LEARN A NEW SKILL

Always be learning. Yes, that sounds like the kind of thing your uncle would post on social media but maybe, just maybe, your uncle is a neuroscientist. Learning new skills is a well-established way of boosting your brain power and slowing mental decline as we age.

The reason is that when we learn something new – it could be a sport, a language, different skills at work – our brains make new neural pathways and patterns. The density of our brain’s white matter increases, and so does our processing speed. Over a lifetime, these cognitive jolts can help to stave off neurodegenerative disease.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US studied a group of people who carried the APOE4 genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Older people with the APOE4 genotype tend to have lower cognitive function, but this study found that APOE4 carriers with a high level of lifelong learning delayed their cognitive impairment by an average of nine years.

The trick is, you can’t just fall back on the stuff you know you’re good at. You have to challenge yourself (and your brain) to make those connections by trying new things. On the plus side, there’s a good chance that it will make you feel great, too. London Economics, a policy and economics consultancy, carried out a survey for the government’s Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and found that 80 per cent of learners had improved self confidence or self-esteem as a result of their learning.