Keep your mind sharp for life

Our brains age along with the rest of us, and around 40% of us will deal with some form of memory loss after 65. The good news? Easy lifestyle tweaks can give you the brain of someone up to 15 years younger, according to research in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. To safeguard your memory, just...

- Alex Fulton

Pause for quiet

Daily meditation turns back the clock on the part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) involved in memory and decision-making. Harvard scientists found people in their 50s who meditated daily for 40 minutes had the same amount of gray matter in one part of the prefrontal cortex as those in their 20s—even though the cortex shrinks with age. Meditation curbs production of the stress hormone cortisol, which can shrink brain tissue.