Brain Rules for Ageing Well

John Medina has written several of these Brain Rules books -- about music, about babies, about work, about teenagers -- and Brain Rules for Ageing Well offers advice (current in 2017) about how to preserve or even improve our brain function as we get older. It's written in a light, friendly style with enough science to be convincing but not enough to overwhelm the reader.

Most of Medina's advice is just sensible: stay connected to friends and family, learn new things, exercise, eat properly, lower your stress (easier said than done). He does devote part of one chapter to the theory of so-called Blue Zones, which unfortunately was recently pretty comprehensively debunked -- for a few years, there was a lot of hype around certain areas of the world, like Sardinia and Okinawa, where people seemed to live well beyond the expected age limit. People got very excited by the supposed lifestyles adopted by these Blue Zone inhabitants -- but it turned out that most of the zones were actually quite poor areas where welfare fraud was common, and the people who were apparently living to 110 had often died years before... Oh,well, back to the drawing board.

One finding in Brain Rules for Ageing Well that initially surprised me was the beneficial effect of marinating in nostalgia. Our brains lay down their most vivid memories during our late teens and early twenties, so reliving those years makes us feel more alive. I can certainly testify that listening to the upbeat music of my youth during my morning walks puts a pep in my step, and when my husband was preparing for a high school reunion last year, the mood rush lasted several weeks as old friends reconnected over group chats and shared memories. So maybe there's something in that -- though I won't be revisiting 80s fashions or hairstyles any time soon.