My Da Vinci Experiment: Using My Non-Dominant Hand to Fight Brain Fog

A Technician’s Disclaimer: I’m No Neuroscientist

Let’s get one thing straight before we begin: I’m a self-proclaimed clumsy technician, not a brain surgeon. I have zero medical knowledge, let alone a grasp of complex neuroscience.

I’m just a regular middle-aged guy who, like many, misses the sharp memory of his youth. This is simply a short story about a personal experiment that, in my subjective experience, didn’t seem to hurt. So, I urge you to leave any grand expectations at the door.

It probably started in my late thirties. I began to feel my once-reliable memory starting to fade. It’s a natural part of aging, I know, but it still made me anxious. What can you do? No one can win a fight against time. I searched online and found the usual flood of advice—brain-boosting supplements and a thousand other clichés—none of which resonated with me.

My Unlikely Inspiration: A Renaissance Genius

Then, out of nowhere, a random figure popped into my head: the great Italian Renaissance master, Leonardo da Vinci. The reason I thought of this world-famous genius was because of his peculiar personal notebooks. He wrote with his left hand, and to take it a step further, he wrote in reverse, from right to left, in what’s known as “mirror writing.”

A thought sparked in my mind: What if using both sides of the brain more evenly could help? As a lifelong, die-hard right-hander, I had a whole left hand and a right brain hemisphere that had been slacking off for decades. Plus, you hear those whispers that the right brain is linked to creativity—something I was more than willing to believe as I felt myself sinking into a creative rut.

So, I decided to give it a shot. “If it was good enough for a genius,” I figured, “surely it must have some small effect on a regular guy like me, right?”

The Experiment: Waking Up My Left Hand

With that simple thought, I began to consciously use my left hand more often. It was incredibly awkward at first, but after several years, it’s started to feel a bit more natural.

Whenever I have a spare moment, I try to scribble down a few words in reverse. And please, don’t judge my penmanship—I have terrible handwriting with my right hand, too.

I can’t objectively prove that this has slowed my memory decline, as I don’t have a second life to use as a control group. But I can say one thing for sure: the sensory perception in my left hand has become noticeably sharper. The sensation of touching the same object with my left and right hands now feels nearly identical.

As an aside, when I was a kid, many left-handed children were forced by their parents to become right-handed. It’s a practice you rarely see now, but it must have been incredibly difficult for them. If anyone reading this went through that, I hope you can find some solace in the fact that you’re now ambidextrous. I’m having to work for it in my old age.

A Technician, Ramen, and a Placebo Effect

Anyway, feeling a bit hungry this afternoon, I made a bowl of ramen—eaten with my left hand, of course.

When I’m not in a hurry, I try to eat with my left hand. They say eating fast is unhealthy, so using my more awkward hand helped me slow down. The funny thing is, I’ve gotten so used to the chopsticks in my left hand now that I finish the bowl in a flash anyway.

Maybe adding the complex mechanics of chopsticks—something da Vinci probably never even imagined—is contributing a little extra to the cause? I admit, there’s a strong subjective feeling, much like the placebo effect.

I’m not greedy enough to hope this makes me smarter. But from a “brain exercise” perspective, I hope it might have some effect on preventing dementia. In any case, nothing has gotten worse, and that’s good enough for me.

These were just the ramblings of a middle-aged guy doing his best to outrun brain fog.