Simple, science-backed changes you can make now to keep yourself healthier in later life.

If you misplace your keys on a regular basis, you’re not alone. Increased forgetfulness is a common part of ageing and there is a widespread belief that our cognitive abilities will decline as we get older.

But cognitive impairments are not an inevitable part of ageing. There are steps we can all take to live well for longer, protecting our brains in the process.

In early infancy our brain constantly builds new connections between neurons or strengthens existing ones. As children, more than one million new neural connections are formed every second in our first few years. But as we age this starts to slow down, especially when some of these connections are no longer needed. One recent study showed that our brains go through five major “epochs” in our lifetime, with key turning points happening on average at the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years old. It found that our brains only hit their “adult” phase in our 30s as our brain regions become more compartmentalised while the architecture begins showing signs of ageing in our mid-60s.