PERU FRANCE GERMANY AFRICA IRELAND ITALY CANADA CARIBBEAN CHINA AUSTRALIA ALASKA EGYPT ENGLAND HOLLAND USA COSTA RICA JAPAN ICELAND SPAIN Where are my keys? By Karen Rice with Metro Creative The Arkansas chapter of the Alzheimer's Association reports that more than 60,000 people are living with Alzheimer's disease in our state. Since cognitive decline is among the first signs of most types of dementia, reducing your risk with brain-healthy habits is important. Forgetfulness can affect anyone. For example, few, if any, adults can say they have not experienced moments when they could not find their keys. And once the keys are found, people move on without giving much thought to why they did not immediately remember where they left their keys. Isolated incidents where people cannot recall where they placed their car keys or other minor bouts with forgetfulness do not occur by accident. In fact, the Harvard Medical School notes that they are likely byproducts of age-related changes in thinking skills. When people reach their 50s, chemical and structural changes in the brain may begin to occur, and these changes can affect a person's ability to process memories. Father Time may be a formidable foe, but people can take steps to give their memories a boost as they get older. • Exercise. Becoming more active can improve brain volume, reduce risk for dementia and improve thinking and memory skills. The journal Neurology found that older people who vigorously exercise performed better on cognitive tests than others of the same age, placing them at the equivalent of 10 years younger. Increased blood flow that occurs with physical activity may help generate new neurons in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved with learning and memory. · Eat a healthy diet. A study published in 2015 in the journal Neurology found that people who eat healthy diets with lots of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and fish and little alcohol and red meat may be less likely to experience declines in their memory and thinking skills. Authored by Andrew Smyth of McMaster University in Ontario and the National University of Ireland in Galway, the study following more than 27,000 people in 40 countries for an average of roughly five years. All participants were 55 and older and had diabetes or a history of heart disease, stroke or periph- eral artery disease. Those who ate the healthiest diets were 24 percent less likely to experience cognitive decline than people with the least healthy diets. · Embrace recognition instead of trusting recall. Dr. Joel Salinas, a neurolo- gist who specializes in behavioral neurology and neuropsychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, notes that human beings are better at recognition than recall. That means people are more likely to remember something they read, such as a note or a list, than something they're simply told. · Recognize the value of repetition. The Harvard Medical School notes that people might be more inclined to remember what they hear if they repeat it out loud. Names and addresses might be more easily remembered after they're repeated out loud because repetition increases the likelihood that the brain will record the information and be capable of retrieving it later. When studying for exams, many students repeat important points to themselves time and again, and that same approach can be applied by adults who are trying to improve their memories. · Break things down. Breaking things down into small chunks also can help improve memory. If tasked with remembering something extensive, such as a speech, focus on a single sentence at a time, only moving on to the next sentence when you're confident you have successfully committed the preceding sentence to memory. Periodic memory lapses are often nothing to worry about. But men and women concerned about maintaining their memories can employ various strategies to do just that. Tips for boosting memory and reducing your risk for cognitive decline "Father Time may be a formidable foe, but people can take steps to give their memories a boost as they get older."