I went on the carnivore diet about six months ago. About two months in, I suddenly had brain again, was able to write as I had been in the before times. My daily word count has gone back to 3000 words a day, instead of 1500 a day.
It’s really obvious in the current book just how good my head is. There are now days when the writing is so easy that I’m finishing 3000 words in about 2 hours. There are still days when it’s a struggle. However, those days are because I didn’t sleep the night before, not because I’m having problems with my cognition.
I still have bad cognition days. I’m starting to track them, so I can get a better idea of how often they occur. Right now, it’s been two and a half weeks since I had one. I don’t know if I’ll always have them. As they used to occur every second or third day, I’m very happy with having only one or two per month.
Yesterday, I was reading an article on “super agers,” people who are in their eighties and still cognitively as well as physically fit. (It’s behind a paywall, otherwise, I’d share.)
There are some things that most super-agers have in common, such as they tend to be more physically fit, have a larger social circle, are more resilient when it comes to change, and exercise their brains.
It was that last one that caught my eye. One of the things that I’m still doing is learning two languages, both Hungarian and Spanish. I do about thirty minutes of “speaking in tongues” as it were every evening, after dinner. I do the Spanish first because it’s so much easier than the Hungarian. I use Duolingo, which can be frustrating.
For Hungarian, they’ve redesigned the course a couple of times since I started. Again, though frustrating, this is good. The course is now much longer, and contains things that they didn’t have the first time I went through it all the way to the end, such as telling time and using the construction that indicates “with.” (That’s the current section I’m in. Yes, it’s so complicated that it deserves an entire section dedicated to it.)
So I’m always learning new vocabulary. I’m stretching my brain to remember the new words. I have what I call my “grimoires” which I use with Duolingo. I write down all new vocabulary. I also write down all my mistakes, with some indication as to what I did wrong. (Hungarian, my biggest problem is word order. Spanish, I forget to use the verb To Be, because I don’t have to use it all the time in Hungarian. I’m speaking a foreign language, therefore I drop the verb To Be.)
The article mentioned that people who are super agers tend to do Sudoku and crosswords rather than Wordle.
That got me thinking.
I used to play Sudoku all the damn time. Thinking back, I realized that it had been getting harder and harder to play that game, to the point that it was no longer fun.
I still had the game on my phone, so I pulled it up and played at my usual level, which on this app, is intermediate.
Easily won, and the tricks I used to use all came back. By the second game, it felt like it used to.
This tells me that I was having some pretty bad cognition issues that I hadn’t even realized I was having.
It turns out I also have three different crossword apps on my phone. I’ve never enjoyed crossword puzzles that much. I’ve obviously tried them more than once, particularly since I’ve read before about how good they are supposed to be for your brain.
While I was going through my first crossword puzzle in years, I suddenly remembered why I’d stopped. It was because I had gotten so frustrated—I couldn’t think of words that I should have known.
Again, a serious sign that I didn’t pay attention to.
I’ve done a few crossword puzzles in the last couple of days. They are so much easier than I remember them being. I’ve also figured out why I sometimes don’t like crossword puzzles.
Clues for crossword puzzles are either word association or trivia.
I’m good at word association. For example, from yesterday’s puzzle: A false type of love. Infatuation. I can think like that, figure out words like that.
I’m bad at trivia. Don’t get me wrong. I know a lot of useless things. I’m a writer. However, I frequently don’t know common cultural touchpoints. Such as: Dostoevsky novel, with “The.”
WTF?
So if I can find an app that’s all word association and minimal trivia, I’ll keep doing crossword puzzles. Maybe I’ll eventually like them more.
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to live, if I’ll be a super ager or not. I have one grandmother who lived until she was 98. She was in a home, she was crippled with arthritis (her hands were just claws) but she was still cognitively sharp the last time I saw her, at 97. All my other relatives died a lot earlier.
I’m healthier than almost all of those relatives.
Plus, I have my brain back. And I’m going to pay more attention to any signs of aging. Not sure there’s much I can do about them, but I’m going to try.
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