When you use your memory, you're engaging a very complicated machine with different "gears" for different types of memory.

It helps you remember your grandmother telling you a story, a recent art exhibit, and where you live, how to drive or read without having to reinvent the wheel each time.

Your memory comes in two parts—working or short-term memory and long-term memory. Both are vital to leading your life as you know it.

Working memory temporarily stores and manages information. It is that scratch pad where you store everything you want to have available, but don't know if it's important enough to move to your long-term memory. One example of short-term memory is the ability to remember a seven-digit telephone number long enough to dial a call.

Long-term memory is anything that happened more than a few minutes ago. Not all long-term memories are equal—some are much stronger enabling you to recall information on demand while other memories surface only after some prompting.

You have two types of long-term memory.

Explicit memory is what most people think of when they think of memory. It's remembering who came to dinner last week or your vacation last summer or your high school years. There are two types of explicit memory—episodic, remembering personal events and their context, and semantic, general knowledge about the world.

Implicit memory is unconscious memory—it allows you to remember how to ride a bicycle, tie your shoes, even things like walking or how to use a fork. Implicit memory allows people with amnesia to retain their ‘everyday living' memory but not be able to recognize family or friends.

Stay brain healthy

Your brain, like your body, needs a healthy lifestyle to remain active and agile.

• B vitamins are vital to normal brain and nerve function.
• Vitamin B1 is needed for healthy brain and nerve cells.
• Vitamin B5 helps transmit nerve impulses.
• Vitamin B6 helps convert tryptophan into serotonin, a brain chemical. Vitamin
• B12 helps maintain healthy nervous tissue

Brain exercises
Mental stimulation is key to maintaining and improving your brain functions. Stay socially involved. Volunteer. Read more. Take a class. Do word games and crossword puzzles. Reconstruct a museum tour you enjoyed. Memorize a song. Challenge your cognitive abilities regularly.

Your brain can't tell the difference between imagining something—like making that perfect putt—and actually doing it. Most athletes imagine doing their best as a way to boost their real-time performance. These mental rehearsals use most of the brain connections you use during the actual performance. What do you want to improve? Think about it. Practice it.

Physical exercises
The brain needs a body that gets a balanced diet and regular exercise. "It is becoming clear that the same factors we know are important for a healthy heart are also important for healthy brain functioning," says Steven Anderson, PhD, UI Hospitals and Clinics neurologist. "Proper management of weight, body fat, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure assure healthy blood flow in the brain as we age." Even 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every other day can make a difference. In addition to the benefits of a stronger body and improved blood flow, regular exercise helps improve sleep patterns, mood, and self-esteem.

Memory or attention?

When you complain about your memory, is it a memory malfunction or an attention problem? Do you stay focused on the information you want to retain or are you easily distracted? Unfortunately, the older you get the more you have to focus on what you want to remember. Give yourself a break. Don't over-estimate how much information you can juggle at one time.