Your Aging Brain
We have more control over the health of our brain than we realize. Our brain merely reflects the current state of our overall physical, spiritual and mental health. I've been reading studies about who will develop Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease, the most common neurological conditions affecting our population today. There are some common denominators: poor diet, chemical exposure, mental/physical abuse, chronic stress, feelings of hopelessness and despair and sedentary lifestyle are contributing factors.
Other factors may include: oxidation, free raducals, antioxidants and toxns. What are these and how do they contribute to the body and brain's aging process.?
Oxidation is similar to the process of rusting. When we leave aluminum chairs outdoors, exposed to the elements of rain, sun, wind and snow, it begins to deteriorate or rust. This is what happens inside our bodies when we are exposed to detrimental factors, exposure to free radicals from air pollution and smoking, chemicals in our foods and water, chronic stress, depression, anxiety, anger, excessive intake of sugar or alcohol, faulty elimination, inadequate hydration, low fiber diets and/or lack of exercise.
We have more control over the health of our brain than we realize. Our brain merely reflects the current state of our overall physical, spiritual and mental health. I've been reading studies about who will develop Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease, the most common neurological conditions affecting our population today. There are some common denominators: poor diet, chemical exposure, mental/physical abuse, chronic stress, feelings of hopelessness and despair and sedentary lifestyle are contributing factors.
Other factors may include: oxidation, free raducals, antioxidants and toxns. What are these and how do they contribute to the body and brain's aging process.?
Oxidation is similar to the process of rusting. When we leave aluminum chairs outdoors, exposed to the elements of rain, sun, wind and snow, it begins to deteriorate or rust. This is what happens inside our bodies when we are exposed to detrimental factors, exposure to free radicals from air pollution and smoking, chemicals in our foods and water, chronic stress, depression, anxiety, anger, excessive intake of sugar or alcohol, faulty elimination, inadequate hydration, low fiber diets and/or lack of exercise.
WEBINAR: AGE-PROOF YOUR BRAIN: Aging Gracefully Series
Next event: tba
Age-Proof Your Brain is the second program in the series, AGING GRACEFULLY: FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
- If you are concerned about maintaining healthy brain function as you age, this webinar is important for you.
There are lifestyle changes you can implement to protect your aging brain.
Studies reveal that we do have control over the way our brain ages and functions.
Learn specific techniques, foods and activities that can sharpen brain function, improve memory and reduce inflammation.
Dr. Shellie Fraddin, Facilitator
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EMAIL: drshellie614@gmail.com
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Negative Emotions Affect Brain Health
When you're angry, your body undergoes a transformation. Every cell and every organ and gland is affected. Stress hormones are released from the adrenals and brain, heart rate increases, breathing rate changes and blood flow is affected. When you see somebody you hate, your brain undergoes additional changes.
A new study published in PLoS One today reveals that hatred isn't the blind, irrational emotion it might seem. In fact, hate activates the brain regions associated with higher reason and the ability to predict what other people will do.
British neuroscientists did MRI brain scans of subjects while they looked at pictures of people they claimed to hate. As a baseline, they also showed them pictures of people they felt neutrally about.
Not surprisingly, hatred activated the regions of the brain associated with aggression and the motor regions that would translate this aggression into action.
And given that love often turns into hate, it's not too surprising that hatred also activates two brain regions associated with passionate, romantic love.
POSITIVE EMOTIONS AFFECT BRAIN HEALTH AND IMMUNE SYSTEM
If negative emotions lower immune response against disease , then positive emotions must raise immune response.
Many previous studies have shown that negative emotions and stress can adversely affect the immune system. But this effect had not been directly correlated with activity in the brain, says study leader Richard Davidson, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US.
The part of the brain the team studied, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is associated with depression. People who had the greatest activity in the right PFC when asked to dwell on distressing episodes in their life had a markedly lower antibody levels after an influenza vaccination. In contrast, those showing exceptional activity in the left PFC when recalling happy times developed high antibody levels.
Davidson says emotions play an important role in regulating systems in the body that influence health. "This study establishes that people with a pattern of brain activity that has been associated with positive [emotions] are also the ones to show the best response to the flu vaccine."
"It begins to suggest a mechanism for why subjects with a more positive emotional disposition may be healthier," he says. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an expert on stress and immunity at Ohio State University, told the New York Times that the study represents "some of the best evidence we've seen to date."
10 Ways to Exercise Your Brain
By Daniel G. Amen M.D.
Date: January 01, 2005
Published in: Amen Clinics Inc.
Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you can use it. New learning causes new connections in the brain. No learning causes the brain to start disconnecting itself. No matter what your age, mental exercise has a global, positive effect on the brain. Here are ten tips for mental workouts.
:For healthy lifestyle changes, call Dr. Shellie Fraddin, Ph.D., call 602-708-9018 or Email: drshellie614@gmail.com. Dr. Shellie is an independent consultant and not affiliated with Amen Clinics.
When you're angry, your body undergoes a transformation. Every cell and every organ and gland is affected. Stress hormones are released from the adrenals and brain, heart rate increases, breathing rate changes and blood flow is affected. When you see somebody you hate, your brain undergoes additional changes.
A new study published in PLoS One today reveals that hatred isn't the blind, irrational emotion it might seem. In fact, hate activates the brain regions associated with higher reason and the ability to predict what other people will do.
British neuroscientists did MRI brain scans of subjects while they looked at pictures of people they claimed to hate. As a baseline, they also showed them pictures of people they felt neutrally about.
Not surprisingly, hatred activated the regions of the brain associated with aggression and the motor regions that would translate this aggression into action.
And given that love often turns into hate, it's not too surprising that hatred also activates two brain regions associated with passionate, romantic love.
POSITIVE EMOTIONS AFFECT BRAIN HEALTH AND IMMUNE SYSTEM
If negative emotions lower immune response against disease , then positive emotions must raise immune response.
Many previous studies have shown that negative emotions and stress can adversely affect the immune system. But this effect had not been directly correlated with activity in the brain, says study leader Richard Davidson, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US.
The part of the brain the team studied, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is associated with depression. People who had the greatest activity in the right PFC when asked to dwell on distressing episodes in their life had a markedly lower antibody levels after an influenza vaccination. In contrast, those showing exceptional activity in the left PFC when recalling happy times developed high antibody levels.
Davidson says emotions play an important role in regulating systems in the body that influence health. "This study establishes that people with a pattern of brain activity that has been associated with positive [emotions] are also the ones to show the best response to the flu vaccine."
"It begins to suggest a mechanism for why subjects with a more positive emotional disposition may be healthier," he says. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an expert on stress and immunity at Ohio State University, told the New York Times that the study represents "some of the best evidence we've seen to date."
10 Ways to Exercise Your Brain
By Daniel G. Amen M.D.
Date: January 01, 2005
Published in: Amen Clinics Inc.
Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you can use it. New learning causes new connections in the brain. No learning causes the brain to start disconnecting itself. No matter what your age, mental exercise has a global, positive effect on the brain. Here are ten tips for mental workouts.
- Commit yourself to learning something new.. Einstein said that if anyone spends 15 minutes a day learning something new, in a year he will be an expert. As in school or business, commitment is critical to achieving greatness or great brains.
- Take a class unrelated to your everyday life. In many areas of the country community colleges or groups such as the Learning Annex (www.learningannex.com) offer low cost classes on a wide variety of subjects. Attend a new class on a subject totally unrelated to your day-to-day life. It is important to challenge your brain to learn new and novel things, especially processes that you’ve never done before. Examples include square-dancing (great exercise), chess, tai chi, yoga, or sculpture. Working with modeling clay or Playdough can be good for children or adults to help them grow new connections. It helps develop agility and hand-brain coordination.
- Learn someone else's job at work. Maybe even switch jobs for several weeks. This benefits the business and employees alike, as both workers will have new skills and better brain function. For example, in a grocery store employees can be taught to work as check out clerks, stock shelves, order products, and alternately work in the produce, grocery and dairy sections of the store.
- Improve your skill at things you already do. Some repetitive mental stimulation is ok as long as you look to expand your skills and knowledge base. Push yourself to do different gardening techniques, more complex sewing patterns, play bridge against more talented players to increase your skill, read new authors on varied subjects, learn a new painting technique, and work harder crossword puzzles. Pushing your brain to new heights help to keep it healthy.
- Limit television, a no brain activity, for kids and adults. In a study published in the journal Pediatrics it was reported that for every hour a day children watch TV there is a 10% increased chance of them being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD). In another study, and several others like it, television watching in children put them at risk for problems as adults that also affect brain health. Dr. R.J. Hancox and colleagues from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine in Dunedin, New Zealand assessed approximately 1000 children born in 1972-73 at regular intervals up to age 26. They found that there was a significant association between higher body-mass indices, lower physical fitness, increased cigarette smoking and raised serum cholesterol. These are all factors that are involved in brain illnesses, such as strokes or Alzheimer’s Disease. In yet another study adults who watched two or more hours a day of TV had a significantly higher risk of Alzheimer’s Disease.
- Limit video games. As a father of three children and a child psychiatrist I have thought a lot about video games over the past 15 years. At first, I found them great fun to play. Then I started to worry. Action video games have been studied using brain imaging techniques that look at blood flow and activity patterns. Video games have been found to work in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, one of the pleasure centers in the brain (WW). In fact, this is the same part of the brain that lights up when we inject a person with cocaine Some children and adults actually get hooked on them.I recently had an experience that highlights how important TV and video games are to mental health problems
- Join a reading group that keeps you accountable to new learning. Almost any mental activity you enjoy can be used to protect your brain. The essential requirement is that it activates several different brain areas, one of which should be the hippocampus (in the temporal lobes), which stores new information for retrieval later on. By recalling information (using your hippocampus) you are protecting your brain’s memory centers. In essence, as long as you learn something new about your favorite activity, and work to recall it later for discussions, you are protecting short-term memory. Given this information, it is better to join a reading group, where you are pushed to remember what you read for later discussion, rather than to read novels or newspapers that you just forget.
- Practice well what you are learning. The brain does not interpret what you feed into it; it simply translates it. When learning to play the piano, the brain doesn’t care if you are becoming a great piano player or a terrible piano player. Consequently, if you repeat imperfect fingering, you will become very good at playing imperfectly. If you are training yourself to be a perfect pianist it is essential that you practice perfectly and not learn bad habits or sloppy fingering of the keys. To play well it is helpful to work with a professional who can correct your mistakes. Your brain doesn’t care what you give it, so if you care whether you do something well or badly, you must be certain that you are giving your brain the right training. This is the reason why it is essential that children have good teachers who watch and monitor their progress and why we need to have effective training programs in the workplace. Teaching someone to do something well at the start prevents them from developing bad habits, which get solidified in the brain and are subsequently hard to retrain. Effective initial training in the workplace and in school is essential to developing effective, happy employees and student. We do not just train people, we train brains.
- Break the routine of your life to stimulate new parts of the brain. Do the opposite of what feels natural to activate the other side of your brain to gain access to both hemispheres. Write with your other hand, shoot basketballs with both hands, hit baseballs left handed (if you are right handed), play table tennis left handed, shoot a rifle sighting with your other eye, use the mouse with your other hand — make your brain feel uncomfortable. In essence, break the patterned routine in your life to challenge your brain to make new connections.
- Treat learning problems to help kids and adults stay in school. Numerous studies show that better-educated people have less risk of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline. Millions of children, teens and adults suffer from ADD and learning problems that cause them to struggle in school or with learning despite having normal or even high intelligence. Recognizing these problems and getting them the help they need is essential to making “lifelong learning” a reality. You can take an online test for ADD at http://www.amenclinic.com and find a clinic in your area..
:For healthy lifestyle changes, call Dr. Shellie Fraddin, Ph.D., call 602-708-9018 or Email: drshellie614@gmail.com. Dr. Shellie is an independent consultant and not affiliated with Amen Clinics.
