Way to boost memory!
Remember Sleeping Well?
Can you really sleep your way to a better memory? Sound too good to be true? Believe, believe!
Wait a second though. Isn’t our blog focused on active aging? How active can sleep be? (Not referring to sleep walking if you wondered.) Since we define “active aging” as making good choices about wellness, exercise, movement, and health habits, then sleep habits definitely come into play.
If you’ve been reading our posts for a bit, you know my sister and I have a particular interest in the connection between the brain and body.
Newly researched pink noise is a real memory booster #Babyboomers #Activeaging
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Pinky Promise that You’ll Improve Your Memory
Jammies time; Go for pink
Guess what? Do you use background sounds to help you sleep? While “white noise” such as a static, steady background hum nicely lulls us to sleep, newly researched “pink” noise is a real memory booster. Pink noise offers rhythmic variation with a mix of high and low frequencies. Examples might include falling rain, waves lapping at a shore, or an oscillating fan. White noise is steady and eventually gets ignored by the brain; pink noise has an intermittent quality that keeps your neurons firing, positively affecting memory storage during deep sleep stages.
Someone did not get enough sleep
Getting enough quality sleep becomes more problematic with age. As we get older, we sleep more lightly and get less deep sleep. Aging is also linked to shorter time spans of sleep, although studies show we still need as much sleep as when we were younger. The exciting aspect about pink noise is that the study (from Northwestern University) focused on older adults, who performed better on memory tests after just one night listening while snoozing.
Already well established is that:
- US adults on average get too little sleep. Aim for at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Less than 7 hours results in lower blood flow to the brain;
- Too little sleep increases health risks and impairs cognitive abilities;
- Not enough sleep increases stress.
(Learn more about how you can use sleep time to improve your looks, health, and weight. Check out Sleep Your Way to a Better Brain and Body and Sleep Better, Weigh Less, Look Younger.
Older adults performed better on memory tests after just 1 night listening to pink noise while…
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Better Memory, More Creativity – You Get it All with ZZZZzzzzzss
The older adult pose vs child’s pose Remember those ZZZZZzzzzsss
A 2010 Harvard study discovered that those whose naps were long enough to enter REM sleep did 40% better on a test of creativity than nappers who didn’t get any REM sleep and non-nappers. That REM sleep gave the brain time and the ability to work creatively on various test problems.
If you really want a better memory, easier learning and enriched creativity, add pink noise to your nightly 7-9 sleep hours.
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Kymberly Williams-Evans, MA
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