Pick a month

In recent days I have had difficulty locating some of the images pinned to my memory calendar as memory tags to remember each day that passes.

I was starting to wonder if this may be associated with my decision to give up sugar. As I mentioned recently a sugar rush from raisins (natural, but still with high on the glycaemic index) boosted my alertness on a long car journey (see 'no sugar' posts). Could the opposite be happening if my blood glucose is stabilising at a lower level, without the peaks and troughs brought on by processed sugar?

I don't think that was the cause. As is often the case, the days that presented problems were in the months that have most recently dropped out of my more comprehensive daily review of the past 6 months: September and October 2013 in particular.

I used the techniques I have developed to recover these lost images, though for some it was actually a day or two before they burst back into full vividness. I was starting to think maybe it was time to accept some days will be lost and that seemed to kick my brain into gear so I remembered the missing image was actually a particularly valuable memory I did not want to lose. That boosted my motivation.

Of particular benefit in locating them was running through each day of the specific month sequentially. The surrounding days provide context and triggers.

Starting my review today on 27 December 2013, it struck me that this month has been progressively dropping out of the 6-month review window. Instead of refreshing images every day, or at least twice each week, they are refreshed only once per month (see the link in the side panel to 'refresh technique' for more details of my current method).

So today I decided to do a run through of December. It was well worth it, as some of the memory tags really benefited from being dusted off. It can take time, however, as the images trigger other memories that are tempting to explore.

A year ago, when I had less days to remember since beginning this process, I would occasionally do a run through every day in sequence from when I started on 17 December 2011. I haven't done that for a long time and doubt I will have the time to do it again as the days continue to pile up. Perhaps if I have time to spare on my death bed.

But I think I will make a point of picking a month every now to run through each day.

Brain boost

Apparently when you remove processed sugar from your diet, it takes a while for your body to adjust.

Before, blood glucose levels spike after eating food or drink with processed sugar, only to drop sharply as insulin is produced to tell your cells to absorb it.

Glucose levels are more regular, but lower, maintained by the breakdown of more complex sugars, carbohydrates and fats in foods with low Glycaemic Index (GI). Processed sugar has a GI of 100. Foods with a lower GI take longer to be broken down to glucose. Foods with a GI below 55 are recommended.

From what I have read, it is advisable to snack between main meals to maintain blood glucose at a steady level. Fruit is good, though I am partial to raw carrots. Carrots have a GI of around 50, more than apples (GI 38), but contain less sugar overall and has the advantage of coming with fibre.

Driving to my parents recently, I felt a familiar drop in alertness, which usually prompts me to stop for coffee and some chocolate.

This time, I had the coffee, but looked for an alternative snack without processed sugar. A mix of nuts and raisins seemed a good bet. Raisins have a GI of 64, so they are not a green lighted food in Rick Gallop's traffic light system.

They had an immediate effect in energising my brain for the remainder of the journey. I'm now carrying some nut and raisins mix in the car for whenever I need to boost my alertness with a healthier sugar hit.

On the return leg, I tried coffee without raisins when I started to flag to see if it was the caffeine hit that had been responsible. It was not.

Bye to sugar

The bad press that sugar has been getting has not passed me by, but it has taken me a while to decide to cut processed sugar from my diet.

There is research that suggests a high sugar diet can affect memory and cognitive skills (an example in Huffington Post).

Diabetics are warned of the risk of too high or too low sugar levels on brain function (Diabetes UK).

Most processed food has added processed sugar, whether it is glucose, fructose, corn syrup or some other designation. While there are already warnings about the health risks of consuming too much sugar, there are suggestions that the Guideline Daily Amounts have been set too high, due to influence from the food industry (British Medical Journal article).

Even then, the current recommendation of limiting daily calories from added sugar to just 100 calories for women and 150 calories for men is blown away.

According to the US Center for Disease Control, the average American consumes 440 calories per day from added sugar – that's 156 pounds (70 kg) of sugar per year. Not far off your own body weight, unless you are already obese!

This statistic comes from an article on the Psychology Today website that goes on to suggest:

'Research indicates that a diet high in added sugar reduces the production of a brain chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Without BDNF, our brains can't form new memories and we can't learn (or remember) much of anything. Levels of BDNF are particularly low in people with an impaired glucose metabolism—diabetics and pre-diabetics—and as the amount of BDNF decreases, sugar metabolism worsens.'

Excess glucose in the blood triggers the pancreas to produce insulin as a signal to cells to absorb the glucose.

In the case of the liver and muscles, this is stored as glycogen. This process can be reversed when glucose levels fall too low in the blood.

But keep overdosing on sugar so that the liver has stored all the glycogen it can and the insulin signalling may break down, leading to uncontrolled glucose blood levels and the development of type-2 diabetes.

Our bodies are powered by sugar, of course. We need it.

Fruit, vegetables and milk contain sugars. Carbohydrates in vegetables and grains, and fat in meat, fish and other foods, are broken down into sugar.

Our brains run on sugar. In fact, as eHow summarises, 'more than 60 percent of the glucose streaming through our blood is consumed by the brain'

So how can we obtain the glucose we need without overdosing and the attendant health risks?

By obtaining sugars, carbohydrates and fats in an unprocessed and unrefined state. That means cooking meals from natural ingredients, using whole grains and eating fruit.

This gives us the glucose we need, but without the glucose spike and overdosing that comes from added sugar and processed foods.

There are guides on the foods to eat. A book I am reading at the moment is The GI Diet by Rick Gallop. This colour codes foods with traffic lights depending on their Glycemic Index, which 'measures the speed at which you digest food and convert it to glucose.'

Sugar has a rating of 100. Boiled potatoes 56. Oatmeal 42. An apple 38.

My memory tag for 16 June 2014 is visiting the library and bookshops to search for information on controlling sugar levels.

I'll tag any future blog posts on this topic with 'no sugar'.

Lost image: 30 April 2014

I lost the image for 30 April 2014 yesterday.

It was strange because I knew it was a corker. It sat within a sequence of images that were still clearly visible on my mental calendar. But Wednesday was a white out. Nothing.

It was also strange because that week had been one I could run through quickly in my reviews. The images were related to each other somehow.

But the day had dropped out of my sequential review of past days on 30 May. Now it is only included when I came to look at past Wednesdays over the previous 6 months each Wednesday and Thursday (see the link at the side for my refresh technique).

Yesterday was Wednesday, so I ran through the Tuesdays and Wednesdays since 11 December 2013. I came to 30 April. Nothing. I had not yet built the associations with days a week apart.

Returning to reviewing the whole week as I was used to, did not help. I was able to remember certain things about that day. In the evening I had looked at hotels to stay near my brother who I planned to visit at the weekend.

But that was not the tag.

The day before I had a meeting about a website I was working on. But the website wasn't in my memory tag for Wednesday, I was sure, although there was some connection.

I didn't sweat it, but moved on to my longer review of a day per month from January 2011. That was fine.

I was expecting the image to pop into my head at some point unprompted, as is often the case, but it had still not done so by the time I was going for an evening run. I was starting to wish I had moved the images into a written record when they dropped out of the sequential daily review of the past month. But I knew that being forced to remember would help to reinforce the memory better than cribbing off a written record.

So I did what I have done several times before in this situation: I ran through the whole month starting on 1 April. I was a little apprehensive as I approached the blank day as nothing was coming immediately to mind. But in the end the associations worked and it came back to me in a flash.

I had been booking the hotel to stay near my brother as we had met for lunch that day. While I was waiting for him, I had been meeting a deadline for filing some documents. That had been the association with my meeting the day before about the website project: getting things sorted.

Image tag: Wednesday 30 April 2014, completing documents while waiting at a café for my brother.

So now it is back and, hopefully, the fact I had to struggle to remember it this time, will make it easier next time.