Physical fitness, brain fitness

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.

Brain Fitness: The Philosophy

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.

Brain Fitness

Brain Training Study Off the Ground!

computer with apple for teacher

After overcoming a number of obstacles, our study of the effects of cognitive training on fluid intelligence has finally started. We’re enrolling participants from our local Life Long Learning Program, all of whom are 50 years or older. In the study, we are comparing the effects of working memory training …

Changes in Brain Size with Aging

Picture of chimpanzee

Understanding brain aging has to be research priority. The average age of people in the US is increasing. This means that there are more older people at risk for diseases that occur as people get older, such as Alzheimer’s. In people, the size of the brain decreases as they get …

Exercise, Mitochondrial DNA, and Brain Fitness

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One very influential theory of why our physical and mental functions decline with age holds that changes in our DNA accumulate over time so that out cells don’t work any more. Perhaps the most important part of our DNA exists in every cell in a special part called the mitochondia. …

The Default Mode Network and Brain Fitness

Man sleeping on grass

If brain fitness is more than just trying to avoid memory loss as you get older (and I think it is), then understanding how you think is (I think) critical. Sometimes called metacognition, this means not just thinking, but thinking about thinking. Follow that? Metacognition is the idea that we …

Mindfulness Meditation, Brain Fitness, and Gray Matter

Buddhist monk looking out over the forest

Most people know that the brain is smaller with age, at least in part due to loss of brain cells in parts of the brain related to perception, memory, and executive processes. Anything that can slow down or reverse the process should be of interest to all of us, whatever our age. …

RSS Worry and GAD Blog

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    This is a cross posting from my brain fitness blog. As it turns out, worry is probably bad for your brain fitness, so coping with worry not only can improve your mood but may also help improve your thinking and memory. Here the post: Irritability means letting small things that happen to all of us […]
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    the contrast between Tibetan monks’ apparent calm, evident even on brain scans, and her own anxiety disorder. Ms. Warner says that she suffers from panic disorder, […]