Exercising Your Brain

It’s hardly news one in three American’s is obese. The causes are two-fold – too many calories and not enough exercise.

A constant barrage of media encourages us to get off the couch and exercise. We are told that exercise improves mood, reduces tension and promotes the tendency to see problems as solvable. It increases endorphins and produces an important anti-distress effect in the body. And, more recent research indicates that exercise makes you smarter. The studies linking exercise to cognitive functioning have been going on for decades (1,2,). After years of research, we find that cardiovascular exercise does improve cognitive abilities, learning, memory and executive functioning (planning, scheduling, multitasking). Although we don’t know the exact mechanisms that improve brain health, animal research is giving us some clues. Researchers are finding that cardiovascular exercise creates new capillaries and increase blood flow and the production of proteins that create new nerve cells and encourage old neurons to grow. All good things, right?

Did you know that inactivity can contribute to depression, ADHD and Alzheimer’s disease? Studies done at Duke and University of Victoria found that exercise works as well as antidepressants on depression. In addition, Laura Baker, PhD, from the University of Washington School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System (3), found that Alzheimer’s patients with mild cognitive impairment improved with aerobic exercise while the group who participated in stretching and balancing exercises continued to decline.

So, how does this relate to resilience? Remember, resilience is all about recovery time. Your mental and physical health is directly related to how quickly you bounce back from stressful events. If you are losing brain cells and your cognitive abilities are declining, you certainly won’t be as sharp as you need to be to cope with life challenges. The healthier you are, the stronger you are, the tougher you are. So get off the couch, get fit and improve your brain. What have you got to lose besides brain cells?

www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/train-your-brain-with-exercise

Kramer, Art. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (Vol.11, No.8)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol.106, No.49)
Archives of Neurology (Vol.67, No.1)

News You Can Use: Your Emotional Brain

In Turning Point’s Using the Mind class, we talk a lot about the mind, brain and emotions. The next time we offer the class, I will be adding some additional information on neuroplasticity and the brain – so for those of you who have taken it before, it is new and improved. But for now, I will give you a short lesson on the emotional part of your brain.

Did you know that for every outside event that you experience, you have a mental and emotional response? Every second of every day, you are responding mentally and emotionally to everything that is happening to you. Here is why: everything that happens is processed in the subcortical part of the brain, also known as the limbic system or stream of emotion. There is nothing you can do about this; it is the way you are wired. The only way around it is if you were somehow disconnected from that part of your brain.

We also know from research done by J.W. Papez, that the brain can be separated into three sections. The stream of cognition governs your intellectual functioning; the stream of emotion governs your emotional functioning; and the stream of motion governs your movement and speech.

The three sections are not very well connected to each other. In essence, there is a lot of communication within each section, but not much between each section. For instance, let’s say you decide to go on a diet. You know all of the intellectual reasons why you should diet - so you start with a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner and then at 10:00 at night, you eat a pan of brownies or bag of potato chips. You think to yourself, “I know I need to do this, why can’t I make myself diet!” What has happened is that your stream of cognition decided you need to do this, but your stream of emotion said “No, I’m not dieting”. And guess which part of your brain is more powerful? The stream of emotion.

So, how do you deal with this? You need to get the stream of cognition and stream of emotion on the same path. And how do you get the stream of emotion agreeing with the stream of cognition? Through right brain activity. Right brain activity is the only way to access the emotional part of your brain.

Some of the best right brain ways to access the emotional part of your brain:

· Relaxation response: There are many techniques that can help you relax, and this “deep relaxation” is great for accessing your stream of emotion. To read further, go to www.mbmi.org/benson or check in next time and I will walk you through the process.
· Repetitive prayer – the repetition of a simple prayer over and over.
· Repetitive physical exercise – running, elliptical, treadmill, etc.
· Mindfulness meditation – Jon Kabat-Zin or Jack Kornfield.
· Breathing techniques – Thousands to choose from!
· Self talk: The repetition of simple language over and over again. More on this later.
· Imagery: Imagining yourself reaching your goals, picturing everything exactly as you would like to be.
· Listen to calming recordings, music or voice.

For a wonderful description of how the right brain functions, I recommend viewing a video of a scientist named Jill Bolte Taylor. Go to www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229 - it is worth the 18 minutes!

See you next time.

Moira

Neurobics

I was recently reading an article in the Wall Street Journal on “neurobics”, the act of exercising your brain to build new pathways (wsj.com, health journal, June 3rd). It reminded me of my days in graduate school when Dr. Jerry Sheridan would lecture on neuroplasticity in the brain, a topic I found fascinating. In the past, researchers thought certain parts of the brain were immutable after development, i.e. you get what you get and have to live with it for the rest of your life.

Decades of research and new scanning and imaging technology have shown that changes can occur in those brain areas that researchers thought were fixed. According to the theory of neuroplasticity, thinking, learning and acting can change the brain’s functioning and physical anatomy. This is great news. We can change our brains. With practice, we can rewire thought patterns.

Let’s say you are a worrier. Your worry pathway is well worn and it is easy for you to take that path – after all, you have practiced worrying for many years. Now we know that you can train a different pathway or rewire a new way of thinking. For instance, you can practice thinking that you are happy and at peace. The key to accessing that part of the brain is to use the repetition of simple language over and over. For instance, if you are training peach of mind, you would say something like “I am happy, I am peaceful”. If you practice it enough, you will wear a pathway of happiness and peace and the worry path, like a path in the woods, grows over and becomes less prominent.

How powerful! You can teach your brain to be happy, to be positive and to be hopeful.

To learn more, I recommend enrolling in the Using the Mind or Resilience program at Turning Point.

Take care,
Moira