Are you taking care of your brain? Have you heard the term “Use it or Lose it”? Let’s talk about what we want as we grow old. I’m not sure about you but I want to keep my brain sharp. It’s nice to reach a nice ripe old age but what good is it if your brain isn’t growing old as gracefully as your body. To keep our brains in the best tip-top shape as we grow older is to give the brain what it needs to grow more neurons. We need to create new neurons as we age to combat the brain’s shrinkage. Yes our brains start shrinking in our late 20’s!
Let’s begin with the obvious. Anything that can impacts your blood vessels will impact your brain function. Too much salt, sugar, cholesterol, alcohol, drugs, and the list goes on. So rather than talk about the negatives here I thought I’d let you in on some secrets. Yes, I have no problem divulging my secrets to you because I want you to have good brain health. The secrets are not really so secret it’s just a matter of looking in the right places. Just like all secrets they are there you just need to uncover them.
Want to improve brain function and keep our brains young as we age? Here are the 4 Pillars of Brain Health you need to know.
The first pillar is nutrition. What are you feeding your bodies? Do you eat enough of the good stuff and indulge in the naughty sweets here and there? Well if not, then this is time to change your eating style. It’s not a diet, it’s a healthy way of eating that helps your brain thrive. Does that make you feel a little better? Feed your brain the nutrients it needs to perform well and keep functioning optimally. It’s not asking for a lot, just a little TLC.
Second pillar is exercise. Let me be honest here with you. I hate formal exercise. I’ve always hated to exercise. But the real key here is not so much how fast you run or how much you can press but to be in constant motion. As much motion as possible. Make a game out of it. Use a smartwatch, Fitbit or any kind of gadget you like but challenge yourself. Challenge your significant other or friend. Whoever has the most steps by the end of the week gets a free Greenstraw drink! Did you think I’d say bottle of wine. Well that works too! Everything in moderation. The key is to move your body. The more the better. When visiting other countries and returning back to America I can see just how lazy we’ve become. To see 90 year olds riding bicycles, walking up steep ancient steps carrying groceries is not unusual to see on an average day in Italy for example. You come back to the states and say “geez we are so lazy!”.
Third pillar is stress. Stress kills. What does it kill? Neurons in the brain. That’s right stress damages our brain and is the main reason the average brain begins to shrink after our 20’s! Unless you’re a Buddhist monk, stress is all around you and at times difficult to control. My advice and the advice of experts is to find ways to manage your stress. I never recommend things I haven’t tried myself so here is my short list: meditation, manifestations, mantras, mindfulness, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, and a good old walk outside in nature! Sometimes just stepping outside and breathing in some fresh air is all I need to get me centered. If you’ve tried all these and still can’t relax, you may need to talk to your physician, or nutritionist about natural vs pharmaceutical remedies to help you bring your stress down to a manageable level. Once you get it down, then return back to the list above and try again! You can do it!
Fourth pillar and a huge piece to brain health is brain exercise! I will be devoting my next blog to just this so hang in there. In the meantime here is what I want to say in a nutshell. Your brain is bored! Bored that it has learned all its skills and is doing everything on automatic pilot. Your formal education, done. Your job, you know what you’re doing and you’re pretty darn good at it. Done. What have you taught your brain to do in the last month? Year? So here is the problem. The brain needs to be stimulated and challenged. Challenge is the key here. Did you know that once we leave the formal classroom our brains begin to shrink? Yes, we lose neurons because we have finished learning (or so we think) and have everything we need to succeed in life/career. So here is what you need to do. Find new things to learn and become a masters at it! I play chess with my husband who is a pretty darn good chess player. It has taken me 12 years to finally say we are at the same skill level! Talk about perseverance! I’m pretty stubborn and the angrier I get the better I play! He will say that’s the Calabrese in me (wink). Don’t’ give up! Sudoku, crossword puzzles, anything with a gradual increase in levels and complexity challenges your brain and builds new neuronal connections.
I have a friend who told me that her 90 year old mother recently said to her “I need to learn something new. I’m bored”. And so she took up painting! Your brain is never too old to learn. In fact the older we get the more we need to learn to counter-balance the decrease in neurons. Remember that once you’ve reached your peak performance you don’t just stay there. You move on! My husband wasn’t very challenged by playing with me for all those years but he did other things to challenge his brain while hanging in there for me. Now he finds our games very challenging and that has his neurons firing like crazy! This makes us both happy!
So get out of your comfort zone. Yes reading is nice and can be very entertaining but it’s not challenging unless you are reading to learn! Learn how to grout your tub. Build furniture. Fix or repair a broken appliance. Use your brain. The take-away here is to remember we need to help fight off what happens naturally as we age. In order to do this we need to utilize the 4 pillars of good brain health and challenge our brains every day!!
Here is my friend’s mom. 90 years young and just learned how to paint using alcohol added to watercolor! Next week I’ll share a photo of my father-in-law. He’s 98 years young and is active on social media!
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