Top Ten Memory Exercises for Seniors

As our bodies age, they begin to operate less efficiently. There is a general decline in the functioning of our various biological processes, and we can experience many unpleasant physical and mental side effects as a result. However, it is important to realize that this process is not inevitable. It is only a tendency, one that can be overcome in a number of different ways. Exercise is one of the most effective ways we have to stem the tide of the aging process, to keep our bodies healthy and strong even as we grow older.

Fortunately, there are mental exercises we can perform that will help preserve, repair, and even restore some of our lost or fading mental abilities, including our memories. It is one of the interesting facts of neuroscience that our thoughts actually have power over our physical brains, so that when we change our thinking habits, it can actually change the structure and functioning brain.

Here are ten activities you can perform that are guaranteed to improve your memory, if this is your specific concern:

1) Association

One way to remember things more clearly is to create linkages between different concepts, ideas, words, and visual pictures. Pick some common elements between disparate concepts, and then try to come up with something memorable based on those commonalities. If, for example, you wanted to remember the name “Roosevelt”, you could picture a giant red rose with legs running across the African veldt. Or if you wanted to remember the New Deal, you could picture President Roosevelt at a card table dealing a hand of poker. All kinds of associations like this can be created – the choices are up to you. As an exercise, you could try to memorize lists using this process, coming up with clever associations for things like all the states or state capitals, or all the song titles of a particular artist, etc., basically anything that suits your fancy. The websitememorise.org has a lot of suggestions for activities that involve memorization through association. Read More.

Into the Woods—Movie Review

by Peter J. O'Connell

Into the Woods. Released: Dec. 25, 2014. Running time: 125 mins. Rated: PG for thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.

Into the Woods is a new take on some old stories. It's Disney's production, directed by Rob Marshall, of music masters Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's hit show that first appeared on Broadway in the 1980s.

In it some classic fairy tales are combined, highlighted for their edgier features, and propelled by (mostly) zippy songs. The premise is that a witch (Meryl Streep) assigns a childless couple (Emily Blunt and James Corden) to find a red cape, a glass slipper, a white cow and blonde hair. If they do, the witch will regain her lost beauty, and the couple will have the child they long for.

This assignment sends the couple into the woods and into contact with, of course, Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and Mr. Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp); Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), her evil stepmother (Christine Baranski) and her prince (Chris Pine); Jack of the Beanstalk Daniel Huttlestone) and his mother (Tracey Ullman); and Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy) and her prince (Billy Magnussen).

The cast, ranging from superstars to emerging stars to veteran character actors to talented youngsters, is in top-notch form (hmmm … maybe some dissent there re. Johnny Depp). Special shout-outs might go to Streep (a commanding presence—as always), Kendrick (a pitch-perfect performance), and Crawford (who handles her post-Wolf song “I Know Some Things” with sly and subtle skill). The movie's production values—sets, costumes, effects--are what might be called “Disney familiar.” This familiarity will appeal to many, though some may feel that a more innovative approach would have better fitted the “revisionist” nature of the film.

Into the Woods moves along briskly for about two-thirds of its length. The last third, however, becomes heavy-handed (or, maybe, given what transpires, “heavy-footed” would be a more descriptive term) in making the point that the ending of fairy tales may sometimes be, so to speak, “happily ever after—not so much.” This section dissipates some of the feeling of fun (albeit astringent fun) generated by the film up to this point. Overall, though, Into the Woods is well worth a trip into your movie theatre.

 

80-Odd Years of 'Happy': Retirement Village Dances Along to Pharrell's Hit (VIDEO)

 I love this video!--TG

Pharrell Williams's hit "Happy" has been playing ad nauseam for almost a year now, but these senior citizens make it worth another listen. 

When you hear the words "retirement community," visions of dentures, naps and early-bird dinners may dance in your head – but the main thing filling this senior living center is actual dancers. 

Sixty residents and staff members of the Diana Isaac Retirement Village in Christchurch, New Zealand, collaborated to show off their best moves in this cover, "80-Odd Years of Happy." The smile-inducing clip is full of senior folks youthfully exercising, swimming, spinning and singing. 

They have style, too! Pharrell's signature bow tie and hat may look even better on this video's leading man. Click here to see the video.

6 Ways Pets Can Improve Your Health

Have you ever noticed that you feel better when you're around your pet?

It's true. Spending quality time with a dog, cat or other animal can have a positive impact on your mood and your health. Pets can be calming stress-fighters.

"We found that pet owners, on average, were better off than non-owners, especially when they have a higher-quality relationship with their pets," says pet researcher Allen R. McConnell, PhD. He's a professor of psychology at Miami University. "What [makes] a meaningful relationship varies from person to person.”

For some active people, that includes playing ball or Frisbee in the park. For others who can’t get outside, just petting your dog can help you feel connected.

Pets can help you in other ways, too.

1. A Healthier Heart

Your dog may make you less likely to get heart disease. Why? Dog owners walk more and have lower blood pressure than people who don't have dogs.

Pets can also be good for you if you already have heart problems.

Heart attack survivors and people with serious abnormal heart rhythms who own dogs live longer than people with the same heart problems who don't have pets, studies show. Read More.

Read To Put Yourself To Sleep

Reading helps the brain relax. John Tesh explains how picking up a book can help put you to sleep.
If you wake up in the middle of the night, try doing the one thing that instantly put you to sleep when you were in school: Read. 
That’ the latest from the Martha Jefferson Sleep Medicine Center…Remember how you used to have to fight to keep your eyes open during reading assignments in school? That same impulse can help you fall back asleep now, because reading helps the brain relax. It’s about the repetition – page after page, line after line. So get out of bed and go lie on the couch. 

You need to read out of the bed so you can condition yourself to associate your bed with your biological sleep phase. Then grab any nearby book and read. But our expert says you need to avoid an exciting thriller that gets your heart racing — it’ll stimulate you instead of sedate you. Read something technical or even a self help book but not a storm of swords. Read More.

Unbroken—Movie Review

by Peter J. O'Connell                      

Unbroken. Released: Dec. 25, 2014. Running time: 137 mins. Rated: PG-13 for war violence, including intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language.

The heroic epics of ancient times usually began “in medias res.” This Latin phrase means “in the middle of the action.” Flashbacks creating the back story followed. This is also the approach that director Angelina Jolie takes in Unbroken, the story of an American Olympian and World War II hero, Louie Zamperini.

The action into which we are plunged at the beginning of the film is a truly stunning sequence depicting the bombing run of a B-24 on a Japanese position in the Pacific in 1943. We see that such planes were essentially simply steel shells, with open sections, and we feel the intense reactions of Louie and the rest of the crew as the B-24 flies and fights its way through flak-filled skies swarming with enemy fighter planes.

Flashbacks show us Louie, played by Jack O'Connell, growing up in an immigrant Italian Catholic family in California. Young Louie starts getting into trouble but is fleet of foot and develops discipline and determination by becoming a local track-and-field star rather than a juvenile delinquent. He even becomes one of America's standout athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Louie's discipline and determination, as well as religious faith and the knowledge that he is loved by his family, sustain him in the ordeals that afflict him during the war. On a rescue mission, his plane crashes into the Pacific. He is one of only three survivors, who spend an astonishing 47 days in rubber life rafts in the shark-filled ocean waters. We see the desperate measures that the three take to stay alive. Finally, they are simultaneously rescued and captured when a Japanese naval vessel comes upon them.

Brutal treatment in two prison camps follows. Louie is singled out for especially harsh measures by Watanabe, a sadistic Japanese officer played by Takamasa Ishihara. (Ishihara's sleek, smooth features and silken manner remind one of an Asian version of early James Spader.) Louie draws this attention because of being an Olympian, and also, the film hints, because Watanabe may feel a homoerotic attraction to him that results in a kind of love/hate syndrome.

Louie's finest moment comes when the Japanese offer him a comfortable lifestyle if he will make broadcasts against the United States—and he refuses. On-screen information tells us that Louie underwent some emotional and psychological difficulties after the war but overcame them through religious faith and the love of his wife and family. Actual news footage shows him running with the Olympic torch in Japan in 1988—running past one of the prison camps where he was held. He died at age 97 in July 2014.

Jolie's film, which is based on Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling book and includes the noted Coen brothers among its screenwriters, is a very worthy endeavor, well served by O'Connell, Ishihara and the rest of its relatively little-known cast, but it tends to evoke admiration for Louie Zamperini without forging an emotional bond with him for audiences. However, as we note the men who flew with Zamperini and the hundreds imprisoned with him, the film does remind us that his struggle and eventual triumph differed only in degree from that of so many others of what has been rightly called “the greatest generation.” See the film for its own merits and as a salute to them.  

Happy Holidays!

"We should live every day like it is a holiday, being thankful and spending time with family, and looking hopefully to the future."