The Vegan Lifestyle

Good memory is important to everybody. It is an essential part of intelligence. Most people need good memory – in schools, in the work sites, and even at homes.

Why do memory fail?

There are various reasons why people become forgetful. The following are some of the reasons or causes of forgetfulness: senility, alcoholic drinks, unbalanced diet, wrong lifestyle, diseases, lack of exercise, and accidents.

As we grow older, we tend to become more forgetful. This may be due in part to the acceptance as truth of the conventional belief that almost all old people become forgetful.This may be due to the slowing down of the  myriad of processes in the human systems as people grow older. But this belief system is reversible. People can be old and still have sharp, retentive memories.

Drinking liquor and other alcoholic drinks is very harmful to the brain. Thousands of brain cells die permanently during every drinking bout, and they are irreplaceable.

The brain thrives mostly on glucose, a sugar found naturally in honey and sweet fruits. This sugar can also be made artificially from carbohydrates by hydrolysis. For a brain to function excellently, it must be feed with food rich in glucose such as fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables. Avoid flesh meats, milk, and sugar. They destroy the memory.

You may wonder why milk and sugar are not good for memory. Milk and sugar combination is not good for memory. When sugar (not from fruits) are taken into the body, the pancreas is stimulated to secrete insulin to neutralize the excess sugar in the bloodstream. This causes a temporary deficiency of sugar, thus starving the brain of needful glucose.

Animal flesh meats are saturated with harmful chemicals, such as growth hormones and feed additives. They also contain stress hormone called 17-hydroxycorticosteroid that blocks the neurotransmitters to the brain. Animal products have chemicals or substances that have mind-altering effects such as thyramin in cheese; tryptamine in fish and sausages, and arachidonic acid. Junk foods and carbonated drinks are loaded with excitotoxins such as monosodium glutamate, aspartame, and caffein that are detrimental to the brain.

Staying late at night, and other forms of insomnia impair the memory, Accidents and diseases too can destroy the memory. And most off all, lack of exercise. Regular physical exercise enhances good blood circulation to the brain to supply glucose and oxygen. Most important, the brain must be trained to memorize regularly. Constant practice makes memorizing easier.

As people grow older, their senses become less keen, and their mental powers are diminished. This may be due to senility, wrong diet, bad lifestyle, and pessimistic mental attitude towards life.

Nowadays people are so busy to observe his sorroundings. His sensory organs are stunted and eventually result to forgetfulness. People are heavily bombarded with noise at home, in the work place, and in public places. These will weaken his power to concentrate, thus aggravating his forgetfulness to dementia.

To reverse this bad effects on memory, and to sharpen our mental faculties, we need to exercise our mind to solve hard problems. One of these is crossword puzzle. It improves our vocabulary for a better language skill.

The other two are solving sudoku squares, and playing the Rubik magic cubes.

Sudoku is a simple yet nerve-racking game. There are four categories: easy, medium, hard, and very hard. There is no math involve, and no formulas to use. Even statistics  cannot be used to predict the exact location of a certain number in a square. But it is not a guessing game. Trial and error technique should be used sparingly if ever. Always remember, each sudoku problem has one and only one unique solution.

Sudoku square is divided into 9 rows, and 9 columns that are grouped into 9 boxes composed of 3 rows and 3 columns each. To play, you must fill up all these squares with a number from 1 up to 9. No numbers can be repeated in the same row or in the same column. Also, no number can be repeated in a box.

There are essential methods to solve sudoku. They are the Complete method, the Force method, and the Last Square Left method. For hard and very hard sudokus, the following expert logic apply: the Channeling, the Partnerships, and the Trios, Quads, Quins.

Hard and very hard sudokus are nerve-racking. Even trial-and-error technique is not reliable most of the time. It is better to pencil lightly all the probable numbers in a square and eliminate the others using the different methods listed above. An answer, no matter how sure you are of its correctness is not absolutely correct until you reach the last square. And it can be very frustrating and can cause headaches when you find at the end that the last number does not belong in the last square. And it is very hard and near to impossibility to retrace back your path and find the square among the 81 where the wrong number was placed. There’s no better option but to erase all your answers and start the puzzle all over again.

Another puzzle that improves your IQ is the Rubik cube. It is a cube of 6 faces with different colors. There are 4 Rubik cubes available in the market: the 3x3x3; 4x4x4, and 5x5x5.

To play the Rubik cube, first disarrange or unscramble the cubes to different faces by combining different colors in each face. For a 3x3x3 cube, start by selecting the color of a center cube of a face. This should be your top face. Work out the cross, and fill up the remaining cubes of this face using an algorithm.

As soon as the first layer (top face) is completed, proceed to the second layer. Align all cubes of the same color, and fill up the edges using another algorithm. Once the second layer is completed, put the cube upside down, with the undone third layer on top. Proceed to make the cross using another algorithm. When done, re-align the median colors using another algorithm. Then fill up the other colors in this layer using another set of algorithm. When after completing this, the edges are not aligned, proceed by using the final algorithm until the cube is solved.

There are problems to encounter in a 4x4x4 and in a 5x5x5 Rubik cubes. The 4x4x4 cube is a little bit harder to solve compared to the 5x5x5 cube. The last moves in a 4x4x4 sometimes lead to 2 or 3 hard problems, which can be solved by using long complicated algorithms, before applying the final algorithm as in a 3x3x3 cube. This is the easiest way to solve the 4x4x4 and the 5x5x5 cubes – they must be treated as a 3x3x3 cube. The initial procedure in solving the 4x4x4 cube is to arrange together the 4 central cubes (2 in a row and 2 in a column) and count it as 1. By this, the 4x4x4 is converted into a 3x3x3. Once the cetral colors are solved, the edges colors are arranged together using another algorithm. Apply the same algorithm to solve the other edges. When the edges are correctly in place, proceed to solve as in a 3x3x3 cube using the final algorithm. But as I said, the end moves in a 4x4x4 may result to 2 or 3 hard problems which must be resolved before using the final algorithm of a 3x3x3 cube.

The 5x5x5 cube is easier to solve. As in 4x4x4 cube, arrange the central colors; this time, 9 cubes in a face (3 in a row and 3 in a column). Once the central colors of all 6 faces are done, proceed to arrange the edges. When all edges are in place, proceed as in 3x3x3 by using the final algorithm.