The Brain Health Book – by Dr. John Randolph
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The author, a clinical neuropsychologist and brain health consultant, brings his professional knowledge and understanding to bear on the questions of what works, what doesn’t, and why?
In practical terms, the focus is mostly on maintaining/improving attention, memory, and executive functions. To that end, he covers what kinds of exercises to do (physical and mental!), and examines what strategies make the most difference—including the usual lifestyle considerations of course, but also more specifically than that, what to prioritize over what when it comes to daily choices.
The style is easy pop-science, with an emphasis on being directly useful to the reader, rather than giving an overabundance of citations for everything as we go along. He does, however, explain the necessary science as we go, making the book educational without being academic.
Bottom line: if you’d like to maintain/improve your brain, this book can certainly help with that, and as a bonus (unless you are already an expert) you’ll learn plenty about the brain as you go.
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Fixing Fascia
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Fascia: Why (And How) You Should Take Care Of Yours
Fascia is the web-like layer of connective tissue that divides your muscles and organs from each other. It simultaneously holds some stuff in place, and allows other parts to glide over each other with minimal friction.
At least, that’s what it’s supposed to do.
Like any body part, it can go wrong. More on this later. But first…
A quick note on terms
It may seem like sometimes people say “myofascial” because it sounds fancier, but it does actually have a specific meaning too:
- “Fascia” is what we just described above
- “Myofascial” means “of or relating to muscles and fascia”
For example, “myofascial release” means “stopping the fascia from sticking to the muscle where it shouldn’t” and “myofascial pain” means “pain that has to do with the muscles and fascia”. See also:
Myofascial vs Fascia: When To Use Each One? What To Consider
Why fascia is so ignored
For millennia, it was mostly disregarded as a “neither this nor that” tissue that just happens to be in the body. We didn’t pay attention to it, just like we mostly don’t pay attention to the air around us.
But, much like the air around us, we sure pay attention when something goes wrong with it!
However, even in more recent years, we’ve been held back until quite new developments like musculoskeletal ultrasound that could show us problems with the fascia.
What can go wrong
It’s supposed to be strong, thin, supple, and slippery. It holds on in the necessary places like a spiderweb, but for the most part, it is evolved for minimum friction.
Some things can cause it to thicken and become sticky in the wrong places. Things such as:
- Physical trauma, e.g. an injury or surgery—but we repeat ourselves, because a surgery is an injury! It’s a (usually) necessary injury, but an injury nonetheless.
- Compensation for pain. If a body part hurts for some reason, and your posture changes to accommodate that, doing so can mess up your fascia, and cause you different problems somewhere else entirely.
- This is not witchcraft; think of how, when using a corded vacuum cleaner, sometimes the cord can get snagged on something in the next room and we nearly break something because we expected it to just come with us and it didn’t? It’s like that.
- Repetitive movements (repetitive strain injury is partly a myofascial issue)
- Not enough movement: when it comes to range of motion, it’s “use it or lose it”.
- The human body tries its best to be as efficient as possible for us! So eventually it will go “Hey, I notice you never move more than 30º in this direction, so I’m going to stop making fascia that allows you to go past that point, and I’ll just dump the materials here instead”
“I’ll just dump the materials here instead” is also part of the problem—it creates what we colloquially call “knots”, which are not so much part of the muscle as the fascia that covers it. That’s an actual physical sticky lumpy bit.
What to do about it
Firstly, avoid the above things! But, if for whatever reason something has gone wrong and you now have sticky lumpy fascia that doesn’t let you move the way you’d like (if you have any mobility/flexibility issues that aren’t for another known reason, then this is usually it), there are things can be done:
- Heat—is definitely not a cure-all, but it’s a good first step before doing the other things. A heating pad or a warm bath are great.
- Here’s an example of a neck+back+shoulders heating pad; you can get them for different body parts, or just use an electric blanket!
- Massage—ideally, by someone else who knows what they are doing. Self-massage is possible, as is teaching oneself (there are plenty of video tutorials available), but skilled professional therapeutic myofascial release massage is the gold standard.
- Foam rollers are a great no-skill way to get going with self-massage, whether because that’s what’s available to you, or because you just want something you can do between sessions. Here’s an example of the kind we mean.
- Acupuncture—triggering localized muscular relaxation, an important part of myofascial release, is something acupuncture is good at.
- See also: Pinpointing The Usefulness Of Acupuncture ← noteworthily, the strongest criticism of acupuncture for pain relief is that it performs only slightly better than sham acupuncture, but taken in practical terms, all that really means is “sticking little needles in does work, even if not necessarily by the mechanism acupuncturists believe”
- Calisthenics—Pilates, yoga, and other forms of body movement training can help gradually get one’s fascia to where and how it’s supposed to be.
- This is that “use it or lose it” bodily efficiency we talked about!
Remember, the body is always rebuilding itself. It never stops, until you die. So on any given day, you get to choose whether it rebuilds itself a little bit worse or a little bit better.
Take care!
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Rapamycin Can Slow Aging By 20% (But Watch Out)
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Rapamycin’s Pros & Cons
Rapamycin is generally heralded as a wonderdrug that (according to best evidence so far) can slow down aging, potentially adding decades to human lifespan—and yes, healthspan.
It comes from a kind of soil bacteria, which in turn comes from the island of Rapa Nui (a Chilean territory best known for its monumental moai statues), hence the name rapamycin.
Does it work?
Yes! Probably! With catches!
Like most drugs that are tested for longevity-inducing properties, research in humans is very slow. Of course for drugs in general, they must go through in vitro and in vivo animal testing first before they can progress to human randomized clinical trials, but for longevity-inducing drugs, it’s tricky to even test in humans, without waiting entire human lifetimes for the results.
Nevertheless, mouse studies are promising:
Rapamycin: An InhibiTOR of Aging Emerges From the Soil of Easter Island
(“Easter Island” is another name given to the island of Rapa Nui)
That’s not a keysmash in the middle there, it’s a reference to rapamycin’s inhibitory effect on the kinase mechanistic target of rapamycin, sometimes called the mammalian target of rapamycin, and either way generally abbreviated to “mTOR”—also known as “FK506-binding protein 12-rapamycin-associated protein 1” or “FRAP1“ to its friends, but we’re going to stick with “mTOR”.
What’s relevant about this is that mTOR regulates cell growth, cell proliferation, cell motility, cell survival, protein synthesis, autophagy, and transcription.
Don’t those words usually get associated with cancer?
They do indeed! Rapamycin and its analogs have well-demonstrated anti-cancer potential:
❝Rapamycin, the naturally occurring inhibitor of mTOR, along with a number of recently developed rapamycin analogs (rapalogs) consisting of synthetically derived compounds containing minor chemical modifications to the parent structure, inhibit the growth of cell lines derived from multiple tumor types in vitro, and tumor models in vivo.
Results from clinical trials indicate that the rapalogs may be useful for the treatment of subsets of certain types of cancer.❞
…and as such, gets used sometimes as an anticancer drug—especially against renal cancer. See also:
Research perspective: Cancer prevention with rapamycin
What’s the catch?
Aside from the fact that its longevity-inducing effects are not yet proven in humans, the mouse models find its longevity effects to be sex-specific, extending the life of male mice but not female ones:
Rapamycin‐mediated mouse lifespan extension: Late‐life dosage regimes with sex‐specific effects
One hypothesis about this is that it may have at least partially to do with rapamycin’s immunomodulatory effect, bearing in mind that estrogen is immune-enhancing and testosterone is immunosuppressant.
And rapamycin? That’s another catch: it is an immunosuppressant.
This goes in rapamycin’s favor for its use to avoiding rejection when it comes to some transplants (most notably including for kidneys), though the very same immunosuppressant effect is a reason it is contraindicated for certain other transplants (such as in liver or lung transplants), where it can lead to an unacceptable increase in risk of lymphoma and other malignancies:
Prescribing Information: Rapamune, Sirolimus Solution / Sirolimus Tablet
(Sirolimus is another name for rapamycin, and Rapamune is a brand name)
What does this mean for the future?
Researchers think that rapamycin may be able to extend human lifespan to a more comfortable 120–125 years, but acknowledge there’s quite a jump to get there from the current mouse studies, and given the current drawbacks of sex-specificity and immunosuppression:
Advances in anti-aging: Rapamycin shows potential to extend lifespan and improve health
Noteworthily, rapamycin has also shown promise in simultaneously staving off certain diseases associated most strongly with aging, including Alzheimer’s and cardiac disease—or even, starting earlier, to delay menopause, in turn kicking back everything else that has an uptick in risk peri- or post-menopause:
Effect of Rapamycin in Ovarian Aging (Rapamycin)
👆 an upcoming study whose results are thus not yet published, but this is to give an idea of where research is currently at. See also:
Pilot Study Evaluates Weekly Pill to Slow Ovarian Aging, Delay Menopause
Where can I try it?
Not from Amazon, that’s for sure!
It’s still tightly regulated, but you can speak with your physician, especially if you are at risk of cancer, especially if kidney cancer, about potentially being prescribed it as a preventative—they will be able to advise about safety and applicability in your personal case.
Alternatively, you can try getting your name on the list for upcoming studies, like the one above. ClinicalTrials.gov is a great place to watch out for those.
Meanwhile, take care!
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The Science Of Sounds
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We Think You Might Like The Sound Of This…
We’ve written before about the benefits of mindfulness meditation, and how to do it.
We also reviewed a great book on a related topic:
This is Your Brain On Music – by Dr. Daniel Levitin
(yes, that’s the same neuroscientist that we featured as an expert talking about The Five Keys of Aging Healthily)
But what happens when we combine the two?
Mantra meditation & music
Most scientific studies that have been undertaken with regard to meditation tend to focus on mindfulness meditation. It’s easy, effective, and (which makes a difference when it comes to publication bias) is a very safe bet when it comes to funding.
However, today we’re going to look at mantra meditation, which has a lot in common, neurologically speaking, with music. Indeed, when the two were compared separately in a randomized control trial:
❝Daily mantra meditation or classical music listening may be beneficial for cognitive outcomes and quality of life of breast cancer survivors with cancer-related cognitive impairment.
The cognitive benefits appear to be sustained beyond the initial intervention period.❞
One possible reason for some of the similar benefits is the vagus nerve—whether intoning a mantra, or humming along to music, the vibrations can stimulate the vagus nerve, which in turn activates the parasympathetic nervous system, resulting in body-wide relaxation:
The Vagus Nerve (And How You Can Make Use Of It)
How effective is mantra meditation?
According to a large recent narrative review, it depends on your goal:
❝Based on the studies in the four important areas presented, there is no doubt of a strong connection between mantra meditation and human health.
Strong evidence has been found that practicing mantra meditation is effective in relieving stress and in coping with hypertension.
For the other two areas: anxiety and immunity, the evidence is inconclusive or not strong enough to firmly support the claim that the mantra meditation can be used to reduce anxiety or to improve immunity. ❞
Read in full: Scientific Evidence of Health Benefits by Practicing Mantra Meditation: Narrative Review
this is a very interesting read if you do have the time!
How do I practice mantra meditation?
The definition is broad, but the critical criteria are:
- You meditate…
- …using a mantra
Lest that seem flippant: those really are the two key points!
Meditation comes in various forms, and mantra meditation is a form of focussed meditation. While some focussed meditation forms may use a candle or some other focal point, in mantra meditation, the mantra itself provides the focus.
You may be wondering: what should the mantra be?
Classic and well-tested mantras include such simple things as the monosyllabic Sanskrit “Om” or “Ham”. We’re a health science newsletter, so we’ll leave esoteric meanings to other publications as they are beyond our scope, but we will say that these result, most naturally, in the humming sound that we mentioned earlier stimulates the vagus nerve.
But that’s not the only way. Practitioners of religions that have repetitive prayer systems (e.g. anything that uses prayer beads, for example) also provide the basis of focused meditation, using a mantra (in this case, usually a very short oft-repeated prayer phrase).
How long is needed for benefits?
Most studies into mantra meditation have used timed sessions of 15–30 minutes, with 20 minutes being a commonly-used session length, once per day. However…
- Vagus nerve benefits should appear a lot more quickly than that (under 5 minutes) in the case of mantras that cause that vibration we mentioned.
- Repetitive spoken prayers (or similar repeated short phrases, for the irreligious) will generally effect relaxation in whatever period of time it takes for your brain to be fully focused on what you are doing now, instead of what you were thinking about before. If using counting beads, then you probably already know what number works for you.
(again, as a health science publication, we cannot comment on any otherworldly benefits, but the worldly benefits seem reason enough to consider these practices for their potential therapeutic effects)
10almonds tip: for any meditative practice that you want to take approximately a given period of time, we recommend investing in a nice sand timer like this one, as this will not result in a jarring alarm going off!
Like to jazz things up a little?
Enjoy: Meditation That You’ll Actually Enjoy ← Meditation games!
Prefer to keep things to the basics?
Enjoy: No Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness ← The simplest scientific approach
Take care!
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Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?
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The Two Sides Of Caffeine
We asked you for your health-related opinions on caffeine itself, not necessarily the coffee, tea, energy drinks, etc that might contain it.
We have, by the way previously written about the health effects of coffee and tea specifically:
As for our question about caffeine itself, though, we got the above-depicted, below-described, set of results:
- About 59% said “caffeine is a safe stimulant and cognitive enhancer”
- About 31% said “caffeine is a moderately safe recreational drug”
- About 8% said “caffeine’s addictive properties make it de facto bad”
- One (1) person said “caffeine will leave you a trembling exhausted wreck”
But what does the science say?
Caffeine is addictive: True or False?
True, though one will find occasional academics quibbling the definition. Most of the studies into the mechanisms of caffeine addiction have been conducted on rats, but human studies exist too and caffeine is generally considered addictive for humans, for example:
See also:
Notwithstanding its addictive status, caffeine is otherwise safe: True or False?
True-ish, for most people. Some people with heart conditions or a hypersensitivity to caffeine may find it is not safe for them at all, and for the rest of us, the dose makes the poison. For example:
❝Can too much caffeine kill you? Although quite rare, caffeine can be fatal in cases of overdose; such circumstances are generally not applicable to healthy individuals who typically consume caffeine via beverages such as tea or coffee.❞
this paper, by the way, also includes a good example of academics quibbling the definition of addiction!
Caffeine is a cognitive enhancer: True or False?
True, but only in the case of occasional use. If you are using it all the time, your physiology will normalize it and you will require caffeine in order to function at your normal level. To attain higher than that, once addicted to caffeine, would now require something else.
Read more: Caffeine: benefits and drawbacks for technical performance
Caffeine will leave you a trembling exhausted wreck: True or False?
True or False depending on usage:
- The famously moderate 3–5 cups per day will not, for most people, cause any such problems.
- Using/abusing it to make up for lost sleep (or some other source of fatigue, such as physical exhaustion from exertion), however, is much more likely to run into problems.
In the latter case, caffeine really is the “payday loan” of energy! It’ll give you an adrenal boost now (in return, you must suffer the adrenal dumping later, along with lost energy expended in the adrenaline surge), and also, the tiredness that you thought was gone, was just caffeine’s adenosine-blocking activities temporarily preventing you from being able to perceive the tiredness. So you’ll have to pay that back later, with interest, because of the extra time/exertion too.
Want to make caffeine a little more gentle on your system?
Taking l-theanine alongside caffeine can ameliorate some of caffeine’s less wonderful effects—and as a bonus, l-theanine has some nifty benefits of its own, too:
Enjoy!
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How to Do the Work – by Dr. Nicole LaPera
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We have reviewed some self-therapy books before, and they chiefly have focused on CBT and mindfulness, which are great. This one’s different.
Dr. Nicole LaPera has a bolder vision for what we can do for ourselves. Rather than giving us some worksheets for unraveling cognitive distortions or clearing up automatic negative thoughts, she bids us treat the cause, rather than the symptom.
For most of us, this will be the life we have led. Now, we cannot change the parenting style(s) we received (or didn’t), get a redo on childhood, avoid mistakes we made in our adolescence, or face adult life with the benefit of experience we gained right after we needed it most. But we can still work on those things if we just know how.
The subtitle of this book promsies that the reader can/will “recognise your patterns, heal from your past, and create your self”.
That’s accurate, for the content of the book and the advice it gives.
Dr. LaPera’s focus is on being our own best healer, and reparenting our own inner child. Giving each of us the confidence in ourself; the love and care and/but also firm-if-necessary direction that a (good) parent gives a child, and the trust that a secure child will have in the parent looking after them. Doing this for ourselves, Dr. LaPera holds, allows us to heal from traumas we went through when we perhaps didn’t quite have that, and show up for ourselves in a way that we might not have thought about before.
If the book has a weak point, it’s that many of the examples given are from Dr. LaPera’s own life and experience, so how relatable the specific examples will be to any given reader may vary. But, the principles and advices stand the same regardless.
Bottom line: if you’d like to try self-therapy on a deeper level than CBT worksheets, this book is an excellent primer.
Click here to check out How To Do The Work, and empower yourself to indeed do the work!
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Walking can prevent low back pain, a new study shows
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Do you suffer from low back pain that recurs regularly? If you do, you’re not alone. Roughly 70% of people who recover from an episode of low back pain will experience a new episode in the following year.
The recurrent nature of low back pain is a major contributor to the enormous burden low back pain places on individuals and the health-care system.
In our new study, published today in The Lancet, we found that a program combining walking and education can effectively reduce the recurrence of low back pain.
PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock The WalkBack trial
We randomly assigned 701 adults who had recently recovered from an episode of low back pain to receive an individualised walking program and education (intervention), or to a no treatment group (control).
Participants in the intervention group were guided by physiotherapists across six sessions, over a six-month period. In the first, third and fifth sessions, the physiotherapist helped each participant to develop a personalised and progressive walking program that was realistic and tailored to their specific needs and preferences.
The remaining sessions were short check-ins (typically less than 15 minutes) to monitor progress and troubleshoot any potential barriers to engagement with the walking program. Due to the COVID pandemic, most participants received the entire intervention via telehealth, using video consultations and phone calls.
Low back pain can be debilitating. Karolina Kaboompics/Pexels The program was designed to be manageable, with a target of five walks per week of roughly 30 minutes daily by the end of the six-month program. Participants were also encouraged to continue walking independently after the program.
Importantly, the walking program was combined with education provided by the physiotherapists during the six sessions. This education aimed to give people a better understanding of pain, reduce fear associated with exercise and movement, and give people the confidence to self-manage any minor recurrences if they occurred.
People in the control group received no preventative treatment or education. This reflects what typically occurs after people recover from an episode of low back pain and are discharged from care.
What the results showed
We monitored the participants monthly from the time they were enrolled in the study, for up to three years, to collect information about any new recurrences of low back pain they may have experienced. We also asked participants to report on any costs related to their back pain, including time off work and the use of health-care services.
The intervention reduced the risk of a recurrence of low back pain that limited daily activity by 28%, while the recurrence of low back pain leading participants to seek care from a health professional decreased by 43%.
Participants who received the intervention had a longer average period before they had a recurrence, with a median of 208 days pain-free, compared to 112 days in the control group.
In our study, regular walking appeared to help with low back pain. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock Overall, we also found this intervention to be cost-effective. The biggest savings came from less work absenteeism and less health service use (such as physiotherapy and massage) among the intervention group.
This trial, like all studies, had some limitations to consider. Although we tried to recruit a wide sample, we found that most participants were female, aged between 43 and 66, and were generally well educated. This may limit the extent to which we can generalise our findings.
Also, in this trial, we used physiotherapists who were up-skilled in health coaching. So we don’t know whether the intervention would achieve the same impact if it were to be delivered by other clinicians.
Walking has multiple benefits
We’ve all heard the saying that “prevention is better than a cure” – and it’s true. But this approach has been largely neglected when it comes to low back pain. Almost all previous studies have focused on treating episodes of pain, not preventing future back pain.
A limited number of small studies have shown that exercise and education can help prevent low back pain. However, most of these studies focused on exercises that are not accessible to everyone due to factors such as high cost, complexity, and the need for supervision from health-care or fitness professionals.
On the other hand, walking is a free, accessible way to exercise, including for people in rural and remote areas with limited access to health care.
Walking has a variety of advantages. Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock Walking also delivers many other health benefits, including better heart health, improved mood and sleep quality, and reduced risk of several chronic diseases.
While walking is not everyone’s favourite form of exercise, the intervention was well-received by most people in our study. Participants reported that the additional general health benefits contributed to their ongoing motivation to continue the walking program independently.
Why is walking helpful for low back pain?
We don’t know exactly why walking is effective for preventing back pain, but possible reasons could include the combination of gentle movements, loading and strengthening of the spinal structures and muscles. It also could be related to relaxation and stress relief, and the release of “feel-good” endorphins, which block pain signals between your body and brain – essentially turning down the dial on pain.
It’s possible that other accessible and low-cost forms of exercise, such as swimming, may also be effective in preventing back pain, but surprisingly, no studies have investigated this.
Preventing low back pain is not easy. But these findings give us hope that we are getting closer to a solution, one step at a time.
Tash Pocovi, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Health Sciences, Macquarie University; Christine Lin, Professor, Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney; Mark Hancock, Professor of Physiotherapy, Macquarie University; Petra Graham, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, and Simon French, Professor of Musculoskeletal Disorders, Macquarie University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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