Elizabeth Filips, medical student busy learning a lot of information, explains how in today’s video:

Active processing

An important thing to keep in mind is that forgetting is an active process, not passive as once believed. It has its own neurotransmitters and pathways, and as such, to improve memory, it’s essential to understand and manage forgetting.

So, how does forgetting occur? Memories are stored with cues or tags, which help retrieve information. However, overloading cues with too much information can cause “transient forgetting”—that is to say, the information is still in there somewhere; you just don’t have the filing system required to retrieve the data. This is the kind of thing that you will try hard to remember at some point in the day when you need it, fail, and then wake up at 3am with an “Aha!” because your brain finally found what you were looking for. So, to avoid that, use unique and strong cues to help improve recall (mnemonics are good for this, as are conceptual anchors).

While memory does not appear to actually be finite, there is some practical truth in the “finite storage” model insofar as learning new information can overwrite previous knowledge, iff your brain mistakes it for an update rather than addition. So for that reason, it’s good to periodically go over old information—in psychology this is called rehearsal, which may conjure theatrical images, but it can be as simple as mentally repeating a phone number, a mnemonic, or visually remembering a route one used to take to go somewhere.

Self-perception affects memory performance. Negative beliefs about one’s memory can worsen performance (so don’t say “I have a bad memory”, even to yourself, and in contrast, find more positive affirmations to make about your memory), and mental health in general plays a significant role in memory. For example, if you have ever had an extended period of depression, then chances are good you have some huge gaps in your memory for that time in your life.

A lot of what we learned in school was wrong—especially what we learned about learning. Traditional (vertical) learning is harder to retain, whereas horizontal learning (connecting topics through shared characteristics) creates stronger, interconnected memories. In short, your memories should tell contextual stories, not be isolated points of data.

Embarking on a new course of study? Yes? (If not, then why not? Pick something!)

It may be difficult at first, but experts memorize things more quickly due to built-up intuition in their field. For example a chess master can glance at a chess board for about 5 seconds and memorize the position—but only if the position is one that could reasonably arise in a game; if the pieces are just placed at random, then their memorization ability plummets to that of the average person, because their expertise has been nullified.

What this means in practical terms: building a “skeleton” framework before learning can enhance memorization through logical connections. For this reason, if embarking on a serious course of study, getting a good initial overview when you start is critical, so that you have a context for the rest of what you learn to go into. For example, let’s say you want to learn a language; if you first quickly do a very basic bare-bones course, such as from Duolingo or similar, then even though you’ll have a very small vocabulary and a modest grasp of grammar and make many mistakes and have a lot of holes in your knowledge, you now have somewhere to “fit” every new word or idea you learn. Same goes for other fields of study; for example, a doctor can be told about a new drug and remember everything about it immediately, because they understand the systems it interacts with, understand how it does what it does, and can compare it mentally to similar drugs, and they thus have a “place” in that overall system for the drug information to reside. But for someone who knows nothing about medicine, it’s just a lot of big words with no meaning. So: framework first, details later.

For more on all this, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

How To Boost Your Memory Immediately (Without Supplements)

Take care!

Health opinions on coffee vary from “it’s an invigorating, healthful drink” to “it will leave you a shaking frazzled wreck”. So, what’s the truth and can we enjoy it healthily? Dr. Alan Mandell weighs in:

Enjoy it, but watch out!

Dr. Mandell is speaking only for caffeinated coffee in this video, and to this end, he’s conflating the health effects of coffee and caffeine. A statistically reasonable imprecision, since most people drink coffee with its natural caffeine in, but we’ll make some adjustment to his comments below, to disambiguate which statements are true for coffee generally, and which are true for caffeine:

• Drinking coffee caffeine first thing in the morning may not be ideal due to dehydration from overnight water loss.
• Coffee caffeine is a diuretic, which means an increase in urination, thus further dehydrating the body.
• Coffee contains great antioxidants, which are of course beneficial for the health in general.
• Cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, is generally at its peak in the morning. This is, in and of itself, good and correct—it’s how we wake up.
• Coffee caffeine consumption raises cortisol levels even more, leading to increased alertness and physical readiness, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and in this case, problems can arise because…
• Elevated cortisol from early coffee caffeine drinking can build tolerance, leading to the need for more coffee caffeine over time.
• It’s better, therefore, to defer drinking coffee caffeine until later in the morning when cortisol levels naturally drop.
• All of this means that drinking coffee caffeine first thing can disrupt the neuroendocrine system, leading to fatigue, depression, and general woe.
• Hydrate first thing in the morning before consuming coffee caffeine to keep the body balanced and healthy.

What you can see from this is that coffee and caffeine are not, in fact, interchangeable words, but the basic message is clear and correct: while a little spike of cortisol in the morning is good, natural, and even necessary, a big spike is none of those things, and caffeine can cause a big spike, and since for most people caffeine is easy to build tolerance to, there will indeed consistently be a need for more, worsening the problem.

In terms of hydration, it’s good to have water (or better yet, herbal tea) on one’s nightstand to drink when one wakes up.

If coffee is an important morning ritual for you, consider finding a good decaffeinated version for at least your first cup (this writer is partial to Lavazza’s “Dek Intenso”—which is not the same as their main decaf line, by the way, so do hold out for the “Dek Intenso” if you want to try my recommendation).

Decaffeinated coffee is hydrating and will not cause a cortisol spike (unless for some reason you find coffee as a concept very stressful in which case, yes, the stressor will cause a stress response).

Anyway, for more on all of this, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

• The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
• Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?

Take care!