22 ways to keep your mind sharp

8. Build up to daily meditation
Find 10 to 20 minutes a day to sit quietly. Researchers found that daily meditation may slow age-related brain deterioration by altering the physical structure of the brain. People who meditated for 40 minutes a day had a denser cerebral cortex than people who did not. In other studies, practitioners of Transcendental Meditation demonstrated cognitive, perceptual and physical abilities equivalent to people up to 10 years their junior.

9. Three steps to basic meditating
• Set an alarm to ring in five minutes. Sit with your spine upright, feet flat on the floor, palms resting on thighs. Relax your shoulders and jaw and switch off from everyday concerns. Close your eyes.

• Watch your breath moving in and out. Let this focus steer you away from trains of thought. If it helps, breathe in to a count of three or four. Exhale to the same count. When distractions arise, focus on your counting or awareness of your flow of breath in and out.

• Return to regular breathing as the alarm rings and slowly open your eyes. Once you feel easy with the technique, increase meditation time in increments of five minutes.

10. Enjoy family and friends
Make time most days to enjoy the company of friends and family. In a study of older people at the University of California, those with most emotional support from a strong social network were more likely to retain memory, abstract thinking and language skills -- even if those relationships were testing!

11. Use stimulating aromas
Perfume various times of day with different aromas to establish associations that trigger new neural pathways. Scent the car with two drops of essential oil of basil. Follow your morning shower with distinctly scented body oil.

12. Holiday senses
Choose a novel scented soap for weekends away. This will stimulate your memory when you use it again as it reminds you of the holiday.

13. Eat greens
Consume foods containing plant antioxidants, such as spinach and blueberries. An American study suggests this reverses mental decline as we age. Plants also rich in folate have more pluses: researchers found older men who ate more folate-rich leafy greens and citrus fruit had significantly less age-related decline in memory and brain function over three years than those whose diets were low in folate.

14. Dine on fish
Eating fish at least once a week can slow the rate of cognitive decline in older people by up to 13 per cent per year reports one study. Other research suggests omega-3 fatty acids in oily fish are vital for the functioning of brain-cell receptors. Eat different varieties -- mackerel, sardines and organically farmed trout -- two or three times a week.

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