After the little example of brain fade at work I described yesterday, I thought it might be apposite to reflect on the things I am doing to promote my own brain health.
Actually I read an article the other day about an elderly brain scientist – that’s my little joke as in fact the man is both elderly, at 80 years old, and also studies the ageing brain. His advice was pretty much as I expected – mostly, that cardiovascular health is brain health. So, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, get plenty of exercise, don’t smoke, don’t drink too much booze, don’t get too overweight, and take your statins, diabetes, and blood pressure pills if you have to. It’s not rocket science! He also mentioned keeping your brain active, and what surprised me was that this included reading fiction. And here I was thinking it was just a hobby! But no, it has proven health benefits as well.
In the interests of broadening my reading horizons, and having been scarred by my recent inadvertent exposure to a soft porn novel masquerading as erotic fiction, I’m trying an old genre that was a favourite in high school – science fiction.
I’ve found one that someone has already bought on the family kindle, which I’m enjoying but I must confess by 5% through I’d already contemplated giving up on it a couple of times. My problem isn’t the complicated story of spaceships and aliens and various criminal activities, with a large cast of characters, but rather the excessive use of jargon. I get that this is a device to promote the feeling of being in a whole new world but it’s jarring when it’s just meaningless babble because you can’t know what they’re talking about. Here are some examples:
I can only say, it begins to make more sense the more you read – but it’s a dangerous tactic in my opinion. Anyway, in the interests of not losing my marbles any quicker than I have to, I shall persist.
