HOW TO STAY YOUNG

WORK towards achieving and maintaining a happy marriage. A bigger predictor than cholesterol level at age 50 for health at age 80 is the quality of your relationships. Good relationships protect the brain. Especially in their 80s, a person who feels they are in an attached relationship will retain sharper memories for longer and enjoy better health.

BUT don’t fear divorce. The longest study on health and happiness ever conducted, the Harvard Grant Study, found that those who remarried were often just as happy as those who stayed in their first marriage.

CULTIVATE your CQ. We all know about IQ and your emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ, is an increasingly familiar metric too. Cognitive scientists now talk about a third, CQ — the curiosity quotient. Openness and curiosity correlate highly with good health and long life.

GET sketching. If you need to remember something, draw it. The deeper we pay attention, the more likely we are to form robust memories.

HAVE a good conversation. Navigating the complex mores and potential pitfalls of dealing with another human being is about the most complex thing we humans can do. It exercises vast neural networks, keeping them tuned up, in shape and ready to fire.

GO FOR a walk outside. Every minute you walk on an unpaved trail requires you to make hundreds of microadjustments to foot pressure, angle and pace. These stimulate the neural circuitry of your brain in the precise way that it evolved to be used.

OR JUST get out of your chair! Even the tiniest amount of physical activity improves brain function.