Natural Health Remedies

Having spent almost four months blogging about health I just realized I’ve missed out a very important topic: memory. We all know that to keep our bodies fit and healthy we should get physical exercise and have a salad a day. But what about memory? Most of us think that loosing our memories is just something that goes hand-in-hand with getting older, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  If you want to learn how to improve you’re memory you’ll be pleasd to know that there are some memory techniques that can be learnt.  Bear in mind hower that your memory won’t magically improve over night.  You really need to work at improving your memory over time, it will happen, you just need some patience.

The Amazing Memory Kit

My mum bought The Amazing Memory Kit: Everything You Need to Improve Your Memory! a couple of years ago and, surprise surprise, forgot to use it. So over the weekend I decided to drag it out and check it over. The creator is Dominic O’Brien who has won the Wold Memory Championships eight times for being able to recall an amazing amount of information. He always believed that he was a slow learner however after seeing someone recall 52 playing cards in the correct order he decided to investigate a way of remembering better.

The kit includes a 63-page book which describes the various techniques of improving memory; a Magical Memory Journey Mapbook; a Memory Wheel and Memory Cards.

Memory Techniques

When I first looked at the kit I thought that it would be full of IQ-style questions designed to give your brain a mental workout. However when I started reading the book I realized that it’s more of a system which you have to learn and develop.

Visual Imagery

Many of the techniques involve the imagination and creating bizarre stories. For instance, if you have to memorize a list of 10 objects you should include those objects in a crazy story. Here’s the beginning of a story he tells in the book: “An ATHLETE who is starting to FLAG hit the DUST when a GOLBLIN struck him on the TEMPLE with a stone…”

The more crazy the imagery is the more likely you are to remember it.

Other techniques include imagining that you are placing object into drawers eg a bottle of BOLinger is placed in the BOLIVIA drawer. I’m not so keen on this technique myself, but I’m working on it. Of course, everyone is different; you might like this technique straight away.

Memory Journeys

Is there a journey you do so often you can remember it inside out? For instance going to work or the gym? Well, use that mental map to attach objects to landmarks on the journey. Again the more bizarre the imagery the more it will stick in your mind. Included in the kit is the journey map which is great for people who find it difficult to use their own mental journey. I used this book yesterday and was able to remember 25 objects perfectly. I imagined all sort of strange things including stealing sunglasses from a scare crow and using a guitar to play volleyball. I can still remember the 25 objects in the correct order today.

Remembering Faces

This is the part I really have to work a lot more on. When you first meet some one you need to look at their most distinguishing feature and somehow link it to their name using imagery/word association. The kit comes with a wheel that you can rotate that has 13 faces, names and careers on it. You can rotate the discs to give more than 2,000 “party guests”.

Remember Numbers

Let’s face it, numbers are pretty dull. Which is why Dominic has created some techniques to combat memory blocks. He created the DOMINIC method which involves allocating a letter to a number. For instance, 1 = A, 2 = B and 3 = C. These letters then become the initials of famous people. If you want to remember 23 then that would be BC which might be Bill Clinton.

At first I didn’t understand the point in doing this. It all sounds a bit of a palaver. However if you need to remember really long strings of numbers then you can put the names of famous people into your journey map.

To remember 237263 it might be Bill Clinton (23) is washing your car, then you see George Bush (72) pulling hamburgers out a trash can, at the bus stop you see Sean Connery (63) begging for spare change.

Alternatively you can look at the shape of each number and decide what it resembles. For instance a swan looks like a 2 whilst a boomerang looks like the number 7.

Conclusion

The book is really easy to read so you don’t have to worry about it being too technical. Obviously you’ll want to re-read it a number of times to fully understand the concepts but overall it’s very accessible for the average person. Don’t expect to read through the book and suddenly be able to remember better than you did yesterday. You will need to work at it.

The book also talks about using the above techniques to remember poems, speeches and remaining composed during a job interview. These things, you could say, are more practical than just remembering lists as a party trick.

I really like the kit and would recommend anyone who wants to improve or maintain their memory to buy The Amazing Memory Kit. The more you work on it the better you’ll become.

If you like Rooibos tea, you’ll love this true story I read in the Readers Digest magazine.

“A cousin of mine works in a speciality tea shop where the choice is so diverse it can leave customers confused. She’s quite used to people having no idea what type of Earl Grey they want, for instance, or requesting a calomine tea instead of camomile.

But when someone asked for “that detective tea - the Scottish one!” she was flummoxed.

Finally, she worked out what the customer was on about - and handed over a packet of Rooibos.”

Deborah Mercer, Theddlethorpe, Linconshire.

(For those who don’t understand what’s funny, Rebus is a character in a series of detective novels by Ian Rankin whilst Rooibos is a type of tea.)

I’ve been noticing an increase in the number of TV shows about artificial colourings, flavours and preservatives (aka E numbers) in children’s food. One show was about children going on a “War Time” diet whilst others simply were complaining about E numbers in general.

The one thing that strikes me about all of these shows is how parents want to blame everyone else for these foods except themselves. Often to demonstrate the problem they would show huge amounts of “kids” foods laid out on a table. There would be fairy cakes, sweets, jelly beans, cola and all sorts of other junk.

The parents would then be shown the foods and be told about all the bad stuff in it. I find it difficult to believe it when the parents turn round and say they didn’t realize the food is unhealthy.

C’mon, if something is fluorescent pink it’s hardly going to be healthy is it??!!

Of course it’s the supermarkets that get the blame for it all. I’m not saying that supermarkets are holier than thou but there are a lot of foods clearly marked as not having artificial additives in it too.

What ever happened to home baking?

I think back on my childhood with fond memories of baking cakes, pancakes and flapjacks. Because they were home made we had total control over the ingredients. Don’t parents bake with their children any more? Is really all too much bother? If it is I think it’s really sad.

Why is Kids Food also Junk Food?

When I was on a bus in Malta a couple of years ago I noticed an English couple with two kids. One of the children probably wasn’t even a year old yet the mother was stuffing marshmallows into its mouth. You’d think it was something healthy the way she was shoving them down, the kid didn’t even look like it wanted them.

Then my parents saw a woman feeding a baby cola from a babies bottle along with white chocolate. Wow, I suppose that’s considered a balanced diet in some parts!

Am I the only person who sees the madness? Yes, of course I think artificial ingredients should be removed from food but ultimately we all have a choice in what foods we eat. No one is forcing us to buy these unhealthy foods.

I just love it when you think you’re doing your body good then some journalist decides to ruin it all for you. The other evening I was watching a show called The One Show which raised the question of fruit smoothies being good for you.

Acid Test

You may already know that when you drop a dirty coin into some cola that it’ll come out clean. Well, they decided to carry out the same test with cola, fruit smoothie, coffee and water. When the coins came out of the cola and smoothie they were clean however the coins that were placed in the coffee and water were still dirty.

What this proves is that cola and fruit smoothies are acidic which can, over time, cause erosion of tooth enamel. To prevent this happening you should drink through a straw so that the liquid goes straight down your throat. Alternatively you can eat cheese because when acid levels in the mouth were tested, the acidity dropped to normal.

Sugar

They said that in a glass of fruit smoothie there’s 8 teaspoons of sugar. This is what I’m not too sure about. I’ve always believed that fruit is healthy for you and that sugar from fruit is different from refined cane sugar. Even if it does have high amount of sugar you do also get fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Lazy

It seems a lot of people are drinking smoothies because they can’t be bothered to eat raw fruit and vegetables. I wouldn’t suggest people do this, if you prefer to drink your daily amount of fruit and veg instead of preparing it yourself, then you’d be better of buying vegetable juice like V8.

I drink smoothies from time to time if I fancy something sweet and filling. I will continue to do so too however to me it’s more of a treat. The key is moderation. Ultimately fruit smoothies have got to be healthier than Sunny D. Surely?

Missy over at Groovy Vegetarian is running a really great contest to win a variety of goodies. They’re pretty good but I think talking part is more fun (have a read further down the page).

• hemp candle (from vegan karma)
• a 1 year sub to Vegetarian Times Mag (great recipes every month)
• organic soap (from love lula)
• $10 cash (via paypal)
• a one month link on Blog About Your Blog (a PR4 blog)
• plus a link on Friday’s Groovy Blog Contest Winner post

All you have to do is come up with a funny caption to go with this photo. My entry is: “I had two ears this morning!” Can you come up with something funnier?