
CREATE YOUR NEW BEGINNING

Get to Know Us
Joanne Dufton watched her father and his two brothers die due to complications of dementia (memory loss).
​
Joanne studied the research, and she learned that if she committed to 7 lifestyle habits, she could live the rest of her life with a brain as sharp as a tack!
​
Stress is one of the leading causes of memory loss.
Charlie Stillings has been meditating for over 50 years. He is a Heartmath certified trainer and a PSYCH-K® facilitator.
​
Joanne teaches lifestyle habits to prevent memory loss. Charlie Stillings teaches beginning and advanced meditation, techniques to manage stress, and he helps you change your limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs.
Lifestyle Habits to Prevent Memory Loss
​
-
Stress kills your brain cells and halts the production of new brain cells. Meditation will reverse the negative impact that stress has on your brain.
-
Live a life aligned with your purpose so that you wake up every day looking forward to your daily activities with excitement and joy.
-
Sleep at least 7-9 hours per night.
-
Get up and move often. Movement increases the blood flow to your brain which will increase the oxygen that is flowing to each cell in the brain.
-
The quality of the food that you eat is important. Avoid added sugars and highly processed foods.
-
Make sure that you drink plenty of water.
-
Join a community of like-minded positive people.
Lifestyle Habit #1
Stress Management
Stress kills your brain cells and halts the production of new brain cells. It shrinks the size of your prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain that handles thinking and reasoning. It shrinks the size of your hippocampus which is the part of the brain that processes memories. It increases the size of your amygdala which is the part of the brain that handles your emotions such anger and anxiety. You end up full of anxiety with no thinking or reasoning ability to manage it!!
​
What can you do about this? Make meditation a daily practice. Over 1600 Studies have been done on meditation and they show that meditation reverses the negative impact that stress has on the brain.
​
Have you tried to meditate and you just cannot quiet your mind?
​
If meditation is not part of your daily practice, Create Your New Beginning offers classes in a variety of different forms of meditation.
7 Lifestyle Habits to
Prevent Memory Loss
Lifestyle Habit #2
Live with excitement and joy!
Live a life aligned with your purpose so that you will wake up every day with excitement and joy.
​
Sometimes after a significant life change such as death of a loved one, retirement, loss of employment, or a move away from family and friends, a person might begin to feel empty and depressed.
​
Depression is highly correlated with memory loss.
​
If you find yourself feeling that empty depressed feeling, find something that speaks to your heart!!
​
Volunteer, take a new class, or start a new hobby. Keep looking until you find something that speaks to your heart!
Do not stop looking!! Your memory depends on it!!

Lifestyle Habit #3
Sleep 7-9 hours every night
Sleep is not a waste of time!
​
Sleep is when your body and your brain can rest and recover from the daily activities.
​
The only time that your brain flushes out the byproducts of all the millions of neural connections it makes every day is when you are in a state of deep sleep!
​
The only time that your brain processes memory from short term to long term is when you are dreaming.
​
Make sleep a priority!

Lifestyle Habit #4
Stay active!
Movement stimulates the production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). This is a protein that stimulates the production of new brain cells.
​
Movement also increases blood flow to the brain which brings additional oxygen to all the cells in the brain.
​
Studies show that people who sit more than 10 hours per day have an increased risk of developing memory loss.
​
Get out and walk at least 20 minutes per day.
​
Make movement a priority!

Lifestyle Habit #5
Make Healthy Food Choices
Select foods that are as close to the way that nature made them as possible. Choose organic whenever you have a choice.
​
Avoid highly processed foods.
​
Stay away from added sugars. Sugars are very inflammatory both to the body and the brain!
​
Be aware that there are many different names for sugar which makes it very difficult to fully determine how much sugar you are actually eating. Many ingredients that end in -ose are sugars and many syrups are also sugars.
​

Lifestyle Habit #6
Drink Plenty of Water
Adequate hydration is important for proper functioning of your brain.
​
Water makes up 75% of the brain.
​
A 1% loss in body weight due to fluid deficiency can create a 5% cognitive decline and can impair your ability to concentrate. A loss of more than 2% body weight due to dehydration can affect your brain’s processing ability and impair your short-term memory.
​
Make sure that you drink plenty of water!

Lifestyle Habit #7
Be part of a community of like minded positive people
If you are lonely or socially isolated, you will increase your risk of memory loss by 50%!
​
What can you do about it?
​
Consider volunteering.
​
Join a group of people with similar interests.
​
Speak to people that you meet throughout the day. Share small items about yourself in order to start building relationships.
