MHME 017: How To Make Lifestyle Habit Changes Easier So You Can Help Prevent Memory Loss Later with David Norris

Good lifestyle habits lead to better memory health

Even small changes to improve your life, building good habits, can have effects that add up to a point of... 

Better health, better cognitive function, and a better life.

Your choices will bear fruit. Just like my mango tree.

Who doesn’t love mangoes? The sweet smelling fruit is just so good.

My family’s mango tree is an old tree, about 90 years old. The tree stopped bearing fruit a few years ago. 

It’s been neglected. Fungal growth is spreading around.

So we pruned. We planted. We attacked the fungal growth. We made changes here and there.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too late to do something about it.

Then things started to get better.

No, much better! The tree started producing so many fruits that I’ve more mangoes than I‘ve chutney jars, Thai salads and gelato boxes.

Yum!

Your cognitive fitness is much like the mango tree.- But don’t leave it before it’s too late

To be at your peak, to help prevent memory loss starts with the right nurturing, personalised to your situation

The small changes in your lifestyle really do matter.

Our daily habits add up to a bumper crop of memory health later in life.

Habits are powerful. You probably don’t even realise you were doing them.

That’s because they’ve been ingrained in your life, in your routine.

Harness that power. Imagine being armed with habits that reduce your risks for memory loss.

You become more confident. You go into battle ready armed to live life fiercely- on your own terms. Raar!

What an image, right? But how do you go about creating and living with those good, daily habits?

It’s hard to consistently make good choices that stick.

There’s a way though. A way to learn how to successfully build new habits. Six principles that will lead to new, powerful habits.

As long as you’re resolute. As long as you’re willing to keep at it. As long as you’re willing to keep grinding.

You have your goal, your vision. And I know you can reach it.

It is never too late to start.

Do you really want to deprive your community of ALL that you can be?

In today’s show, you will learn the 6 facets of how to build successful habits. Find out also what is the most often neglected element key to habit formation.

Episode Highlights

• It’s Never Too Late For Change
• Setting The Right Goals For Developing Behaviour
• Repetition Leads To Successful Habit Formation
• 6 Principles For New Habit Success
• Quick Exercise For Finding Purpose
• The Biggest Takeaway about Key Lifestyle Factors For Better Health

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About Our Host

David Norris is an occupational therapist who has been in this practice for 20 years.

He has dealt with a lot of clients who seek help with their memory loss problems. David began asking himself about how these people can get ahead of these problems. It is then that he started teaching his clients how to improve their brain health to prevent memory loss.

David Norris is also the director and founder of Occupational Therapy Brisbane.

 

Building New Habits

It’s Never Too Late For Change

• My family's 90+ year old mango tree was able to bore fruits after years of not doing so.
• The tree had been neglected and was experiencing some fungal growth. Support and some tending helped it to thrive again.
• There is still the opportunity for your body to be primed to achieve as much as possible.
• Poor conditions increase the likelihood of memory loss happening again.
• It is never too late to start correcting your illness.
• Changing our diet can have a dramatic impact on your gut microbiome resulting in improved health and being. 
• Short exercises will release endorphins and give you improved endurance and focus.
• Meditation can easily be used to tackle stress.

Setting The Right Goals For Developing Behaviour

• Goals are amazing. But set it too high and you set yourself up for failure.
• When you fall short of your goals, it’s easy to turn back to what you were doing before and give up.
• Not having goals though is like going on bushwalker track under dark conditions without a torch.
• The key is to narrow your vision and take each step at a time. 
• The step-by-step, methodological activity will help embed that new behaviour.

Repetition Leads To Successful Habit Formation

• Old habits can sneak in and make you undermine your commitment to developing good behaviour like eating healthy.
• You feel guilt and shame. It erodes your sense of purpose, self, and strength to keep going.
• You want good behaviour to transform into good habits. 
• Committing to repetitive action will set you up for success.
• Habits can deal with anything. You do them even unconsciously.

6 Principles For New Habit Success

• Setting up supportive environments allows you to build things that trigger the new behaviour.
• Leverage context by keeping things simple. Do not overcomplicate things. 
• Eliminate friction or resistance by removing other choices or tasks.
• Put in place reward systems to support behaviour.
• Practice and repetition makes a habit stick.
• Having a sense of meaning to why you’re doing something is a powerful motivator.

Quick Exercise For Finding Purpose

• Before starting, it’s important to be non-judgmental about yourself and be open.
• Think about what your family member will say about you at your funeral.
• Think about what your co-worker or community member will share about your impact in their lives.
• Think about what a stranger who has heard about you would say about you.
• This exercise will help you figure out what is the most important thing for you.
• What are the changes that need to be made for you to become that person they all talked about?
• You can still grow into the person you want to be at the end of your life.

 

Previously Recommended Resources

Articles

 

• The Science of Habit, October 2015. David Neal, Ph.D. Jelena Vujcic, MPH Orlando Hernandez, Ph.D. Wendy Wood, Ph.D. http://www.washplus.org/sites/default/files/resource_files/habits-neal2015.pdf 
• Exercise dose and quality of life: Results of a randomized controlled trial., Arch Intern Med. 169(3): 269–278. Corby K. Martin, Timothy S. Church, Angela M. Thompson, Conrad P. Earnest, Steven N. Blair (2009)  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745102/
• Effects of interval training on quality of life and cardiometabolic risk markers in older adults: a randomized controlled trial. Clin Interv Aging. 2019;14:1589–1599. Published 2019 Sep 4. doi:10.2147/CIA.S213133 Ballin M, Lundberg E, Sörlén N, Nordström P, Hult A, Nordström A. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732517/ 
• Regular exercise and the trajectory of health-related quality of life among Taiwanese adults: a cohort study analysis 2006-2014. BMC Public Health. 2019;19(1):1352. Published 2019 Oct 23. doi:10.1186/s12889-019-7662-8 Chang HC, Liang J, Hsu HC, Lin SK, Chang TH, Liu SH. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6806516/
• Long-Term Impact of Caregiving and Metabolic Syndrome with Perceived Decline in Cognitive Function 8 Years Later: A Pilot Study Suggesting Important Avenues for Future Research. Open J Med Psychol. 2013;2(1):23–28. doi:10.4236/ojmp.2013.21005 Brummett BH, Austin SB, Welsh-Bohmer KA, Williams RB, Siegler IC. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3952276/#!po=65.0000 
• Gonzalez, C. (2006). The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). Public Health Nutrition, 9(1a), 124-126. doi:10.1079/PHN2005934 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/european-prospective-investigation-into-cancer-and-nutrition-epic/F506B4D995930AD84F74289B5F16D132# 
• The Microbiome and Mental Health: Looking Back, Moving Forward with Lessons from Allergic Diseases. Clin Psychopharmacol Neurosci. 2016;14(2):131–147. doi:10.9758/cpn.2016.14.2.131 Logan AC, Jacka FN, Craig JM, Prescott SL. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4857870/

 

Books

• Atomic Habits: The life-changing million copy bestseller by James Clear 
• Want to get 1% better everyday? Then this book may be just the next step for you. "A supremely practical and useful book, James Clear distils the most fundamental information about habit formation, so you can accomplish more by focusing on less." -Mark Manson  
• https://amzn.to/2twTRnB 

 

Podcast Episodes

• Podcast Ep 005: Food, Mood, Microbiome and Your Memory with Dr Amy Loughman
• Podcast Ep 008: How Your Gut Health Affects Your Brain and Memory Health with Scott C Anderson

 

The Biggest Takeaway about Key Lifestyle Factors For Better Health

Memory Health and making changes to help your body to achieve as much as it can is still possible. Remember the fruitless mango tree that bore again even when it was over 90+ years old.

Quotable “Success takes time. Building these habits into your life takes time. These habits that make you into the gorgeous human being that you will be and are, will take time” - David Norris

 

What was your BIGGEST takeaway from this episode? 

 

 

All the best 

David 

P.S. Did you get the free guide?  If not, here’s the link. 

 

Disclaimer: Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.