Mike Carruthers

Does diet matter much in terms of what you eat or don't eat?

And is it more what you eat or what you don't eat?

So generally a healthy diet is what we consider, you know, lots of fruits and vegetables, not a lot of sugar, that kind of thing is a good brain diet as well.

Often in these discussions about mental decline and cognitive ability, particularly when it comes to older people, you hear the phrase, use it or lose it, that older people need to exercise their brain by doing crossword puzzles and other mental exercises that that will help.

What do you say?

What's the science say?

I wonder how much of this has to do with attention and intention.

In other words, if I put my keys down and go back and look for them later and I can't find them,

I don't know that that's necessarily a cognitive problem as much as it was an attention problem.

When I put the keys down, I probably wasn't paying attention to where I put them.

I wasn't real intentional about it.

So when I go look for my keys, I can't find them.

But the next time, when I'm careful where I put my keys, the next time I know exactly where they are and I find them easily.

So I wonder if in this discussion about cognitive function, that a lot of cognitive function has to do with what you pay attention to.

There's been no significant decrease.

That's good to hear.

I've never been good at math.

I'm still not good at math, but I've never been good at math, so I'm not going to worry about that.

So what's the big thing?

And I think I know what you're going to say.