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Why Brain Health Matters

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Health and healthy lifestyles have become a priority in the lives of more people than ever before. Millions of people walk or jog, engage in formal exercise, meditate, and abide by healthy diets all to maximize the healthy of their bodies. Interestingly, our culture, like so many before, prioritizes the health of the heart as most important. Indeed, the Egyptian royalty were buried with every organ removed except the heart because they believed the heart was the center of the universe.

We in the United States continue to prioritize the heart, a pump that perfuses blood throughout our body. We provide meaning and import to the heart it really does not deserve. For example, we ascribe love and emotion to the heart as when we say “I love you with all my heart or you broke my heart.” While common prose, it is really a silly statement. It is time to realize that our every thought, emotion, and motor behavior is due to the miraculous system of the human brain.

With recent research supporting the human brain as a highly dynamic, constantly reorganizing system (plasticity) capable of generating new brain cells and brain reserve, we are now able to apply a lifestyle that promotes health for the brain. Perhaps one of the greatest paradoxes of our time is the fact that most do not even know the basics of this critical part of our being-our brain!

Brain Health is important because our commitment to a lifelong lifestyle that promotes development of brain reserve can enhance our ability to maintain our thinking abilities, our memory, and our “life story.” Many Americans are afraid of brain disease and fear losing their memory. Brain health is a proactive and positive means to do what is in our control to maximize and preserve our brain function.

I have proposed and published a “Brain Health Lifestyle” that is proactive and contains five major factors to form your Brain Health Pie:

  • Physical Activity
  • Mental Stimulation
  • Spirituality
  • Nutrition
  • Socialization

Together, these five components each have specific research-based activities that relate to brain health and development of brain reserve. FitBrains provides opportunity for brain games that is considered important to the mental stimulation piece of the brain health pie. I will outline each of the five major components to your brain health lifestyle in upcoming blogs.

Normal Brain Changes with Aging

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Nearly everyone experiences the inability to recall a name or to struggle trying to find the correct word. These moments are referred to “tip of the tongue” phenomena and can be quite frustrating. The good news is that word finding problems is not necessarily a sign of pathology or disease, and indeed likely represents changes that occur with the normal aging process.

Around the age of 50 our brains begin to change structurally and functionally. We lose brain cells over the lifespan with a disproportionate number of cells lost in the frontal lobes. These are normal changes and the functional change associated with aging is also considered normal. We tend not to freely recall information, our information processing speed slows, and we may struggle with word finding. Once again, these are typically considered normal changes with aging and it is most common to experience such changes around age 50.

I believe that brain exercise, particularly in the cognitive areas listed above, can help to keep these functions relatively sharp and maintained. Passivity certainly will not help the brain and indeed it may exacerbate the changes in our cognitive processes.

Get started today on brain games and turn to FitBrains as your source for a good brain fitness workout.

Why Should I be interested in Brain Health?

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More and more we hear and read about the supposed powers of mental exercise. While this seems to make sense it is natural to wonder how and why a “brain fitness” is beneficial.

We have learned within the past decade that the human brain has the ability to generate new brain cells (neurogenesis). The hippocampus, a structure that lies deep in the middle of each temporal lobe and serves functions of memory, learning, and spatial representation, is the site of such neurogenesis. Interestingly, this is the exact site of neurogenesis established in rodents in the 1950s. There appears to be something critically important about the hippocampus with regard to new brain cell development.

Similar to rodent brains the human brain reacts to environmental input in generally predictable ways. Damaging, punishing, and negative input can do structural and functional damage to the hippocampus. In contrast, positive, nurturing, and stimulating input can help to foster structural and functional enhancements. As we noted earlier on this blog, the human brain seeks and enjoys mental stimulation and exposure to the “novel and complex.”

A daily brain workout (e.g. brain games) can help to provide the brain (cortex) the stimulation it seeks. Environments that are considered complex and novel by your brain will provide the most benefit particularly when compared to input that is rote and passive. Daily brain games that challenge the cortex will also help to build new cellular connections (synapses) that in turn reflect “brain reserve.” Recall, brain reserve is believed to delay the onset of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease.

One of the greatest fears of the baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, is the loss of memory and onset of dementia. A proactive approach to try and delay the onset of such loss and disease is a lifelong brain health lifestyle, part of which includes daily exposure to the novel and complex. Brain fitness workout makes good sense so get started today!!

What exactly is Brain Reserve?

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Brain reserve refers to a brain that has formed many cellular connections and is rich in brain cell density. The power of brain reserve is that we believe it has the ability to delay the clinical onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Simply put, AD will have to work longer and harder to manifest itself if it invades a brain that has built up reserve.

I often use the example of a brain that looks like a jungle versus one that looks like an island with one palm tree. In this example, the brain that looks like a jungle is the healthy brain because it has tremendous cellular connections like the density of a jungle and therefore brain reserve. If you think of AD as a weed whacker, it will invade the brain and begin to do its damage by destroying brain cells. However, it will take AD a long time to show any impact if it has to destroy a jungle’s worth of brain cell connections. In contrast, AD will manifest quickly after infiltration into the brain if it simply needs to destroy only a relatively few cellular connections (the island with one plam tree).

Brain reserve is developed over the lifespan as one exposes his or her brain to the novel and complex, the enriched environment on a daily basis. A Brain Health Lifestyle that involves Mental Stimulation (e.g. brain games), Physical Activity, Spirituality, Socialization, and Nutrition can help to build up brain reserve and maintain a healthy brain.

Physical and Mental Exercise – Both Good for the Brain

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Two recent studies show further evidence that both physical and brain exercise (e.g. brain games) have a positive impact on the brain. In the first study, USA Today reports “children who play vigorously for 20 to 40 minutes a day may be better able to organize schoolwork, do class projects and learn mathematics”.  In the second study, the BBC reports, “a Dundee school took part in the project to show how computer games can enhance and build on classroom learning”.  These studies illustrate the need for education systems to include more physical and mental exercise in the curriculum.

In the last several years, similar studies have been published that indicate the same holds true for adults. With a global aging population, both physical and brain fitness are important and need to be apart of our daily life. As a society, we should all make an effort to keep our bodies and minds functioning at a high level.  For more information on these articles, click on the links below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7064196.stm·

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-10-29-exercise-brains_N.htm

Dr. Paul Nussbaum, Fit Brains and Brain Health- Part 2

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Here is part 2 to the inital brain health blog from Dr. Nussbaum

Your Brain Health

1. Brain health begins in the womb and needs to be promoted across your lifespan.

2. Engage in the novel and complex not the rote and passive.

3. Consider the following Brain Health Lifestyle to build up your brain reserve:

Five Domains of the Brain Health Lifestyle: Socialization

  • Do not isolate or segregate as you get older. People who isolate have a higher risk for dementia.

  • Join groups and social organizations in your community.

  • Maintain and build your friendship and family network.

  • Be forgiving.

  • Develop hobbies.

  • Do not retire.

Physical Activity

  • Walk between 7,000 and 12,000 steps daily. Walking several times a week reduces the risk of dementia.

  • Buy yourself a pedometer to remind yourself to walk and to keep track of your daily steps.

  • Dance as this is a behavior that reduces the risk of dementia.

  • Garden and Knitting reduce the risk of dementia.

  • Aerobic exercise will help the heart and thereby feed the brain with the necessary blood and oxygen. It also promotes cognitive functioning such as memory and is now believed to relate to positive structural changes in the brain.

  • Use both sides of your body more often: Become ambidextrous.

Mental Stimulation

  • Play Fit Brains brain games

  • Learn a second language.

  • Read and write (use your nondominant hand) on a daily basis: the more complex the better.

  • Learn sign language as it increases IQ and increased IQ reduces the risk of dementia.

  • Play board games as board game playing reduces the risk of dementia.

  • Travel reduces the risk of dementia because it involves a new and complex environment.

  • Play a musical instrument.

  • Listen to classic music as it helps to increase learning.

  • Problem solve.

Spirituality

  • Pray on a daily basis as it enhances your immune system.

  • Attend regularly a formal place of worship at it relates to better quality of life and longevity.

  • Learn to meditate in order to slow down. Animals exposed to environments that are too stimulating demonstrate slowed brain development.

  • Learn relaxation procedures with deep breathing and muscle relaxation.

  • Slow down and do not be afraid to say “no”.

Nutrition

  • Eat 80% of what you intend to eat at each meal. Reasonable caloric restriction can increase your longevity.

  • Eat with utensils and you will eat less and also eat healthier foods.

  • Increase your intake of Omega 3 fatty acids. This includes fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, and herring. Several ounces of salmon weekly reduce the risk of dementia. Walnuts and unsalted nuts are also good for you.

  • Increase your intake of antioxidants. This includes Vitamins C and E. Colored fruits (grapes, apples, cantaloupe, and berries) and vegetables are good for you. The FDA recommends five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

  • Decrease your intake of processed foods and red meats. Lean meat such as chicken breast without skin is relatively okay.

  • Green leafy vegetables are good for you.

  • Eat one sit down meal with others a day. This activity provides many brain boosting effects at once (classic music, language, eating with utensils, slowing down, eating healthier foods).

Tea, Chocolate Chemical May Boost Memory

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We are starting off the Fit Brains Brain Health blog with some good news. Some food items that we actually do like might be good for us and not the reverse. In a recent study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers believe it may be possible to boost memory. The article states:

“It may be possible to boost memory with a plant compound called epicatechin, which is found in foods and drinks including blueberries, grapes, tea, and cocoa”.

To read the full article, click here.