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I’m okay…but am I?

I couldn’t stop raving about this book. I kept obnoxiously reading sentences from this book to my friends--lookie lookie lookie! Like a little kid at show and tell. But when I got to scary stuff (Alzheimer’s), I shut my mouth. It wasn’t such a fun read anymore. Turns out I am doing very bad things: sleeping too little, exercising too little, stressing too much—could I be leading myself to Alzheimer’s?

So it’s funny that I gave this book 5 stars, given that it wasn’t a nice read by the end. Understatement--it freaked me out! I ended up deciding that just because the book scared the bejesus out of me, I shouldn’t dole out fewer points. It’s a great book, whether it made me squirm or not.

Genova is a neuroscientist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, but she’s not stuffy or abstract or distant. She has an amazing ability to simplify hard concepts without talking down to us mortals, and she makes the information so accessible. The tone is conversational, and she gives lots of personal examples, which drew me in.

Going in, I didn’t realize it was a self-help book. I thought it was a book about memory. Well, it’s both. Genova tells us a lot about what’s happening in your brain, but she also gives us tips on how to remember stuff and how to help prevent dementia. I learned so much about how we remember things, about all the sections of the brain that chime in.

Fascinating stuff:

- You have to pay attention if you want your brain to be able to create memories. Think of parking. If you don’t pay attention when you park your car—by noting which level you’re on, e.g.—you could forget where you parked and go crazy trying to find your car later.

-You can train yourself to remember to-do or grocery lists. Genova tells you how to do this. (I tried, and it worked!)

-Forgetting stuff isn’t always bad. Seriously. The author gives great examples. (Oh, she was making me feel like I was so okay!)

-It’s natural that your memory gets worse with age. (Oh, such good news!)

-Sorry, doing crossword puzzles does not help your memory. (Not fair!)

-Every time you tell a story, you edit it. Then that edited version becomes the right one, the real one—until you tell the story again and accidentally edit it more. The story morphs every time you tell it. It’s like the game of telephone. I thought of stories I have told—quite sure I was telling the absolute truth, and then realizing when I told it again, I remembered something differently. Fascinating!

-Marilu Henner from the (old) TV show Taxi has a condition called hyperthymesia, or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, where she remembers every single thing that happened to her on every single day of her life. You could ask her what she was doing on June 17, 2002, and she’ll be able to tell you. Total recall. The condition is extremely rare; only 60 people in the world are known to have it.

-People with Alzheimer’s are still able to feel love, so don’t think they’re a complete blank. Genova shows so much compassion for people afflicted with the disease, it’s touching.

Scary stuff (as in, “I’m screwed��):

-1 in 3 people over age 75 will get Alzheimer’s. OMG OMG OMG!

-Think you’re cool because you can multi-task? The more things you can juggle the better? Take that smile right off your face: multi-tasking is not good for your brain.

-You must get 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night. Period. This helps with memory and helps prevent Alzheimer’s. Genova spends a LOT of time talking about sleep—stop it already! I’ve always bragged about needing less sleep than others (Genova talks about this stupid bragging), but come to find out, I’m fooling myself. Less than 7 hours of sleep is a very bad thing. (Tell that to my cat who screams and wakes me up too early. Will I be the first person in the world to blame a cat for Alzheimer’s?)

-You’ve gotta exercise! Now who knew exercise was good for memory? Tell me it’s not so! Though I must admit, reading this book DID get me exercising more! (5 stars for me.)

-Don’t stress! Because stress is really bad for your memory. Oh, great, telling me that only stresses me out more!

-Every time you recall a bad memory, it becomes stronger—because reliving any memory reinforces it. So try to think of the good times, not the bad. Ha, easier said than done!

Final thoughts:

I’ve read most of Genova’s fiction and with the exception of one book, I liked it all. Still Alice is one of my favorite books, in fact. Nice to know I like her other books, too—it’s my kind of non-fiction; mainly, easy to understand. I’m a fiction reader through and through, so it’s a big deal for me to like a book of nonfiction.

Some might say this book is on the light side, as many self-help books are. I disagree; I’m in awe of how well Genova can distill complex ideas and make them understandable. And although I read Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting a while ago, I still remember a lot. (In fact, I wish I could forget the parts that traumatized me!) Despite my freakout, I highly recommend this book.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book..