Two Words To Erase From Your Mind

I hear it all the time.  A friend is telling me something and before she finishes, there’s a pause.  She might clear her throat and crinkle her eyebrows.  Then she says, “Oh dear, another senior moment.”

Usually the person is over 50 – but lately I’ve been hearing it even from men and women in their 40s.

I have no idea who started that saying, “senior moment.”  It may have been funny the first ten times but now it’s in the mainstream of our language and it’s no laughing matter.

Although it seems harmless, when we say “senior moment,” we’re reinforcing and accepting a belief about our own aging.  We’re actually saying that we’re losing mental ability and that we accept it.

Realize that having your mind momentarily go blank happens to everyone.  Often it’s because your brain is full of various things that are vying for your attention.  If you feel the need to fill the silence gap, just mention that you have so many exciting things to tell and they’re all coming to the front of your mind at once.

Our words are very powerful, whether we’re saying them out loud or silently as thoughts.  Your words program your subconscious mind and your subconscious mind programs your biology.  Recent studies in neuroscience and cell biology show this to be true.

It’s important to stop “telling” your subconscious that you accept the belief that loss of mental ability is natural as you age.  Become conscious of what you are saying and thinking, and make it a habit to catch yourself before you utter the words, “senior moment.”  If they slip out occasionally, that’s okay.  Just start again to erase those two words from your vocabulary.

And here’s a way to program your brain with positive words:  whenever you’re telling someone something and the next thought seems to disappear, mentally say, “I have a clear, sharp mind,” before continuing.  Say it often enough and your brain will take the command and run with it.

For more in-depth information, read PRAYER IS GOOD MEDICINE: How to Reap the Healing Benefits of Prayer by Larry Dossey, M.D. – and The Genie in Your Genes: Epigenetic Medicine and the New Biology of Intention by Dr. Dawson Church.

You CAN affect your health by choosing positive and affirming thoughts!

REMINDER TIP Words are very powerful. Catch yourself each time you tell your subconscious mind that your memory’s not what it used to be.

Joy! Joy! Joy! ​is the first book to give kitchen-sink, detailed advice for de-stressing and beating the blues, seasoned with stories of how seven Body Mind Spirit habits dramatically and permanently transformed the author's life, including reversing Alzheimer's and conquering deep depression.

This transformational book of Mind Body Spirit habits could change your life forever.

SIGNS OF A STROKE

First, cut this out and put it on your refrigerator with some magnets:

SIGNS OF A STROKE – SAVE A LIFE! Tell the person: S   “Smile.” T   “Talk to me. Say, ‘Mary had a little lamb.’” R   “Raise both arms.” O   “Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.” Then you: K   Kall 911 if the person has trouble with any ONE of these. E   Educate others on these signs.

I’ve received a forwarded email several times in the past few years about how to tell if someone is having a stroke.Usually I just delete those emails that are circling the planet but occasionally I’ll open them for some important message or a good belly laugh. Don’t count on me though, to forward it to seven or nine or however many friends.

The one I looked at today was one of the important ones -- ways to identify a stroke and save lives.  And AGAIN I printed it out because I hadn’t memorized it any of the other times I’d read it.

But it’s four pages (!) - not a short, concise thing I can put on my refrigerator. Whoever wrote it made a valiant attempt to make it easy for us to memorize by having us remember the first three letters of STROKE. Then I got the idea to use ALL the letters and to share it with my readers. 

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within three hours, he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke…TOTALLY.  The trick is recognizing the signs of a stroke and then getting the patient medically cared for within three hours, which rarely happens. Oftentimes a stroke victim will say they just had a dizzy spell or tripped on something. It takes fast action by someone who knows the signs of a stroke.

If someone falls and seems somewhat disoriented or a bit shaken up, use these tips immediately. Look for slurred speech and weak muscles. When they stick out their tongue, if it’s crooked or goes to one side, that also indicates a stroke.

Yeah, so I can’t spell – but Kall 911 gets the point across. 

Growing younger means living a long, long time and having a strong, healthy body and clear, sharp mind until the day you leave this planet. Know how to recognize the signs of a stroke and you may be able to save a life and help someone avoid serious brain damage.  Pass it on.

Got a Small Problem? Here’s How to Overcome It

    Big and little, in momentous and in less earth-shaking ways, my mind body spirit practices have transformed my life. Some of my experiences with these practices are not earthshaking – but demonstrate how much they’ve changed my everyday perspective on life.

    Several months ago, I had a three-hour drive to a speaking event in southern Colorado. All my props and books and CDs were safely packed in my car, and my daughter was driving so I could get a little shuteye before going onstage. We had brought snacks, and I had a huge bath towel – no, it was more like a beach towel – to cover my clothes while munching on slices of apple, cheese wedges and crackers. I didn’t want anything that would mess up my elegant crocheted dress. I didn’t even hug the dog before we left, because he likes to put his toenails in the crochet holes and pull. But, no. If you’re thinking I ruined my dress that day, uh uh. That’s not it.

    When we arrived at the venue, I stepped out of the car and looked down. My feet were still in my bedroom slippers! I immediately realized that my strappy shoes, the ones that go with my elegant crocheted dress, were still waiting by the door of my bedroom, instead of in the trunk of my car where they should have been. These bedroom slippers are not the kind that could pass for shoes – they’re the fuzzy kind, the dirty fuzzy kind. I’m fastidious about making sure everything is flawless for my gigs and this was a major slip-up. 

    I’m proud to tell you that all I said was, Oh, dang.

    And here’s what I mean about how I’ve changed. Formerly I would have said, OH DAMN!! all caps, maybe 16 exclamation points plus a few choice expletives. Perhaps I would even have stamped my fuzzy-slippered foot. Worst of all, I would have held onto that negative feeling, allowing myself to go down into the rabbit hole of bleakness. That would have thrown off my pace during my talk and believe me, audiences notice that kind of thing.

    Instead, I did one of my quickie practices to center myself and ask for divine assistance. Then when I got inside, I took off my dirty slippers and my socks (those fuzzy slippers are too wide so I wear them with socks) and I gave my talk in bare feet. Sort of bohemian-style. Even got a standing ovation.

    It was a good reminder: maybe those things I think are so important aren’t really so crucial, after all. Like being perfect. Like never making mistakes.

    If you have a small problem and you want to overcome it, take these steps:

1.    Pause and close your eyes.
2.    Focus your attention on your heart.
3.    Breathe through your heart for about 30 seconds.
4.    Surrender your problem to Spirit and ask for peace.
5.    Open up and allow God’s peace to calm you.
6.    Say, “Thank you.”
7.    Smile.

What to do About Short Term Memory Loss

In the past decade hundreds of clinical trials, at an aggregate cost of over one billion dollars, have been conducted to find the ONE cure for Alzheimer’s Disease. But they all came up empty.

    It turns out that there is a cure for early Alzheimer’s, including short term memory loss– but it’s not one particular drug or toodling with one specific gene. In fact, it’s not ONE thing at all.

    In a small joint study, scientists from UCLA Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging found that memory loss may be reversed, and improvement sustained, using a lifestyle program that involves comprehensive changes in diet, brain stimulation, exercise, meditation, supplements and multiple additional steps that affect brain chemistry.

    Sounds almost exactly like the program I developed for myself in 2004 when evidence of my mental decline became progressively worse. My symptoms were very much like the early part of Alzheimer’s Disease that had claimed my mother ten years before: I was making copious notes because of short term memory loss; I didn’t ask a question because Icouldn’t remember if I had just asked it; and my tongue kept tripping on words, if I could evenfind the word.

    Some of the ten participants in UCLA/Buck Institute’s study had symptoms similar to mine. For example, patient 3’s memory was so bad that she used an iPad to record everything, then forgot her password. Her children noticed she commonly lost her train of thought in mid-sentence, and often asked them if they had carried out the tasks that she mistakenly thought she had asked them to do.

    The study was conducted by Dr. Dale Bredesen, UCLA’s Augustus Rose Professor of Neurology, director of the Easton Center and the paper’s author. Although other chronic illnesses such as heart disease, cancer and HIV have been improved through the use of combination therapies, this is the first time a clinical trial has been conducted for Alzheimer’s by combining a number of therapies.

    Dr. Bredesentheorized that, rather than a single targeted agent, the solution might be a multiple-component system approach. “The existing Alzheimer’s drugs affect a single target, but Alzheimer’s Disease is more complex. Imagine having a roof with 36 holes in it, and your drug patched one hole very well,” he said. “The drug may have worked, and a single hole may have been fixed, but you still have 35 other leaks, and so the underlying process may not be affected much.” Dr. Bredesen added that although the findings are “very encouraging,” the results are largely anecdotal and a more extensive, controlled clinical trial is needed.

    Of course, integrative functional medical practitioners have been combining diet and other lifestyle and healing techniques for decades to successfully reverse mild impairment associated with Alzheimer’s. They just did not have the necessary financing for clinical research studies.

    In the UCLA/Buck Institute study, cognitive decline was reversed in nine of the ten participants. The patient who had been diagnosed with late stage Alzheimer’s did not improve.

    The global burden of dementia is astounding, and on the rise. Alzheimer’s disease is now the third leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease and cancer. There are currently 5.2 million Americans with AD, and 75 million young Americans with the most important genetic risk factor, APO-e4, the Alzheimer’s geneI inherited.

    Cognitive decline can be reversed.I did it with my program of mind body spirit practices I developed and began using in 2004 and shared with the world in the books I have published. Today, at 81 years old, I am strong and healthy in mind body and spirit – and very grateful.

Ellen Wood of Taos, NM is an inspirational speaker and award-winning author of “Think and Grow Young.” Her new book is “Joy! Joy! Joy! 7 Mind Body Spirit Self-Help Practices to Relieve Stress and Anxiety, Reverse Memory Loss and Live Happy.” Contact her at ellen@bookofjoyjoyjoy.com.