Archive for February, 2008
Some may wonder why we’re so interested in physical fitness, medical problems, diet, and exercise in our evaluation. The answer is simple: all these things can affect how your brain works.
Perhaps the most important piece of information you should know (if you don’t already) is that physical exercise is one of the best ways to improve and maintain your thinking ability. A recent book, Spark, by John J. Ratey, MD (Little, Brown, 2008) presents an extensive discussion of how exercise can promote brain fitness. Exercise raises levels of certain chemicals in the body that improve how well you think. There’s more, too. Physical exercise can improve your mood – that’s been demonstrated a number of times. In our assessment, we will ask about your mood because depression is one of the most common treatable causes of memory problems in older adults.
We ask about your medical problems because they can affect your brain functioning, too. And we’re interested in your diet because how and what you eat can affect your risk for disease. In addition, some people think that eating a diet high in antioxidants can reduce your chances of getting Alzheimer’s or memory problems.
That’s why any brain fitness evaluation has to include an evaluation of much more than only how well you remember and how well you can think.
For a long time, those interested in helping older adults do well have known the importance of assessing many aspects of someone’s functioning. When addressing a physical problem, for example, an alert doctor would look not only at an older person’s blood tests, but also how well they can care for themselves, how well they get around, and whether there’s anyone around to help them if they need it. This kind of assessment might focus on someone’s physical status, but would also look at a number of other things. Fixing any problem the doctor finds is important in making sure the patient is functioning at the best level possible.
Brain fitness takes that same philosophy but instead of focusing on disease it focuses on taking you where you are and helping you get better. In a multidisciplinary brain fitness assessment, we look at a number of things that can affect how well you think or remember, not just memory. And the prescription isn’t just about memory or thinking — it may be about stress management, exercise, and changing your diet, too.
Latest
- Brain Fitness and The Mind of a Monk
- Brain Fitness Tip: Training Without a Computer
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. (more…)
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.