Pam Strand (00:02):
Welcome to the Longevity Gym. Hello, my name is Pam Strand. I'm your podcast host. The Longevity Gym Podcast is the place to come to hear helpful information and to learn about tools and techniques that will help you live longer, stronger, and better. My 20 year career as a personal trainer and life coach informs much of what I share in this podcast show. My curiosity is also a huge contributor. I have always been curious about how the mind and body work and how they work together. A great deal of my studies and certifications are in this area. I'm specifically interested or especially interested in what we can do to strengthen our minds and bodies at any age. Today we're going to take a look at how we can keep our brains and minds strong and healthy. It's a big question we have. As we get older, many of us are determined to lower the risk of memory issues and of dementia and diseases like Alzheimer's.
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In this episode, I'm going to share what I consider the 12 most important habits and behaviors for brain and cognitive health. Like all areas of our body, our brain changes as we age. Certain parts of the brain shrink, especially those important to learning attention and complex mental activities and thought processes. The circulation to the brain decreases leading to less oxygen and nutrients getting to the brain. Our brain cells and various parts of our brain don't talk as well to each other and the level of neurotransmitters decline. Those are the chemical messages or chemical messengers that carry message and information between parts of our bodies and its systems. Even the low grade chronic level of inflammation that's associated with aging, which has been labeled inflammaging, can disrupt our brain's health and function. I know it sounds a bit overwhelming and maybe even a little depressing, but science is finding ways or finding answers for us and giving us clues on what lifestyle habits and behaviors we can adopt that help keep the brain as healthy as possible for as long as possible and slow its aging process.
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From a physiological perspective, we want to look at the habits and behaviors that encourage and support making new brain cells and neurons, building new neural pathways, keeping brain cells healthy and talking to one another. Growing parts of the brain that tend to shrink as we age and making sure we have good circulation so that oxygen and nutrients get to our brains and nourish our brains. No single behavior is guaranteed to prevent dementia and cognitive decline like so many other things related to the body, the literature and evidence keeps pointing to an overall healthy lifestyle that incorporates many interrelated habits and behaviors as the means for reducing the risk of diseases associated with the brain and the mind. Here are 12 key behaviors and practices. The smorgasbord, if you will, for the brain and mind that come up most often in the scientific literature and research.
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One, get regular exercise. Two, eat a healthy diet. Three, drink less alcohol and don't smoke. Four, get high quality sleep. Five, stay mentally well and healthy. Six, be cognitively active. Seven, lower or eliminate chronic stress. Eight, maintain positive social connections. Nine, practice breathwork. 10. Do meditation and mindfulness. 11, build grip strength. 12, train your balance. Let's look at each of these in a little more detail. Regular exercise shows up on the top of almost any list when you talk about improving wellness, fitness, and health. Exercise acts as a fountain of youth for our brains not to mention the rest of our bodies. Exercise grows the part of the brain or the parts of the brain that shrink as we age. It increases white and gray matter in the brain. Exercise improves blood flow and circulation. It improves cellular communication. It produces proteins responsible for the survival and health of our brain cells.
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Exercise improves how we sleep. It results in cognitive improvement. It reduces inflammation in the body and in the brain. Inflammation in the brain is linked to aging and depression, aerobic exercise, resistance training and doing mind body exercise. All of these are shown to have positive impact on the health of our brain, so a varied and consistent exercise and movement practice is essential. I haven't found research that suggests what length of working out or what length of a workout is ideal for the brain and the mind. I have seen conversations and discussions that both high intensity interval training and moderately intense exercise for at least 30 to 40 minutes at a time are both beneficial for overall health, and I think this pertains to our brain and mind health as well. Experts suggest the guidelines of 75 minutes each week of high intensity exercise that gets your heart rate up into the vigorous level, which would be in the 70 to 85% range of your estimated maximum heart rate or 150 minutes of moderate exercise, which equates to 50 or 60% of your estimated maximum heart rate with exercise. As long as there aren't any medical limitations or reasons for not exercising a little helps a lot and more helps even more individual fitness levels and health considerations should always be considered, so it is recommended to consult with your medical professional before beginning an exercise program and especially if you are interested in a high intensity level of exercise.
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Movement can be used in other ways to promote brain and cognitive health, novel movements or movements that are new to your body. Slow articulated movements, especially at the joints and movements that train hand eye coordination all stimulate the brain in its neural pathways. I like to use movement in two other ways with my clients and in my own movement practice, making sure we move through all planes of motion moving forward, backward, side to side in that we're rotating. The second way is rhythmic movement, and you can think of rhythmic movement. It's noting like walking and running and swimming, but basically it's moving or even breathing to a steady beat. These stimulate new neural pathways and new neural maps in the brain. Think of all of this as cross-training for the brain and our cognition. The brain and our minds love cross-training just like the rest of our body practice or behavior.
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Number two, eat a healthy diet. The brain needs nutrients. Diets that are healthy for the heart are also noted for being healthy for the brain, the dash diet and the Mediterranean diet or ways of eating that focus on whole grains, plants, both fruits and vegetables. Lean protein and unsaturated and healthy fats are the focus of the dash and the Mediterranean diet. There is also the mind diet that combines these two in that is specifically designed for brain health. You want to also think anti-inflammatory foods and hydration. The brain drain that usually happens around three o'clock in the afternoon is thought likely to be more of a mild dehydration rather than a need for more food or a snack. Number three, drink less alcohol and don't smoke. Alcohol and tobacco are toxins to the body and negatively impact our brain. Health. Alcohol, especially in heavy consumption is known to decrease mental health. Both of these stress the body and its systems and are linked to a higher risk of chronic disease.
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Get high quality sleep is number four. Getting your disease is important for brain and cognitive health. Sleep is a restoration and waste removal event for the brain. It's the only time the brain goes through a detox. During phases of sleep, systems are activated that clear out toxic waste and also that strengthen neural pathways. Memory consolidation also happens during sleep. High quality sleep is beneficial, but poor quality. Sleep simply isn't just a neutral event. It is over time detrimental to our brain in our neurobiology. In other words, how the brain and our nervous system function and regulate things like behavior, perception, learning, memory, movement, even the balance amongst our hormonal systems and the communication and signaling throughout the body, even the immune system sleep's role in our body and in our brain is massive and we want to take care of it. I hope to devote future podcasts to all that I've learned about sleep and how to sleep well, but in the meantime here are a few tips. Sorry. Environmental factors can help you sleep well or not such as light noise, room temperature and air quality. We want a dark room, a quiet room, room temperature. I've read or studied that at 68 to 74 degrees is ideal, but that's personal preference and air quality. I think of relative humidity and allergens in the air when I think of air quality, so you want to make sure the levels are there to make sure that you can breathe well while you sleep.
(10:48):
Most adults need seven to nine hours, but the quantity of REM and deep sleep is really the most important thing for the brain. From what I have read and study, evidence says that one hour of deep sleep and two hours of REM sleep is ideal. An interesting perspective to have is that sleep is a skill. That means we can develop new skills that help us sleep well or help us get back to sleep when we wake up during the middle of the night. Breathing techniques before bed or even when we wake up can help changing up our nutrition. Practicing meditation, working on stress reduction and light and dark exposure can also improve the quality of our sleep, making sure that we are in sync with our circadian rhythms. Number five, mental health and wellness. These are essential for brain and cognitive health. Some studies link depression with a higher risk of dementia.
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Addressing any mental health issues that you may be experiencing is important and practicing mental wellness is also important and that is exercise in general, mind body movement, specifically things like yoga and tai chi. They combine breath and movement and that does a wonderful thing for our brain meditation. All of these positively influence our mental and our brain health. Number six, stay cognitively active. While the literature I have read shows mixed results on correlating cognitive training with reduced risk of dementia training or cognitive skills, however, do keep them sharp as possible as we age, and that can help minimizing the impact of any cognitive decline or even dementia that might come about as we get older. The cognitive activities to prioritize include problem solving, attention focus, and concentration. Problem solving is all about knowing, hey, we've got a problem to solve, identifying various solutions and implementing a solution to solve the problem.
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Problems can be small, they can be large and complex. We want to make sure that we are tending to different types of problems. Attention is about where our mental effort and energy goes and practicing being selective on where we direct our attention. Focus takes attention to a higher level where our attention is sustained to the exclusion of everything else. This also involves practicing managing distractions. Concentration is the ability to sustain attention and focus for long periods of time. In other words, the ability to keep your mind on a task until it's done. All of these things can be practiced in our daily lives. Think of this as cross-training For the mind. You want to change up your cognitive challenges to create new and novel stimuli for your mind and your brain. Studying a new subject, learning new skills, having new experiences, those are all important things to do. Mix it up.
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Number seven, reducing or eliminating chronic stress, stress management or more specifically stress reduction improves our cellular health, including the health of the cells in our brain. Reducing stress levels leads to reducing chronic inflammation and systemic disruption in our physiology. If you're interested in learning more about stress in the body, tune into episodes four and five of the Longevity Gym. I did a two-part series on stress that you might find helpful. Number eight, positive social connections. These correlate with longevity and are crucial to brain health. Socializing stimulates attention and memory and also helps strengthen neural networks. Longevity science also correlates social interactions to adding additional healthy years to our lives and some studies are suggesting that positive meaningful connections might reduce cognitive decline in the risk of Alzheimer's breath work. It's number nine, particularly nostril breathing. Breathing in and out our nose has been shown to have positive effects on brain health and cognition. Diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, which helps soothe and calm our nervous system and it also stimulates communication between the various parts of the brain. Breath. Work techniques can help improve your blood oxygen levels. Oxygen to the brain is important for attention and learning. I spoke a bit about breath work in episode 10, so if you're interested in learning more, tune into that episode. This is a topic that I do want to continue to explore because I find the practice absolutely fascinating.
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The last two ways of improving brain and cognitive health come from the longevity science studies have correlated grip strength and balance to a lowered risk of dementia. Using a dynamometer is an easy way to measure your grip strength. It's a device that you hold in your hand and then squeeze the handle and read the results. It's pretty simple. I will put a link to the one I have in the show notes below. They are easily found on Amazon or your local gym may also have one. Longevity science indicates a grip strength of 44 pounds or greater for women and 72 pounds or greater for men is what correlates to a lowered risk of dementia. The ability to balance on one leg for 20 seconds has also been correlated to the lowered risk of dementia. That's 20 seconds of balancing on each leg, not just your dominant one, and it's good to know that both grip strengths and balance are physical attributes that can be trained and developed.
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Lifting and carrying heavy things in your hands is one way to train grip strength. In the gym, we would have clients perform what we call the farmer's carry, which was to hold heavy weights in each hand and walk across the floor fluidly and with good posture. In addition to grip strength, it also ends up being a nice full body strength exercise. There's also a number of tools on the market that are specifically designed for grip strength. For example, there's a physical therapy putty that's easy to use and also small flexible bars that you can bend and twist with your hands. I'll put some examples in the show notes. I wanted to share a couple of notes about training balance. There are systems within the body that control our balance, the visual system where the eyes send input to the brain. The other two are the vestibular system or the inner ear, which is a sensory system that creates a sense of balance and spatial awareness and proprioception, which is a sensory system that lets us perceive the location, the movement, and the action of the various parts of our body.
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When it comes to improving balance, we want to incorporate all three of these to the greatest extent possible. Our sight, the movement of our head and moving our body through space are all important. For example, standing on one leg is one way to train balance. Standing on one leg with our eyes closed is a more advanced version. Walking outdoors does more for your balance than walking on the treadmill because your eyes are gathering input about the uneven surfaces and also getting input that comes from the body moving through space that doesn't happen on the treadmill. Yoga and Tai chi are wonderful movement practices for training your balance because they have you changing positions in a continuous and extended flow. Of course, always stay safe when training your balance, working near a wall or a steady piece of furniture or even an apparatus like a ballet bar, or you can have someone spot you.
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These are my 12 ways to help your brain and cognition stay strong and healthy. As I said, they're like a smorgasbord for your brain. There are 12 ways to make sure you're nourishing your brain and your mind. As you can see, the types of activities and behaviors are diverse and they're also interrelated. This makes sense since our physiology is made up of complex interdependent systems and the more we can change things up, the better our minds and our bodies and our brains do best. When exposed to a variety of stimulation and challenges, as the old proverb goes, variety is a spice of life. It's also the spice that keeps our brains minds and bodies healthy and strong. If you have any questions about this episode, please email me. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. My email is pam@strandfitnessonline.com. I also invite you to sign up for my newsletter. It's a great way to stay up to date on the Longevity Gym episodes. I send an email about every two weeks letting you know about the latest episodes. My emails will also let you know when any new offering launches, I've included a link in the show note below, or you can go to my website, strand fitness online.com. There's a signup form at the bottom of
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My homepage. Thank you for tuning in and I hope you have found at least one piece of information that will help you train your brain and mine so that they stay healthy and strong for as long as possible. I'll see you soon.