Save Your Brain

Atrophy in your hippocampus is linked to terrible conditions including Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, a degraded hippocampus hurts your episodic memory and your ability to make cognitive maps and to imagine yourself in the future.

In case you’re wondering what’s a hippocampus, it’s a small organ that is part of your limbic system, a region of your brain that regulates emotions.  It’s also associated with memory, particularly long-term memory, and plays a major role in spatial navigation.

Most of you reading this are now  wondering how you can ensure your hippocampus is happy, functioning well, and even getting stronger.

And yet most of you are also degrading your hippocampus regularly, maybe even daily. After all, you often use a GPS, don’t you?

The hippocampus is your own internal GPS which maps your environment and helps you navigate. When we continuously rely on an external electronic device to do that work for us, the hippocampus begins to atrophy, much like our muscles when we don’t exercise.   When we pay attention to what’s around us we exercise our hippocampus and make it stronger.

Beyond the danger a GPS poses to your hippocampus, it causes other bad things. You pay less attention to what’s happening around you, you don’t notice your surroundings, you lose touch with the world, Alzheimer’s perhaps being your ultimate disconnection from reality.

While getting lost probably annoys you no end and for some leads to much stress and even fear, as you figure out how to get where you’re going it also leads to a healthier brain.

So get lost. Try to relax as you strengthen your hippocampus and discover things you’ve never seen or thought about before.

But don’t get lost alone. Take your children along and have a family adventure as you strengthen everyone’s hippocampus. Re-learn how to navigate without technology and teach your children this great skill.

Notice how you’re paying close attention to what’s around you and observing so much more than when you let a GPS plan your trip and guide your every move. And so are your children.

What a nice present to give them. A healthy hippocampus and the life benefits that come with it.