Synergistic Brain-Training

10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

The 10almonds Team

Let The Games Begin (But It Matters What Kind)

Exercise is good for brain health; we’ve written about this before, for example:

How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk ← there are many advices here, but exercise, especially cardiovascular exercise in this case, is an important item on the list!

Today it’s Psychology Sunday though, and we’re going to talk about looking after brain health by means of brain-training, via games.

“Brain-training” gets a lot of hype and flak:

  • Hype: do sudoku every day and soon you will have an IQ of 200 and still have a sharp wit at the age of 120
  • Flak: brain-training is usually training only one kind of cognitive function, with limited transferability to the rest of life

The reality is somewhere between the two. Brain training really does improve not just outwardly measurable cognitive function, but also internally measurable improvements visible on brain scans, for example:

But what about the transferability?

Let us play

This is where game-based brain-training comes in. And, the more complex the game, the better the benefits, because there is more chance of applicability to life, e.g:

  • Sudoku: very limited applicability
  • Crosswords: language faculties
  • Chess: spatial reasoning, critical path analysis, planning, memory, focus (also unlike the previous two, chess tends to be social for most people, and also involve a lot of reading, if one is keen)
  • Computer games: wildly varied depending on the game. While an arcade-style “shoot-em-up” may do little for the brain, there is a lot of potential for a lot of much more relevant brain-training in other kinds of games: it could be planning, problem-solving, social dynamics, economics, things that mirror the day-to-day challenges of running a household, even, or a business.
    • It’s not that the skills are useful, by the way. Playing “Stardew Valley” will not qualify you to run a real farm, nor will playing “Civilization” qualify you to run a country. But the brain functions used and trained? Those are important.

It becomes easily explicable, then, why these two research reviews with very similar titles got very different results:

The first review found that game-based brain-training had negligible actual use. The “games” they looked at? BrainGymmer, BrainHQ, CogMed, CogniFit, Dakim, Lumosity, and MyBrainTrainer. In other words, made-for-purpose brain-trainers, not actual computer games per se.

The second reviewfound that game-based training was very beneficial. The games they looked at? They didn’t name them, but based on the descriptions, they were actual multiplayer online turn-based computer games, not made-for-purpose brain-trainers.

To summarize the above in few words: multiplayer online turn-based computer games outperform made-for-purpose brain-trainers for cognitive improvement.

Bringing synergy

However, before you order that expensive gaming-chair for marathon gaming sessions (research suggests a tail-off in usefulness after about an hour of continuous gaming per session, by the way), be aware that cognitive training and (physical) exercise training combined, performed close in time to each other or simultaneously, perform better than the sum of either alone:

Comparing the effect of cognitive vs. exercise training on brain MRI outcomes in healthy older adults: A systematic review

See also:

❝Simultaneous training was the most efficacious approach for cognition, followed by sequential combinations and cognitive training alone, and significantly better than physical exercise.

Our findings suggest that simultaneously and sequentially combined interventions are efficacious for promoting cognitive alongside physical health in older adults, and therefore should be preferred over implementation of single-domain training❞

~ Dr. Hanna Malmberg Gavelin et al.

Source: Combined physical and cognitive training for older adults with and without cognitive impairment: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Take care!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • What’s Your Ikigai?
  • What Are Nootropics, Really?
    A nootropic is a cognitive enhancer that improves brainpower. They can be called “smart drugs” and come in various forms, such as neurochemical modulators, metabolic brain boosters, and ingredients in a witch’s potion.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Resistance Is Useful!

    At 10almonds we talk a lot about the importance of regular moderate exercise (e.g. walking, gardening, housework, etc), and with good reason: getting in those minutes (at least 150 minutes per week, so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) is the exericise most consistently linked to better general health outcomes and reduced mortality risk.

    We also often come back to mobility, because at the end of the day, being able to reach for something from a kitchen cabinet without doing oneself an injury is generally more important in life than being able to leg-press a car.

    Today though, we’re going to talk about resistance training.

    What is resistance training?

    It can be weight-lifting, or it can be bodyweight exercises. In those cases, what you’re resisting is gravity. It can also be exercises with resistance bands or machines. In all cases, it’s about building and/or maintaining strength.

    Why does it matter?

    Let’s say you’re not an athlete, soldier, or laborer, and the heaviest thing you have to pick up is a bag of groceries. Strength still matters, for two main reasons:

    • Muscle strength correlates to bone strength. You can’t build (or maintain) strong muscles on weak bones, so if you take care of your muscles, then your body will keep your bones strong too.
      • That’s assuming you have a good diet as well—but today’s not about that. If you’d like to know more about eating for bone health though, do check out this previous article about that!
    • Muscle strength correlates to balance and stability. You can’t keep yourself from falling over if you are physically frail.

    Both of those things matter, because falls and fractures often have terrible health outcomes (e.g., slower recovery and more complications) the older we get. So, we want to:

    • Ideally, not fall in the first place
    • If we do fall, have robust bones

    See also: Effects of Resistance Exercise on Bone Health

    How much should we do?

    Let’s go to the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research on this one:

    ❝There is strong evidence to support the benefits of resistance exercise for countering many age-related processes of sarcopenia, muscle weakness, mobility loss, chronic disease, disability, and even premature mortality.

    In addition, this Position Statement provides specific evidence-based practice recommendations to aid in the implementation of resistance exercise programs for healthy older adults and those with special considerations.

    While there are instances where low-intensity, low-volume programs are appropriate (i.e., beginning programs for individuals with frailty or CVDs), the greatest benefits are possible with progression to moderate to higher intensity programs.❞

    ~ Fragala et al

    Read the statement in full:

    Resistance Training for Older Adults: Position Statement From the National Strength and Conditioning Association

    There’s a lot of science there and it’s well worth reading if you have the time. It’s particularly good at delineating how much is not enough vs how much is too much, and the extent to which we should (or shouldn’t) train to exhaustion.

    If you don’t fancy that, though, and/or just want to start with something accessible and work your way up, the below is a very good (and also evidence-based) start-up plan:

    Healthline’s Exercise Plan For Seniors—For Strength, Balance, & Flexibility

    (it has a weekly planner, step-by-step guides to the exercises, and very clear illustrative animations of each)

    Share This Post

  • Building Psychological Resilience (Without Undue Hardship)

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

    When we talk about the five lifestyle factors that make the biggest difference to health, stress management would be a worthy addition as number six. We haven’t focused explicitly on that for a while, so let’s get ready to start the New Year on a good footing…

    You’re not going to have a stress-free 2024

    What a tender world that would be! Hopefully your stressors will be small and manageable, but rest assured, things will stress you.

    And that’s key: “rest assured”. Know it now, prepare for it, and build resilience.

    Sounds grim, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be, though.

    When the forecast weather is cold and wet, you’re not afraid of it when you have a warm dry house. When the heating bill comes for that warm dry house, you’re not afraid of it when you have money to pay it. If you didn’t have the money and the warm dry house, the cold wet weather could be devastating to you.

    The lesson here is: we can generally handle what we’re prepared for.

    Negative visualization and the PNS

    This is the opposite of what a lot of “think and grow rich”-style gurus would advise. And indeed, it’s not helpful to slide into anxious worrying.

    If you do find yourself spiralling, here’s a tool for getting out of that spiral:

    RAIN: an intervention for dealing with difficult emotions

    For now, however, we’re going to practice Radical Acceptance.

    First, some biology: you may be aware that your Central Nervous System (CNS) branches into the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS).

    The PNS is the part that cues our body to relax, and suppresses our fight/flight response. We’re going to activate it.

    Activating the PNS is easy for most people in comfortable circumstances (e.g., you are not currently exposed to stressful stimuli). It may well be activated already, and if it’s not, a few deep breaths is usually all it takes.

    If you’d like a quick and easy Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) technique, here you go:

    No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

    Activating the PNS is hard for most people in difficult circumstances (e.g., you either are currently exposed to stressful stimuli, or you are in one of the emotional spirals we discussed earlier).

    However, we can trick our bodies and brains by—when we are safe and unstressed—practicing imagining those stressful stimuli. Taking a moment to not just imagine it experientially, but immersively. This, in CBT and DBT, is the modern equivalent to the old samurai who simply accepted, before battle, that they were already dead—and thus went into battle with zero fear of death.

    A less drastic example is the zen master who had a favorite teacup, and feared it would get broken. So he would tell himself “the cup is already broken”. One day, it actually broke, and he simply smiled ruefully and said “Of course”.

    How this ties together: practice the mindfulness-based stress reduction we linked above, while imagining the things that do/would stress you the most.

    Since it’s just imagination, this is a little easier than when the thing is actually happening. Practicing this way means that when and if the thing actually happens (an unfortunate diagnosis, a financial reversal, whatever it may be), our CNS is already well-trained to respond to stress with a dose of PNS-induced calm.

    You can also leverage hormesis, a beneficial aspect of (in this case, optional and chosen by you) acute stress:

    Dr. Elissa Epel | The Stress Prescription

    Psychological resilience training

    This (learned!) ability to respond to stress in an adaptive fashion (without maladaptive coping strategies such as unhelpful behavioral reactivity and/or substance use) is a key part of what in psychology is called resilience:

    Psychological resilience: an update on definitions, a critical appraisal, and research recommendations

    And yes, the CBT/DBT/MBSR methods we’ve been giving you are the evidence-based gold standard.

    Only the best for 10almonds subscribers! 😎

    Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions

    ❝That was helpful, but not cheery; can we finish the year on a cheerier note?❞

    We can indeed:

    How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Body Sculpting with Kettlebells for Women – by Lorna Kleidman

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    For those of us who are more often lifting groceries or pots and pans than bodybuilding trophies, kettlebells provide a way of training functional strength. This book does (as per the title) offer both sides of things—the body sculpting, and thebody maintenance free from pain and injury.

    Kleidman first explains the basics of kettlebell training, and how to get the most from one’s workouts, before discussing what kinds of exercises are best for which benefits, and finally moving on to provide full exercise programs.

    The exercise programs themselves are fairly comprehensive without being unduly detailed, and give a week-by-week plan for getting your body to where you want it to be.

    The style is fairly personal and relaxed, while keeping things quite clear—the photographs are also clear, though if there’s a weakness here, it’s that we don’t get to see which muscles are being worked in the same as we do when there’s an illustration with a different-colored part to show that.

    Bottom line: if you’re looking for an introductory course for kettlebell training that’ll take you from beginner through to the “I now know what I’m doing and can take it from here, thanks” stage.

    Click here to check out Body Sculpting With Kettlebells For Women, and get sculpting!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • What’s Your Ikigai?

  • If Your Adult Kid Calls In Crisis…

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The 10almonds Team

    Parent(s) To The Rescue?

    We’ve written before about the very common (yes, really, it is common) phenomenon of estrangement between parents and adult children:

    Family Estrangement & How To Fix It

    We’ve also written about the juggling act that can be…

    Managing Sibling Relationships In Adult Life

    …which includes dealing with such situations as supporting each other through difficult times, while still maintaining healthy boundaries.

    But what about when one’s [adult] child is in crisis?

    When a parent’s job never ends

    Hopefully, we have not been estranged (or worse, bereaved) by our children.

    In which case, when crisis hits, we are likely to be amongst the first to whom our children will reach out for support. Naturally, we will want to help. But how can we do that, and where (if applicable) to draw the line?

    No “helicopter parenting”

    If you’ve not heard the term “helicopter parenting”, it refers to the sort of parents who hover around, waiting to swoop in at a moment’s notice.

    This is most often applied to parents of kids of university age and downwards, but it’s worth keeping it in mind at any age.

    After all, we do want our kids to be able to solve their own problems if possible!

    So, if you’ve ever advised your kid to “take a deep breath and count to 10” (or even if you haven’t), then, consider doing that too, and then…

    Listen first!

    If your first reaction isn’t to join them in panic, it might be to groan and “oh not again”. But for now, quietly shelve that, and listen to whatever it is.

    See also: Active Listening (Without Sounding Like A Furby)

    And certainly, do your best to maintain your own calm while listening. Your kid is in all likelihood looking to you to be the rock in the storm, so let’s be that.

    Empower them, if you can

    Maybe they just needed to vent. If so, the above will probably cover it.

    More likely, they need help.

    Perhaps they need guidance, from your greater life experience. Sometimes things that can seem like overwhelming challenges to one person, are a thing we dealt with 20 or more years ago (it probably felt overwhelming to us at the time, too, but here we are, the other side of it).

    Tip: ask “are you looking for my guidance/advice/etc?” before offering it. Doing so will make it much more likely to be accepted rather than rejected as unsolicited advice.

    Chances are, they will take the life-ring offered.

    It could be that that’s not what they had in mind, and they’re looking for material support. If so…

    When it’s about money or similar

    Tip: it’s worth thinking about this sort of thing in advance (now is great, if you have adult kids), and ask yourself nowwhat you’d be prepared to give in that regard, e.g:

    • if they need money, how much (if any) are you willing and able to provide?
    • if they want/need to come stay with you, how prepared are you for that (including: if they want/need to actually move back in with you for a while, which is increasingly common these days)?

    Having these answers in your head ready will make the conversation a lot less difficult in the moment, and will avoid you giving a knee-jerk response you might regret (in either direction).

    Have a counteroffer up your sleeve if necessary

    Maybe:

    • you can’t solve their life problem for them, but you can help them find a therapist (if applicable, for example)
    • you can’t solve their money problem for them, but you can help them find a free debt advice service (if applicable, for example)
    • you can’t solve their residence problem for them, but you can help them find a service that can help with that (if applicable, for example)

    You don’t need to brainstorm now for every option; you’re a parent, not Batman. But it’s a lot easier to think through such hypothetical thought-experiments now, than it will be with your fraught kid on the phone later.

    Magic words to remember: “Let’s find a way through this for you”

    Don’t forget to look after yourself

    Many of us, as parents, will tend to not think twice before sacrificing something for our kid(s). That’s generally laudable, but we must avoid accidentally becoming “the giving tree” who has nothing left for ourself, and that includes our mental energy and our personal peace.

    That doesn’t mean that when your kid comes in crisis we say “Shh, stop disturbing my personal peace”, but it does mean that we remember to keep at least some boundaries (also figure out now what they are, too!), and to take care of ourselves too.

    The following article was written with a slightly different scenario in mind, but the advice remains just as valid here:

    How To Avoid Carer Burnout (Without Dropping Care)

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Indistractable – by Nir Eyal

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The 10almonds Team

    Have you ever felt that you could accomplish anything you wanted/needed, if only you didn’t get distracted?

    This book lays out a series of psychological interventions for precisely that aim, and it goes a lot beyond the usual “download/delete these apps to help you stop checking social media every 47 seconds”.

    Some you’ll have heard of before, some you won’t have, and if even one method works for you, it’ll have been well worth your while reading this book. This reviewer, for example, enjoyed the call to identity-based strength, e.g. adopting an “I am indistractable*” perspective going into tasks. This is akin to the strength of, for example, “I don’t drink” over “I am a recovering alcoholic”.

    *the usual spelling of this, by the way, is “undistractable”, but we use the author’s version here for consistency. It’s a great marketing gimmick, as all searches for the word “indistractable” will bring up his book.

    Nor is the book just about maximizing productivity to the detriment of everything else; this is not about having a 25 hours per day “grindset”. Rather, it even makes sure to cover such things as focusing on one’s loved ones, for instance.

    Bottom line: if you’ve tried blocking out the distractions but still find you can’t focus, this book offers next-level solutions

    Click here to check out Indistractible, and become indeed indistractable!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Black Cohosh vs The Menopause

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The 10almonds Team

    Black Cohosh, By Any Other Name…

    Black cohosh is a flowering plant whose extracts are popularly used to relieve menopausal (and postmenopausal) symptoms.

    Note on terms: we’ll use “black cohosh” in this article, but if you see the botanical names in studies, the reason it sometimes appears as Actaea racemosa and sometimes as Cimicfuga racemosa, is because it got changed and changed back on account of some disagreements between botanists. It’s the same plant, in any case!

    Read: Reclassification of Actaea to include Cimicifuga and Souliea (Ranunculaceae)

    Does it work?

    In few words: it works for physical symptoms, but not emotional ones, based on this large (n=2,310) meta-analysis of studies:

    ❝Black cohosh extracts were associated with significant improvements in overall menopausal symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.575, 95% CI = 0.283 to 0.867, P < 0.001), as well as in hot flashes (Hedges’ g = 0.315, 95% CIs = 0.107 to 0.524, P = 0.003), and somatic symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.418, 95% CI = 0.165 to 0.670, P = 0.001), compared with placebo.

    However, black cohosh did not significantly improve anxiety (Hedges’ g = 0.194, 95% CI = -0.296 to 0.684, P = 0.438) or depressive symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.406, 95% CI = -0.121 to 0.932, P = 0.131)❞

    ~ Dr. Ryochi Sadahiro et al., 2023

    Source: Black cohosh extracts in women with menopausal symptoms: an updated pairwise meta-analysis

    Here’s an even larger (n=43,759) one that found similarly, and also noted on safety:

    ❝Treatment with iCR/iCR+HP was well tolerated with few minor adverse events, with a frequency comparable to placebo. The clinical data did not reveal any evidence of hepatotoxicity.

    Hormone levels remained unchanged and estrogen-sensitive tissues (e.g. breast, endometrium) were unaffected by iCR treatment.

    As benefits clearly outweigh risks, iCR/iCR+HP should be recommended as an evidence-based treatment option for natural climacteric symptoms.

    With its good safety profile in general and at estrogen-sensitive organs, iCR as a non-hormonal herbal therapy can also be used in patients with hormone-dependent diseases who suffer from iatrogenic climacteric symptoms.❞

    ~ Dr. Castelo-Branco et al., 2020

    Source: Review & meta-analysis: isopropanolic black cohosh extract iCR for menopausal symptoms – an update on the evidence

    (iCR = isopropanolic Cimicifuga racemosa)

    So, is this estrogenic or not?

    This is the question many scientists were asking, about 20 or so years ago. There are many papers from around 2000–2005, but here’s a good one that’s quite representative:

    ❝These new data dispute the estrogenic theory and demonstrate that extracts of black cohosh do not bind to the estrogen receptor in vitro, up-regulate estrogen-dependent genes, or stimulate the growth of estrogen-dependent tumors❞

    ~ Dr. Gail Mahady, 2003

    Source: Is Black Cohosh Estrogenic?

    (the abstract is a little vague, but if you click on the PDF icon, you can read the full paper, which is a lot clearer and more detailed)

    The short answer: no, black cohosh is not estrogenic

    Is it safe?

    As ever, check with your doctor as everyone’s situation can vary, but broadly speaking, yes, it has a very good safety profile—including for breast cancer patients, at that. See for example:

    Where can I get some?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: