The Exercise That Protects Your Brain
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The Neuroscientist In The Gym
This is Dr. Wendy Suzuki. She’s a neuroscientist, and an expert in the neurobiology of memory, as well as neuroplasticity, and the role of exercise in neuroprotection.
We’ve sneakily semi-featured her before when we shared her Big Think talk:
Brain Benefits In Three Months… Through Walking?
Today we’re going to expand on that a little!
A Quick Recap
To share the absolute key points of that already fairly streamlined rundown:
- Exercise boosts levels of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin (and, which wasn’t mentioned there, noradrenaline)
- These are responsible for motivation, happiness, and focus (amongst other things)
- Persistent exercise boosts certain regions of the brain in particular, most notably the pre-frontal cortex and the hippocampi*
- These are responsible for planning and memory (amongst other things)
Dr. Suzuki advocates for stepping up your exercise routine if you can, with more exercise generally being better than less (unless you have some special medical reason why that’s not the case for you).
*often referred to in the singular as the hippocampus, but you have one on each side of your brain (unless a serious accident/incident destroyed one, but you’ll know if that applies to you, unless you lost both, in which case you will not remember about it).
What kind(s) of workout?
While a varied workout is best for overall health, for these brain benefits specifically, what’s most important is that it raises your heart rate.
This is why in her Big Think talk we shared before, she talks about the benefits of taking a brisk walk daily. See also:
If that’s not your thing, though (and/or is for whatever reason an inaccessible form of exercise for you), there is almost certainly some kind of High Intensity Interval Training that is a possibility for you. That might sound intimidating, but if you have a bit of floor and can exercise for one minute at a time, then HIIT is an option for you:
How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Dr. Suzuki herself is an ardent fan of “intenSati” which blends cardio workouts with yoga for holistic mind-and-body fitness. In fact, she loves it so much that she became a certified exercise instructor:
How much is enough?
It’s natural to want to know the minimum we can do to get results, but Dr. Suzuki would like us to bear in mind that when it comes to our time spent exercising, it’s not so much an expense of time as an investment in time:
❝Exercise is something that when you spend time on it, it will buy you time when you start to work❞
Read more: A Neuroscientist Experimented on Her Students and Found a Powerful Way to Improve Brain Function
Ok, but we really want to know how much!
Dr. Suzuki recommends at least three to four 30-minute exercise sessions per week.
Note: this adds up to less than the recommended 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, but high-intensity exercise counts for twice the minutes for these purposes, e.g. 1 minute of high-intensity exercise is worth 2 minutes of moderate exercise.
How soon will we see benefits?
Benefits start immediately, but stack up cumulatively with continued long-term exercise:
❝My lab showed that a single workout can improve your ability to shift and focus attention, and that focus improvement will last for at least two hours. ❞
…which is a great start, but what’s more exciting is…
❝The more you’re working out, the bigger and stronger your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex gets. Why is that important?
Because the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus are the two areas that are most susceptible to neurodegenerative diseases and normal cognitive decline in aging. ❞
In other words, while improving your heart rate through regular exercise will help prevent neurodegeneration by the usual mechanism of reducing neuroinflammation… It’ll also build the parts of your brain most susceptible to decline, meaning that when/if decline sets in, it’ll take a lot longer to get to a critical level of degradation, because it had more to start with.
Read more:
Inspir Modern Senior Living | Dr. Wendy Suzuki Boosts Brain Health with Exercise
Want more from Dr. Suzuki?
You might enjoy her TED talk:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically
Prefer text? TED.com has a transcript for you
Prefer lots of text? You might like her book, which we haven’t reviewed yet but will soon:
Enjoy!
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Sensitive – by Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo
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This book is written for what is called the “Highly Sensitive Person”, which makes it sound like a very rare snowflake condition, when in fact the diagnostic criteria (discussed early in the book) yield a population bell curve of 30:40:30, whereupon 30% are in the band of “high sensitivity”, 40% “normal sensitivity” and the remainder “low sensitivity”. You may note that “high” and “low” together outnumber “normal”, but statistics is like that.
So, if you’re one of the approximately one in three people who fall into the higher category, and/or you have a loved one who is in that category, then this book looks at the many advantages to a commonly stigmatized and (by cruel irony) criticized personality trait.
Those advantages range from personal life to work and even public life (yes, really), and can be grown, positively highlighted, used, and enjoyed.
In the category of criticism, the book does not usefully cover the benefit of psychological resilience. Resilience does not mean losing sensitivity, just, being able to also dry one’s tears and weather life’s slings and arrows when the world is harsher than one might like. But for the authors, they have stacked all their chips on “we must make the world a better place”. Which is a noble goal, if not always an immediately attainable one.
Bottom line: if you are more sensitive than average and would like to use that to benefit yourself and those around you, then this is the book for you!
Click here to check out Sensitive, and make the most of your strengths!
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How Not to Die – by Dr. Michael Greger
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Dr. Greger (of “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen” fame) outlines for us in cold hard facts and stats what’s most likely to be our cause of death. While this is not a cheery premise for a book, he then sets out to work back from there—what could have prevented those specific things?
Some of the advice is what you might expect: eat green things and whole grains, skip the bacon. Other advice is less well-known: get a daily dose of curcumin/turmeric, take it with black pepper. Works wonders. If you want to add in daily exercises, just lifting the book could be a start; weighing in at 678 pages, it’s an information-dense tome that’s more likely to be sifted through than read cover-to-cover.
If you’re a more cynical sort, you might note that since the book doesn’t confer immortality, but does help us avoid statistically likely causes of death, logically it significantly increases our chances of dying in a statistically unlikely way. (Ha! Your mental exercise for today will be decoding that sentence )
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5 Steps To Beat Overwhelm
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Dealing With Overwhelm
Whether we live a hectic life in general, or we usually casually take each day as it comes but sometimes several days gang up on us at once, everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes.
Today we’re going to look at how to deal with it healthily.
Step 1: Start anywhere
It’s easy to get stuck in “analysis paralysis” and not know how to tackle an unexpected large problem. An (unhealthy) alternative is to try to tackle everything at once, and end up doing nothing very well.
Even the most expert juggler will not successfully juggle 10 random things thrown unexpectedly at them.
So instead, just pick any part of the the mountain of to-dos, and start.
If you do want a little more finesse though, check out:
Procrastination, And How To Pay Off The To-Do List Debt
Step 2: Accept what you’re capable of
This one works both ways. It means being aware of your limitations yes, but also, of your actual abilities:
- Is the task ahead of you really beyond what you are capable of?
- Could you do it right now without hesitation if a loved one’s life depended on it?
- Could you do it, but there’s a price to pay (e.g. you can do it but it’ll wipe you out in some other life area)?
Work out what’s possible and acceptable to you, and make a decision. And remember, it could be that someone else could do it, but everyone has taken the “if you want something doing, give it to someone busy” approach. It’s flattering that people have such confidence in our competence, but it is also necessary to say “no” sometimes, or at least enlisting help.
Step 3: Listen to your body
…like a leader listening to an advisory council. Your perception of tiredness, pain, weakness, and all your emotions are simply messengers. Listen to the message! And then say “thank you for the information”, and proceed accordingly.
Sometimes that will be in the way the messengers seem to be hoping for!
Sometimes, however, maybe we (blessed with a weighty brain and not entirely a slave to our limbic system) know better, and know when it’s right to push through instead.
Similarly, that voice in your head? You get to decide where it goes and doesn’t. On which note…
Step 4: Be responsive, not reactive
We wrote previously on the difference between these:
A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It
Measured responses will always be better than knee-jerk reactions, unless it is literally a case of a split-second making a difference. 99% of our problems in life are not so; usually the problem will still be there unchanged after a moment’s mindful consideration, so invest in that moment.
You’ve probably heard the saying “give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe”. In this case, that can be your mind. Here’s a good starting point:
No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
And if your mental state is already worse than that, mind racing with threats (real or perceived) and doom-laden scenarios, here’s how to get out of that negative spiral first, so that you can apply the rest of this:
Do remember to turn it on again afterwards, though
Step 5: Transcend discomfort
This is partly a callback to step 3, but it’s now coming from a place of a clear ready mind, so the territory should be looking quite different now. Nevertheless, it’s entirely possible that your clear view shows discomfort ahead.
You’re going to make a conscious decision whether or not to proceed through the discomfort (and if you’re not, then now’s the time to start calmly and measuredly looking at alternative plans; delegating, ditching, etc).
If you are going to proceed through discomfort, then it can help to frame the discomfort as simply a neutral part of the path to getting where you want. Maybe you’re going to be going way out of your comfort zone in order to deal with something, and if that’s the case, make your peace with it now, in advance.
“Certainly it hurts” / “Well, what’s the trick then?” / “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts”
(lines from a famous scene from the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia)
It’s ok to say to yourself (if it’s what you decide is the right thing to do) “Yep, this experience is going to suck terribly, but I’m going to do it anyway”.
See also (this being about Radical Acceptance):
What’s The Worst That Could Happen?
Take care!
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Seeds: The Good, The Bad, And The Not-Really-Seeds!
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Doctors are great at saving lives like mine. I’m a two time survivor of colon cancer and have recently been diagnosed with Chron’s disease at 62. No one is the health system can or is prepared to tell me an appropriate diet to follow or what to avoid. Can you?❞
Congratulations on the survivorship!
As to Crohn’s, that’s indeed quite a pain, isn’t it? In some ways, a good diet for Crohn’s is the same as a good diet for most other people, with one major exception: fiber
…and unfortunately, that changes everything, in terms of a whole-foods majority plant-based diet.
What stays the same:
- You still ideally want to eat a lot of plants
- You definitely want to avoid meat and dairy in general
- Eating fish is still usually* fine, same with eggs
- Get plenty of water
What needs to change:
- Consider swapping grains for potatoes or pasta (at least: avoid grains)
- Peel vegetables that are peelable; discard the peel or use it to make stock
- Consider steaming fruit and veg for easier digestion
- Skip spicy foods (moderate spices, like ginger, turmeric, and black pepper, are usually fine in moderation)
Much of this latter list is opposite to the advice for people without Crohn’s Disease.
*A good practice, by the way, is to keep a food journal. There are apps that you can get for free, or you can do it the old-fashioned way on paper if prefer.
But the important part is: make a note not just of what you ate, but also of how you felt afterwards. That way, you can start to get a picture of patterns, and what’s working (or not) for you, and build up a more personalized set of guidelines than anyone else could give to you.
We hope the above pointers at least help you get going on the right foot, though!
❝Why do baked goods and deep fried foods all of a sudden become intolerable? I used to b able to ingest bakery foods and fried foods. Lately I developed an extreme allergy to Kiwi… what else should I “fear”❞
About the baked goods and the deep-fried foods, it’s hard to say without more information! It could be something in the ingredients or the method, and the intolerance could be any number of symptoms that we don’t know. Certainly, pastries and deep-fried foods are not generally substantial parts of a healthy diet, of course!
Kiwi, on the other hand, we can answer… Or rather, we can direct you to today’s “What’s happening in the health world” section below, as there is news on that front!
We turn the tables and ask you a question!
We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:
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Fruit & Veg In The Fridge: Pros & Cons
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝What effect does refrigeration have on the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables??❞
It’s difficult to give a single definitive answer, because naturally there are a lot of different fruits and vegetables, and a lot of different climates. The answer may be different for tomatoes in Alaska vs bananas in Arizona!
However, we can still generalize at least somewhat
Refrigeration will generally slow down any degradation process, and in the case of fruit and vegetables, that can mean slowing down their “ripening” too, as applicable.
However…
Refrigeration will also impede helpful bioactivity too, and that includes quite a list of things.
Here’s a good study that’s quite illustrative; we’d summarize the conclusions but the rather long title already does that nicely:
So, this really is a case of “there are pros and cons, but probably more cons on balance”.
In practical terms, a good take-away from this can be twofold:
- don’t keep fruit and veg in the fridge unless the ambient temperature really requires it
- if the ambient temperature does require it, it’s best to get the produce in fresh each day if that’s feasible, to minimize time spent in the fridge
An extra thing not included there: often when it comes to the spoilage of fruit and veg, the problem is that it respires and oxidizes; reducing the temperature does lower the rate of those, but often a far better way is to remove the oxygen. So for example, if you get carried away and chop too many carrot batons for your hummus night, then putting them in a sealed container can go a long way to keeping them fresh.
See also: How Does the Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables Change Over Time?
Enjoy!
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‘I keep away from people’ – combined vision and hearing loss is isolating more and more older Australians
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Our ageing population brings a growing crisis: people over 65 are at greater risk of dual sensory impairment (also known as “deafblindness” or combined vision and hearing loss).
Some 66% of people over 60 have hearing loss and 33% of older Australians have low vision. Estimates suggest more than a quarter of Australians over 80 are living with dual sensory impairment.
Combined vision and hearing loss describes any degree of sight and hearing loss, so neither sense can compensate for the other. Dual sensory impairment can occur at any point in life but is increasingly common as people get older.
The experience can make older people feel isolated and unable to participate in important conversations, including about their health.
bricolage/Shutterstock Causes and conditions
Conditions related to hearing and vision impairment often increase as we age – but many of these changes are subtle.
Hearing loss can start as early as our 50s and often accompany other age-related visual changes, such as age-related macular degeneration.
Other age-related conditions are frequently prioritised by patients, doctors or carers, such as diabetes or heart disease. Vision and hearing changes can be easy to overlook or accept as a normal aspect of ageing. As an older person we interviewed for our research told us
I don’t see too good or hear too well. It’s just part of old age.
An invisible disability
Dual sensory impairment has a significant and negative impact in all aspects of a person’s life. It reduces access to information, mobility and orientation, impacts social activities and communication, making it difficult for older adults to manage.
It is underdiagnosed, underrecognised and sometimes misattributed (for example, to cognitive impairment or decline). However, there is also growing evidence of links between dementia and dual sensory loss. If left untreated or without appropriate support, dual sensory impairment diminishes the capacity of older people to live independently, feel happy and be safe.
A dearth of specific resources to educate and support older Australians with their dual sensory impairment means when older people do raise the issue, their GP or health professional may not understand its significance or where to refer them. One older person told us:
There’s another thing too about the GP, the sort of mentality ‘well what do you expect? You’re 95.’ Hearing and vision loss in old age is not seen as a disability, it’s seen as something else.
Isolated yet more dependent on others
Global trends show a worrying conundrum. Older people with dual sensory impairment become more socially isolated, which impacts their mental health and wellbeing. At the same time they can become increasingly dependent on other people to help them navigate and manage day-to-day activities with limited sight and hearing.
One aspect of this is how effectively they can comprehend and communicate in a health-care setting. Recent research shows doctors and nurses in hospitals aren’t making themselves understood to most of their patients with dual sensory impairment. Good communication in the health context is about more than just “knowing what is going on”, researchers note. It facilitates:
- shorter hospital stays
- fewer re-admissions
- reduced emergency room visits
- better treatment adherence and medical follow up
- less unnecessary diagnostic testing
- improved health-care outcomes.
‘Too hard’
Globally, there is a better understanding of how important it is to maintain active social lives as people age. But this is difficult for older adults with dual sensory loss. One person told us
I don’t particularly want to mix with people. Too hard, because they can’t understand. I can no longer now walk into that room, see nothing, find my seat and not recognise [or hear] people.
Again, these experiences increase reliance on family. But caring in this context is tough and largely hidden. Family members describe being the “eyes and ears” for their loved one. It’s a 24/7 role which can bring frustration, social isolation and depression for carers too. One spouse told us:
He doesn’t talk anymore much, because he doesn’t know whether [people are] talking to him, unless they use his name, he’s unaware they’re speaking to him, so he might ignore people and so on. And in the end, I noticed people weren’t even bothering him to talk, so now I refuse to go. Because I don’t think it’s fair.
Dual sensory loss can be isolating for older people and carers. Synthex/Shutterstock So, what can we do?
Dual sensory impairment is a growing problem with potentially devastating impacts.
It should be considered a unique and distinct disability in all relevant protections and policies. This includes the right to dedicated diagnosis and support, accessibility provisions and specialised skill development for health and social professionals and carers.
We need to develop resources to help people with dual sensory impairment and their families and carers understand the condition, what it means and how everyone can be supported. This could include communication adaptation, such as social haptics (communicating using touch) and specialised support for older adults to navigate health care.
Increasing awareness and understanding of dual sensory impairment will also help those impacted with everyday engagement with the world around them – rather than the isolation many feel now.
Moira Dunsmore, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Nursing School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, University of Sydney; Annmaree Watharow, Lived Experience Research Fellow, Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney, and Emily Kecman, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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