Archive for February, 2009
The New York Times has a nice article today about distance runner Matt Carpenter who at age 44 is training for more altitude distance runs. As the article points out, he set a record for the Pike’s Peak Marathon in territory where visitors are warned about respiratory problems. After a career that appeared to fade, he won six races last year. With a resting heart rate of 33 bpm and a VO2 max better than Lance Armstrong’s, Matt is a pretty impressive athlete.
Here’s a link to the article on the Times’ web site:
Focus on stress. Our own, and many other researchers’ work, has shown that stress has a negative relation to memory. Stress may affect how well you can pay attention, and the chemicals it increases in our body (sometimes called stress hormones) may have a negative impact on your body. Whatever the cause, stress has a negative effect on your ability to remember what you want to remember.
What to do? First, check out your stress level. Do you often feel tense, worried, and jumpy? Stress might be the reason. How often do you feel out of control, or as though events have gotten away from you? Those are the sorts of experiences that make for increased stress. People sometimes forget that we adapt to stressors, so that after some time we may not even notice how stressed we are.
Simple ways to control stress include mental “time outs,” relaxation, and exercise. Mental “time outs” mean simply taking a few minutes once or twice a day to shift gears. Stop the headlong rush through the day for just a few minutes. Do something else for 10 minutes, but be sure that you take a few seconds to breathe and mentally shift gears. Still better, practice relaxation for 15 minutes twice a day. Simply sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, and focus on relaxing the muscles of your body from your head to your feet. Finally, exercise five times a week. It doesn’t mean that you have to go to a gym and lift weights or train for a marathon. Just walking 30 minutes can make a difference
The most important things are to notice your stress level and make a plan for dealing with it. Your memory will thank you.
A recent study provides a clue into the exercise-brain fitness relation. A paper reported in the December 2008 issue of the journal Neurology shows that high levels of blood glucose (the kind that can happen in people with diabetes) may directly affect the hippocampus. Since the hippocampus is a part of the brain that is essential for memory, this study helps us understand one way in which physical fitness can affect brain function. What’s the link? We know that physical fitness improves the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar levels, so being physically fit may decrease the damage that high blood sugar levels can cause to the hippocampus.
The story is a little more complicated, though (isn’t it always)? Blood sugar is regulated by a hormone called insulin. People who have type II diabetes (the kind that people usually get later in life) have a condition called insulin resistance. This means that the body makes enough, and sometimes too much, insulin. The problem is that the insulin doesn’t have a strong enough effect. This means that the body keeps making higher levels of insulin. Exposing the body to high levels of insulin can cause problems.
In the case of the brain, insulin is very important for its function. Insulin has to cross into the brain from the blood by way of a special mechanism called a transporter protein. When insulin levels are high all the time, the body decreases the number of these transporter proteins, and the brain may not get enough insulin. Some studies have shown that insulin is important in memory function, so a decrease in the number of these transporter proteins may be yet another way that high blood sugar levels can affect memory. While all of these studies are preliminary, they add to what we know about high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and mental functioning.
There are two effective ways of keeping your blood sugar under control: diet and exercise. Following the Mediterranean diet can help, because it emphasizes the kinds of food that will help keep your blood sugar stable. Exercise has been shown to help your body be more sensitive to the effects of insulin. When your body is more sensitive to insulin’s effects, blood sugar levels will be lower and more stable. We know that following the Mediterranean diet and regular exercise can help your memory – their link to blood sugar and blood sugar’s effects on the brain may be why.
The Mediterranean diet is an important part of any brain health program. A number of studies have shown that people who follow the Mediterranean diet have less chance of having a heart attack, and that changing to the diet can reduce risk for another heart attack. Consistent with our increasing appreciation of the relation of heart and brain risk factors, at least one study has shown that people who follow the Mediterranean diet more closely have a lower risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Just that may be enough to have you ready to try the diet, but you might wonder what it is and what you’re supposed to eat. That’s where Dr. Michael Ozner’s book comes in. Dr. Ozner is a cardiologist in Miami, Florida, and says that he has been using the diet to treat his patients for more than 25 years. The book includes clinical vignettes in which patients describe their experiences with the diet and how it has helped them. Although Dr. Ozner recommends the often-unpopular practice of counting calories, people who follow the diet may find that they can eat more and still lose weight because of the diet’s emphasis on low-glycemic index foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, and whole-grain breads and pastas.
In clear language Dr. Ozner lays out the reasons why you should be interested in the diet. He gives you an overview of the studies that have shown that people who follow the diet have lower risk for heart disease, and explains why. You may note that many of the elements of the Mediterranean diet have anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects, making it similar in this respect to Dr. Andrew Weil’s anti-inflammatory diet.
But the book has lots more than just a description of the why the diet is important. It also has a complete 14-day diet plan and a wide selection of recipes that any cook can use to make the diet not just healthy but delicious. My favorite section of recipes is the one for pizzas. There is also a section with a number of recipes for desserts that are high in flavor and low in fat.
Overall, this is a very useful book that will help you understand the importance of the Mediterranean diet and will help you get started in following it.
The Miami Mediterranean Diet: Lose Weight and Lower Your Risk of Heart Disease with 300 Delicious Recipes
Hardcover, 432 pages, ISBN 978-1933771502, $25.95.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.
The Mediterranean diet is an important part of any brain health program. A number of studies have shown that people who follow the Mediterranean diet have less chance of having a heart attack, and that changing to the diet can reduce risk for another heart attack. Consistent with our increasing appreciation of the relation of heart and brain risk factors, at least one study has shown that people who follow the Mediterranean diet more closely have a lower risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Just that may be enough to have you ready to try the diet, but you might wonder what it is and what you’re supposed to eat. That’s where Dr. Michael Ozner’s book comes in. Dr. Ozner is a cardiologist in Miami, Florida, and says that he has been using the diet to treat his patients for more than 25 years. The book includes clinical vignettes in which patients describe their experiences with the diet and how it has helped them. Although Dr. Ozner recommends the often-unpopular practice of counting calories, people who follow the diet may find that they can eat more and still lose weight because of the diet’s emphasis on low-glycemic index foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, and whole-grain breads and pastas.
In clear language Dr. Ozner lays out the reasons why you should be interested in the diet. He gives you an overview of the studies that have shown that people who follow the diet have lower risk for heart disease, and explains why. You may note that many of the elements of the Mediterranean diet have anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects, making it similar in this respect to Dr. Andrew Weil’s anti-inflammatory diet.
But the book has lots more than just a description of the why the diet is important. It also has a complete 14-day diet plan and a wide selection of recipes that any cook can use to make the diet not just healthy but delicious. My favorite section of recipes is the one for pizzas. There is also a section with a number of recipes for desserts that are high in flavor and low in fat.
Overall, this is a very useful book that will help you understand the importance of the Mediterranean diet and will help you get started in following it.
The Miami Mediterranean Diet: Lose Weight and Lower Your Risk of Heart Disease with 300 Delicious Recipes
Hardcover, 432 pages, ISBN 978-1933771502, $25.95.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.
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.