TRAIN YOUR BRAIN

Tap these genius strategies to improve your brain fitness and maintain your mental edge.

- SALLY WADYKA AND MAGGIE SEAVER

EVER FIND YOURSELF blanking during a work meeting? Or do you sometimes jumble perfectly easy sentences? If you're young and relatively healthy, you might wonder: What's the deal?

Brain blips can be unnerving, but they're completely normal. The good news is that they're rarely the sign of a declining mind. We tend to think of youth as a time of peak mental capacity and that once our child-prodigy days are gone, there's no hope left. But the human brain is most likely at its best during midlife, when life experiences combine with decades of neural connections, resulting in peak intelligence and ability.

"We may not learn or recall information quite as quickly as we did in our teens and 20s, but during our 30s, 40s, and 50s, we get better at what matters most: making decisions, synthesizing information, and coming up with big ideas," says Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD., the founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas. That means however old you are now, it's never too late to adopt healthy habits that will get your brain in good shape-and even improve with time.

As we age, it's natural for neurons to fire more slowly, but stress and anxiety cause people to pathologize perfectly normal experiences like forgetting an acquaintance's name (again). "You probably pay attention to the few things that go wrong but don't give your brain credit for the thousands of things it did right," Chapman points out.

Instead of focusing on the occasional lapse, concentrate on daily habits. What you do today will play a significant role in whether you operate optimally in the present, and even whether you develop dementia later in life. When it comes to brain function, everyday behavior matters as much as-if not more than-your DNA. Whether you're 23 or 63, here are five proven ways to gain a mental edge for years to come.