Category Archives: Mental Health

Post #66 – Optimal Health through Optimal Breathing

03 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by in Aging, Biomarkers for Stress, Breathing, Living to 120, meditation, Mental Health, Optimal Health, Optimal Sleep, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Uncategorized, Vigor, Vitality, wellness, Yoga

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There is an old joke. Question: How do you live long? Answer: Just keep breathing.

Joke aside, when was the last time you gave any thought to breathing?

Are you breathing too much? Too little? Just enough?

Are you breathing the right way?

Are you breathing optimally?  

What kind of impact breath can have on your health?

Can you cure chronic diseases by breathing in a certain way?

Can you cause chronic diseases by NOT breathing in a proper way?

Being a student of yoga and meditation, I have been quite aware of breath and different ways of breathing and subjectively feeling differently when breathing certain way. And I am always curious about finding other methods of breathing.

So, when I picked up James Nestor’s book: The New Science of Lost Art, I thought I might learn a few more distinctions about breathing. I was blown away by how much I did not know about breathing and how big an impact breathing can have on our health.

Nestor describes how the ancient wisdom of breathing, has been discovered and rediscovered over time by people he calls Pulmonauts, i.e., the breath explorers. He beautiful weaves this ancient wisdom with explanations we now know through science along with his personal exploration and experiences.

The book is well worth the read. I definitely learned a lot.

Here are some nuggets that I picked up from this book:

  1. Keep Your Mouth Shut – especially When Sleeping.  As Nestor explains:

“During the deepest, most restful stages of sleep, the pituitary gland, a pea-size ball at the base of the brain, secretes hormones that control the release of adrenaline, endorphins, growth hormone, and other substances, including vasopressin, which communicates with cells to store more water. This is how animals can sleep through the night without feeling thirsty or needing to relieve themselves.

But if the body has inadequate time in deep sleep, as it does when it experiences chronic sleep apnea, vasopressin won’t be secreted normally. The kidneys will release water, which triggers the need to urinate and signals to our brains that we should consume more liquid. We get thirsty, and we need to pee more. A lack of vasopressin explains not only my own irritable bladder but the constant, seemingly unquenchable thirst I have every night.”

So, here is an interesting vicious circle: if you are not getting enough deep sleep, you would wake up more often due to inadequate vasopressin. And, if you wake up more often, you are probably not getting enough deep sleep.

Simple Solution: Tape you mouth shut when you are sleeping. Really!! It is that simple. And watch how you sleep and all biomarkers that good sleep brings improve. It may even improve or eliminate sleep apnea. From his own experience of trial and error, Nestor recommends 3M Nexcare Durapore “durable cloth” tape, to tape your mouth shut. It works great, I can vouch for it.

2. You Can Use Breathing to Activate Parasympathetic or Sympathetic nervous System: As Nestor explains:

“The right nostril is a gas pedal. When you’re inhaling primarily through this channel, circulation speeds up, your body gets hotter, and cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate all increase. This happens because breathing through the right side of the nose activates the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight or flight” mechanism that puts the body in a more elevated state of alertness and readiness.

The left nostril is more deeply connected to the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-relax side that lowers blood pressure, cools the body, and reduces anxiety.”

Now how cool is that!

3. Carbon Dioxide is Even More Important Than Oxygen: I am sure you are saying, ”What?!” – just like I did when I read about this.  When you take a slow inhale followed by a very slow exhale or when you just slow down your breathing, if you feel calm settle over you that is due to increasing carbon content in your blood and tissues. If you are hyperventilating, it is the opposite – that is when you need to breath inside a paper bag to calm yourself down.

This is also how our bodies determine how fast and often we breathe, not by the amount of oxygen, but by the level of carbon dioxide.

Simple Tip: Take long exhales and slow down your breathing. Basically, breathe but breathe less.

4. Optimal Breath: “It turns out that the most efficient breathing rhythm occurred when both the length of respirations and total breaths per minute were locked in to a spooky symmetry: 5.5-second inhales followed by 5.5-second exhales, which works out almost exactly to 5.5 breaths a minute.” This is the pattern of chanting of Om, rosary, chanting of common Buddhist mantras and many other ancient rituals.

5. Secret to Youthful Face is Chewing: “What?!”, you say again. This was definitely new one for me. Here is verbatim from Nestor’s book:

‘Unlike other bones in the body, the bone that makes up the center of the face, called the maxilla, is made of a membrane bone that’s highly plastic. The maxilla can remodel and grow more dense into our 70s, and likely longer. “You, me, whoever—we can grow bone at any age,” Belfor told me. All we need are stem cells. And the way we produce and signal stem cells to build more maxilla bone in the face is by engaging the masseter—by clamping down on the back molars over and over.’

Simple Tip: Find excuses to chew with back molar as often as you can. There you go – 32 chews per bite that mom told us is validated by science now.

6. Hold your Breath to Eliminate Anxiety and Fear:

“…All this suggests that for the past hundred years psychologists may have been treating chronic fears, and all the anxieties that come with them, in the wrong way. Fears weren’t just a mental problem, and they couldn’t be treated by simply getting patients to think differently. Fears and anxiety had a physical manifestation, too. They could be generated from outside the amygdalae, from within a more ancient part of the reptilian brain.

Eighteen percent of Americans suffer from some form of anxiety or panic, with these numbers rising every year. Perhaps the best step in treating them, and hundreds of millions of others around the world, was by first conditioning the central chemoreceptors and the rest of the brain to become more flexible to carbon dioxide levels. By teaching anxious people the art of holding their breath.”

Simple Tip: To calm your anxiety don’t just take a deep breath, HOLD your breath.

Bottom Line: The book has a lot more to offer, but here are some nuggets in summary:

  1. Tape you mouth shut when you are sleeping. Really!! It will improve your sleep and give you all benefits that good sleep does
  2. You can trigger sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous systems by simply breathing through your right nose or left nose
  3. Take long exhales and slow down your breathing. Basically, breathe but breathe less.
  4. Optimal breath is: 5.5-second inhales followed by 5.5-second exhales, which works out almost exactly to 5.5 breaths a minute.
  5. Find excuses to chew with back molar as often as you can.
  6. To calm your anxiety don’t just take a deep breath, HOLD your breath.

What do you think?

Have you explored different ways of breathing?

What worked or not worked for you?

What benefits or difficulties have you faced due to proper or improper breathing?

I and the readers of this blog would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.

Post #61 – How much sleep do we need for optimal health?

16 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Living to 120, Mental Health, Optimal Health, Optimal Sleep, Uncategorized, Vigor, Vitality, wellness

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In Post #59, I talked about the lifestyle choices that are important to maximizing health and lifespan:
1. Benchmarking Health
2. Nutrition
3. Exercise
4. Maintaining Musco-skelatal Integrity
5. Maintaining Mind-body Connection
6. Enhancing and Maintaining Brain
7. Stress Management
8. Adequate Sleep
9. Social Engagement
10. Purposeful Living
11. Making full-use of all modalities of medical care
12. Make use of Genetics Science

These were of course not in any particular order. For example, Adequate Sleep would rate much higher in priority, probably towards the top. After all, most of us cannot even function if deprived of sleep over even a few days.

I recently read the book, Why We Sleep by Mathew Walker, Ph.D. He is a professor at University of California Berkeley and has dedicated his career to research in sleep. This is a pretty definitive book on sleep and covers the topic from almost all angles.

Why we sleep cover

I have been generally aware that 7 to 9 hours of sleep is considered a must for optimal health. And, since I learned that I do make the effort to catch that much sleep and when I don’t I would make effort to catch up on that sleep during the weekends.

However, reading this book has been seriously eye opener for me. As a result, I am taking sleep as a lifestyle choice for living for optimal health now much more seriously than I used to.

Sleep Myths – Busted

Here are some myths about sleep that the research cited in the book has busted for me.

1. I can live quite well with 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep. Dr. Mathews is very definitive on research that the range of sleep for optimal health for healthy adults is between 7 to 9 hours. Of course, children have different needs for sleep and so do sick people to allow their body to recover.

He also makes distinction between “opportunity to sleep”, e.g., how long I kept my head on the pillow, and actual sleep. So, if I was “in bed” for 7 hours, it took me half an hour to fall sleep, I got up twice to go to the bathroom and each time it took me half hour to fall back to sleep, then I slept for 5.5 hour. There is some research that more than 9 hour sleep is not optimal, but that research is still controversial.

One test for adequate sleep is that if during the day you close your eyes and see yourself falling asleep, then you are not getting enough sleep.

2. Early morning sleep is more important that the late-night sleep. There are two broad categories of sleep: Rapid Eye Movement or REM happens when we are in deep dream state. In early sleep cycles, which generally happen before and shortly after mid night, most of the sleep is not REM or NREM. In early morning hours, sleep is mostly REM. Each REM and NREM have their very distinct function for brain and our physiology and we need both. The following figure from scielo.br illustrates how amount of REM sleep increases as the sleep progresses and NREM shown here as Stages 1 through 4 decreases.

Sleep Cycle 2

In NREM sleep, for example, our brain takes information stored in short-term memory and shuffles it over to the long-term memory regions of the brain. In REM sleep then our brain builds interconnection with pre-existing long-term elements. If we miss NREM sleep, short-term memory buffers get over-written. If we miss REM sleep, we don’t get a chance to develop ways to access and use the information on the long term.

3. If I don’t sleep enough during the week day, I can always catch up during the weekend. From the REM and NREM sleep discussion above, you can probably quickly extrapolate that if we short change sleep, certain functions are not optimal on a daily basis. Information once lost, probably is lost forever – unless of course you relearn it.

Sleep is driven by two cycles: Circadian clock and a hormone Adenosine, see the picture below (from hackyourgut.com). Circadian clock drives our urge to awake while adenosine drives our urge to sleep.  Adenosine only goes up after we wake up until we clear it again during sleep. More adenosine in our body the more is our urge to fall asleep.  Our body’s energy level changes with change in circadian rhythm. When energy is increasing, we have the urge to wake up.

Two-process-model-sleep-circadian-homestatic-sleep-drive

When we skip sleep, it feels that we have energy to keep going based on our circadian clock. But we may still have the urge to sleep because adenosine is still high. So, when we sleep extra during the weekend, we are clearing up any residual adenosine which clears the urge to sleep. So, we feel like we have caught up on sleep. But remember, we did not really catch up on the mental benefits of sleep for memory capture and reorganization. And, that is the missed opportunity, when we try to catch up on sleep during the weekends.

4. Alcohol and sleeping pills can make you sleep better. Alcohol makes you sleepy, so clearly it must make you sleep better. Right. Wrong. Both alcohol and sleeping pills have similar effect on the brain. They are sedatives and make you drowsy by shutting down you neo-cortex, i.e., thinking brain, activities. When monitored, your brain does not have the same physiology as if you were sleeping in either REM or NREM sleep. Hence, you find that people who take sleeping pills or night caps as sleep aids, are often groggy, lacking motor skills, lethargic, and forgetful during the next day.

5. If I am short of sleep, I will know so I can correct it. And, that is the same thing someone who is drunk would say, ”I am not drunk. I don’t feel drunk.” We just discussed above the effect of alcohol on the thinking brain, which is also the decision-making brain. Lack of sleep has exactly the same effect as being drunk. And, that is one of the reason, lack of sleep leads to car accidents.

In fact, did you know, lack of sleep causes more accidents than drunk driving. If you have slept only 4 hours or less the previous 24 hours, your chance of car crash increase by a factor of 10.

And, if you are short of sleep, it is the micro sleeps that make driving fatal. if you are sleep deprived, brain just shuts down for a second or two. And, a second or two while going at 60 miles an hour is sufficient to cause serious crashes.

6. Coffee, slapping myself, or loud music can keep me going: Turns out that research shows none of these are effective at preventing micro sleeps. The only thing that is found effective is, you pull over, stop and take a nap.

7. Caffeine is not a problem, if don’t ingest caffeinated drinks at dinner time. Half-life of caffeine is 8 hours. So, it can take up to 16 hours to purge effect of just a cup of coffee from the body. So, any caffeinated drink after lunch can probably disrupt the sleep and should be avoided to obtain highest quality of sleep.

8. Melatonin will help me sleep better. Actually this is yes and no depends upon the nuance. Melatonin does not improve the quality of sleep. It does, however, tell your brain and body when it is time to go to sleep and to start to get ready. Generally, it is released as the darkness sets in.

In our modern worlds, where darkness hardly sets in or if our body clock is messed up due to jetlag from travel, it may be helpful to have melatonin supplement to tell the body that it is time for bed. Dimming lights and shutting down screens (TV, smart phones iPads, laptops) as the bed time appraoches is an excellent way of getting your body to start producing its own melatonin.

If you do take mealtonin supplements, just be warned that melatonin pills available over the counter have great variability in the melatonin content when you compare actual vs. printed on the label. In one test, FDA found -89% to +473% variability. I recently learned that a great source of melatonin is raw pistachio. Just a few kernels of pistachio release enough melatonin that is in most pills. Check out this link from NutritionFacts.Org.

Sleep Hygiene – Best Method to Improve Quality of Sleep

Instead of taking any sleeping pills, Dr. Walker recommends the same sleep protocol that NIH recommend, see NIH published Your Guide to Healthy Sleep,
1. Stick to a sleep schedule.
2. Exercise is great, but not too late in the day.
3. Avoid caffeine and nicotine.
4. Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed.
5. Avoid large meals and beverages late at night.
6. If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep.
7. Don’t take naps after 3 p.m
8. Relax before bed.
9. Take a hot bath before bed.
10. Have a good sleeping environment.
11. Have the right sunlight exposure.
12. Don’t lie in bed awake.
13. See a doctor if you continue to have trouble sleeping

Summary
Sleep is way at the top of lifestyle choices for optimal health. Statistics show again and again that most of us do not get enough sleep.

Dr. Mathew Walker’s book Why We Sleep is a great book if you want to learn about latest on every aspect of sleep. NIH published Your Guide to Healthy Sleep is also a great resource that summarizes healthful practices.

In this post, I covered several myths on sleep
1. I can live quite well with 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep
2. Early morning sleep is more important that the late-night sleep
3. If I don’t sleep enough during the week day, I can always catch up on the weekend
4. Alcohol and sleeping pills can make you sleep better
5. If I am short of sleep, I will know so I can correct it
6. Coffee, slapping myself, or loud music can keep me going
7. Caffeine is not a problem, if don’t ingest caffeinated drinks at dinner time
8. Melatonin will help me sleep better

If you want to improve the quality of your sleep, check out the 13 step Sleep Hygiene protocols that I summarized above. Dr. Walker and NIH recommend this method of improving your sleep quality and is proven to work better than sleeping pills.

NIH published Your Guide to Healthy Sleep and Dr. Walker’s book have more details on this method of improving sleep quality.

What do you think?

Have you learnt something about sleep, that you can share?

I would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.

Post #60 – 10 Books on Health and Wellness I Read Over the Last Year

06 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Aging, Life-Span, Living to 120, meditation, Mental Health, Nutrition, Optimal Exercise, Optimal Health, Optimal Nutrition, Puposely Living, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress, TM, Uncategorized, wellness, Yoga

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I thought I would share titles, quick summary and my takeaways of the books I recently read on the subject of health and wellness. May be one or more might intrigue you or inspire you for you to explore further. Or, even adopt some practices recommended in these books to improve you health and wellness.

How Not to Die Cook Book As I mentioned in my previous post #58, I consider Michael Greger’s website http://www.NutiritionFacts.com as the go-to site for all information related to nutrition. This cookbook is a good companion book to the website and his earlier best-selling book How Not To Die. Recipes are practical way of adapting to the latest in nutrition science. I have tried few recipes. They are very good.

The End of Heart Disease In my blog post #9 – When it comes to health, vitality and aging what is really possible?, I had discussed the book, Prevent and Reverse Hearth Disease by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. M.D. In this book, Dr. Fuhrman’s has updated research on preventing and reversing heart disease. Case studies are mind blowing. He not only gives research but actually prescription on what you should actually eat and even very specific meal plans.  Dr. Furhman promises his patients to let him decide what they eat for six weeks and then based on the result they can then decide what to eat. Most of them become converts to his prescription of nutrition after seeing the results.

Super ImmunityI did a series for posts #51-#54 on How to Optimize Your Immune System. In this book, Dr. Fuhrman offers a lot more research and very practical ways to build immunity so your body can fight whatever comes its way – not only flues and colds, but also other infections and even cancer. Cancer after-all is just DNA mutation that body fights all day long. Only when our immune system is NOT capable of handling the mutated DNA, it starts to take over the organs unchecked. Again, the book includes nutrition meal plans, recipes to put into practice his philosophy – not just eat food that is packed with desired micro-nutrients, but eat a lot of it.

The Telomere Effect In blog post #50, I discussed how to optimize your health by maximizing your telomeres. Elizabeth Blackburh received Nobel Prize for her research in telomeres. Telomeres are the end-caps at the ends of our DNA strands like little plastic wraps at the end of shoe laces. If the little plastic wraps are damaged shoe laces become useless, so is the case with the DNA. The length of telomeres correlate with the remaining lifespan. Dr. Blackburn shares the latest research in lay-person language and shares the different methods by which we can increase the length of our telomeres. Reading this book, it should not come as surprise to you that the  lifestyle choices I discussed in my Post #59, all help increase the lengths of your telomeres.

The Science of ExerciseTime did a fantastic job in summarizing the latest in science of exercise in this special Time Magazine publication. If you needed any further evidence how exercise impacts health and lifespan, I believe this publication will deliver, without having to read some big tome. The issue spans many diverse topics: cardio vs. weights, high intensity interval training, running, swimming, yoga and other exercise modalities.

The Science of Being and Art of LivingIn my blog post #17 – Is meditation an effective antidote to stress, I talk about Transcendental Meditation or TM as a very effective and well-researched means for combating stress. Science of Being and Art of Living is book compiled based on lectures by Maharishi Mahesh, who introduced TM to the West. He also founded the TM movement that has established TM Centers pretty much in all major cities throughout the world. While first part of the book serves as evidence and motivation for TM, the later parts are more for the practitioners and advanced students of TM and Yoga.

Heart Health KitA few months ago, I got a chance to meet and attend a work shop by Dr. Levy, who has spent all his life building bridges between Western medicine and Eastern philosophies of yoga and meditation. Dr. Levy talks about how to prevent and reverse heart diseases by tackling the most insidious of the issues that impact heart health, i.e., Stress. This manual is accompanied by CDs on which you will find and can actually use his hypnosis techniques for relieving stress and anxiety.

The Happiness SutraIn this more recent publication, The Happiness Sutra, Dr. Levy further delves into the four different types of stresses humans face and how best to deal with all four types of stresses. This book also has a CD that you can listen to to get the benefit of Dr. Levy’s hypnosis methods for relieving stress.

Mind over Medicine Lissa Rankin, M.D.’s  book Mind Over Medicine is a great case study of extreme stress brought on modern living and by our current medical system. Dr. Rankin, a practicing OB GYN, quit her practice of medicine  because of the numerous health and personal issues brought on by stress from her profession. She eventually found ways to heal herself and then learned to apply her new found knowledge to become a true healer,  without becoming slave to the medical system.

 

Have you read books on health and wellness that you would like to share?

I would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.

 

 

 

 

Post #59 – What are our lifestyle choices for maximizing health and lifespan?

11 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Life-Span, Living to 120, meditation, Mental Health, Nutrition, Optimal Exercise, Optimal Health, Optimal Nutrition, Puposely Living, Quality of Life, Stress, Supplements, TM, Uncategorized, Vitality, wellness, Yoga

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Lifestyle Choices for Maximizing Health and Lifespan

Unless you have been living under a rock on an isolated island, I am sure you have heard that lifestyle choices have big impact on both your health and how long you live.

Living longer means not dying sooner.  And, to not die sooner, you must take actions that eliminate the various ways one dies.

Living healthy, means taking actions to prevent all the ways one loses their abilities to enjoy day-to-day activities of life. Or, at least postpone the time as far into the future as possible before developing disabilities.

In both case, i.e., living longer and living healthy, lifestyle choices play crucial roles. But what are these life choices, besides the ones you hear all the time:  Eat Better and Exercise.

When I started to systematically pursue this topic of living optimal lifespan possible (my goal being 120 years), with optimal health span (my goal being no disabilities), I started enumerating all areas of life in which one can take some action to make this impact.

Of course, not everything is in our control. We did not come to this earth with guarantees. Unforeseen, random event, or events that are not in our control can ruin all our goals and plans. But the objective is to not let the possibility of events not in our control prevent us from taking actions that are indeed in our control.

So, here are all 13 dimensions of lifestyle that I have discovered so far that impact health span and life span. Each subject is a very extensive topic by itself.  I just very briefly summarize my personal take on these and may be an example of how I am attempting to address them in my lifestyle and where you can read about further in these blog posts.

1. Benchmarking Health: Knowing where you are is where I believe it has to all start. You go to doctor’s office and they take your physical measurements (height, weight), you vitals (pulse, blood pressure), order some measurements from the lab and then compare those with what should be “normal” for you. In Post #7 – Can biomarkers help in the quest for vitality and longevity?, I discuss the various measurements you can use as biomarkers for health. These days I measure:

Daily: Weight, waist, fat near navel and thigh, BP, SPO2, pulse, my over-all subjective state of my physical, emotional and mental health

Weekly: pH, Nitric Oxide, fasting glucose

Quarterly: Bloodwork through my primary physician – CBC (complete blood count), typical chemistry panel, Lipids (Cholesterol total, HDL, LDL, VLDL, Triglysrides), TSH, T3, T4 (Thyroid hormones), Male Hormones (Total and Free Testosterone, Estrogen, LH, FSH), Hydroxy-D, fasting glucose, A1c, PSA (for prostrate tumor screening), CRP, (for inflammation), Homocysteine (for heart condition)

Annually or Biennially: Telomere Measurements (DNA strands that dictate how long cells live), X-Rays of joints if I suspect arthritis etc., Ultrasound Study of Carotid and Aorta arteries, MRI’s to detect any tumors, eye-exam, hearing test, EKG.

Every 5 years: Colonoscopy, Stress-test.    

2.  Nutrition – That is everything that crosses our lips, what we eat or drink. I discussed the topic of nutrition in a series of eight blog posts on this subject of Optimal Nutrition, Posts #22 through #29.  additionally, Post #15, #31 and #32 discuss the topic of how and when to complement the nutrition with supplements.

 3. Exercise – Exercise is indispensable for building and maintaining muscle strength, flexibility, balance, endurance. There is also abundant proof that it helps with the metabolism, overall health and health of specific organs. I discussed this topic of exercise in blog post #30 – How much and what type of exercise do you need for optimal health?

 4. Maintaining Musco-skelatal Integrity: Pains in the back, knees, hips, shoulder, wrists and other various joints creep up. We may think that these pains just come out of nowhere. After all, we often notice that “yesterday it did not hurt and today it hurts”. So, it got be a random event. Right?

Reality is that unless there was a trauma caused by an accident, most of these are the result of repetitive movement in un-aligned joints. The underlying cause could be neglect of the muscles, ligaments and tendons surrounding joints or prolonged asymmetrical movements, e.g., always carrying a bag on the same shoulder, or playing games such tennis or golf that inherently require asymmetrical movement.

Yoga, myofascial massages, Rolfing, rolling with foam rollers, visiting a chiropractor for body alignment, weight bearing exercises for join strengths, e-cise routines designed by Pete Egoscue are methods I have learned for maintaining musco-skeletal integrity.  I discuss some of these in Post #30 – How much and what type of exercise do you need for optimal health? And Post #49 – What is the role of massage therapy in Optimal Health? Also, I discuss how you can use foam rolling for body alignment in Post #39 – Ever heard of foam rolling.

5. Maintaining Optimal Dental Health: Good dental health not only impacts quality of your life, it can also impact how long you live.

The American Heart Association published a Statement in April 2012 supporting an association between gum disease and heart disease. The article noted that current scientific data do not indicate if regular brushing and flossing or treatment of gum disease will decrease the incidence, rate or severity of the narrowing of the arteries (called atherosclerosis) that can lead to heart attacks and strokes. However, many studies show an as-yet-unexplained association between gum disease and several serious health conditions, including heart disease, even after adjusting for common risk factors.

You may also have seen health and lifestyle surveys used for estimating life-expectancy that want to know if you floss daily. If you do the models give you credit for an extra 2 to 4 years of life.

In Post #47 – What does optimal dental health look like and how to achieve it?, I discuss this topic in greater detail.

 6. Maintaining Mind-body Connection: Our mind and body are inherently connected. Maintaining the connection between the two is essential for optimal health. Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, are some ways to develop and maintain mind-body connection.  I have very limited experience with Tai Chi and Qigong. I do, however, perform Yoga as part of my lifestyle.  In Post #11 – My first year of experience with Bikram Yoga, Post #12 – My second year of experience with Bikram Yoga, I describe how I incorporated Bikram Yoga into my lifestyle.

 7. Enhancing and Maintaining Brain: If we lose vitality of the brain, the quality of life suffers dramatically. Alzheimer and other forms of Dementia can often be very painful way of living. Evidence is mounting that for optimal brain health, we must keep the brain stimulated with right activities. All my life, I have been very focused on left brain type of activities. As I was turning 60, I decided to do something about it and started taking piano lessons to stimulate my right brain and prevent any premature aging of the brain. I discuss the activities for maintaining optimal health in Post #57 – Optimal Mental Health – what is it and how to achieve it?

 8. Stress Management: Stress is a root cause of many diseases. We have all experienced how stress can bring about disturbances in the digestive systems, back pain, high blood pressures, even heart attacks and strokes. Yoga and Meditation are two of the ways to manage stress. Perspective management is another powerful method. I got initiated in Transcendental Meditation over 30 years ago and I have been doing TM ever since with good benefits. I tackle the subject in Post #16 – What is stress really and why is it bad for longevity and health and Post #17 – Is meditation an effective antidote to stress.

9. Adequate Sleep: There is more and more evidence every day that inadequate sleep can cause all sorts of ailments. 7 to 9 hours of restful sleep is considered optimal. All my life, I thought the object of the game was to get away with as little a sleep as possible. Sleeping more than 6 hours every night is still a challenge for me. Although I am working on it to extend sleeping hours during the week and may be do some catch up sleeping during the weekends. Maybe I will tackle this topic in a future post. In Post #61 – How much sleep do we need? – I discuss the latest in sleep research.

10. Social Engagement: World-wide Study of Blue Zones, i.e., geographical areas where longest living people are clustered, showed a very surprising factor that contributed to long healthy life of people living there. Researchers found that people in Blue Zones are socially very engaged. Centenarians in these areas are engaged with tight knit groups of friends and family. So, the conclusion is that social engagement is an important factor in living longer and healthier.

 11. Purposeful Living: It is well known that death rates spike after the holidays and after major life events. Researchers deduce from studies of such phenomena that people live only as long as they find life meaningful.

Of course, it needs an ongoing effort to figure out what one can derive meaning from. One may find meaning in raising kids or grand kids, contributions to society, being the best spouse one can be or from “slaying some dragon”. Some people find meaning in their faith and service to God. Others find meaning in being of service to mankind or their fellow human beings. Yet others can find meaning in their job or career.

Viktor Frankel in his book: Man’s Search for Meaning, explores this topic beautifully. 

12. Make Full-use of All Modalities of Medical Care: Modern medicine has developed amazing and miraculous treatments. By making use of the modern medicine one can live much healthier and much longer.  In general, the earlier you are able to catch a disease and the sooner you start treatment, better your chances are of a cure or at least minimizing the damage. Mantra for modern medicine is “early detection, early cure”

 Alternative schools of medicine, such as Ayurvedic, Homeopathy, Aquapuncture, Naturopathy, offer valid means for preventative care and whole-person healing.  Leveraging these modalities of medical care as appropriate can offer means for optimal healing and living. Here the rule is the age old wisdom: An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

I was even able to eliminate my severe seasonal allergies by working with doctors of Naturopathy and thus was able to totally change the vector of my health as I discuss in Post #8 – So, did I you tell you the story of my allergies. Also strengthening your immune system can have major consequences on how your body deals with diseases as I discuss in a series of Posts #51 – 54 – How to Optimize Your Immune System – Part I through Part IV

13. Making use of Genetics Science: There is of course the truth of genetics. Genes do play a role in how long we will live and what diseases we may have the tendencies to develop. Over the last few years, however, scientists are finding that inherited genes often do not determine your destiny, it is the lifestyle that can either turn those genes on or off. This is the exciting field of epigenetics.

 Studies from the filed of epigenetics do  give us opportunities to leverage genes.  Through genome mapping, we can find out what might be our tendencies and to what aspects of our life, therefore, we should pay particular attention. Over the last few years, I have gotten my telomeres measured – these are tips at the ends of genes that are considered to act like our lifespan clocks.  I discussed this in Post #50 – How to optimize your health by maximizing your telomeres. More recently, I have sent for genetic testing to be able to receive personalized genetics bases lifestyle coaching. I will share results of that experiences in a future post.

The percent of role of genes that we cannot do anything about is constantly shrinking all the time. Now it is believed that only between 5% to 15% of lifespan and health span is determined by genes that we have no control over.

Bottomline:

In summary, researchers have shown again and again that health span and life span depend upon one’s lifestyle choices. A holistic look at lifestyle choices means many different and distinct areas of life.

I shared my take on these dimension of lifestyle and some of my experience. Also, gave references to where you can find more information, whenever, I have already discussed that topic in more detail in my blog posts.

  1. Benchmarking Health
  2. Nutrition
  3. Exercise
  4. Maintaining Musco-skelatal Integrity
  5. Maintaining Optimal Dental Health
  6. Maintaining Mind-body Connection
  7. Enhancing and Maintaining Brain
  8. Stress Management
  9. Adequate Sleep
  10. Social Engagement
  11. Purposeful Living
  12. Making full-use of all modalities of medical care
  13. Making use of Genetics Science

What do you think?

Do you think there some other dimension of lifestyle that I did not address here that is also important?

I would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input. 

 

Post #57 – Optimal Mental Health – what is it and how to achieve it?

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Mental Health, Optimal Health, Stress, Vitality, wellness

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Throughout life, mental health influences how we make decisions, manage stress and interact with others. Similar to physical health, mental health is important for optimal development at every stage of life.

However, before we get deeper into the subject of Optimal Mental Health, it is probably useful to first figure out what is Mental Health. Sometimes, such common terms can be slippery to nail down.  And, that exactly seems to be the case with this term Mental Health.

Mental Health

According to U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), Mental Health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.

Mental Illness

A related term Mental Illness, on the other hand, is defined as collectively all diagnosable mental disorders or health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior (or some combination thereof) associated with distress and/or impaired functioning.

Depression is the most common type of mental illness, affecting more than 26% of the U.S. adult population. It has been estimated that by the year 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability throughout the world, trailing only ischemic heart disease, i.e., heart attack. The seriousness of mental health issues was clearly raised in a very comprehensive report, almost 500-page report: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, 1999.

Mental Health Indicators

In the health care and public health arena, more emphasis and resources have been devoted to screening, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness than mental health. Little has been done to protect the mental health of those free of mental illness. Researchers suggest that there are indicators of mental health, representing three domains:

  • Emotional well-being – such as perceived life satisfaction, happiness, cheerfulness, peacefulness.
  • Psychological well-being – such as self-acceptance, personal growth including openness to new experiences, optimism, hopefulness, purpose in life, control of one’s environment, spirituality, self-direction, and positive relationships, and
  • Social well-being – social acceptance, beliefs in the potential of people and society as a whole, personal self-worth and usefulness to society, sense of community.

One way to look at mental health and mental illness is that these are points along a continuum and neither state exists in pure isolation from the other.

Mind and Body are Inseparable

In another but related context, everyday language tends to encourage a misperception that “mental health” or “mental illness” is unrelated to “physical health” or “physical illness.” In fact, mental health and physical health are inseparable.

Although “mind” is a broad term that has had many different meanings over the centuries, these days it refers to the totality of mental functions related to thinking, mood, and purposive behavior. The mind is generally seen as deriving from activities within the brain but displaying emergent properties, such as consciousness.

One reason the people continue to this day to emphasize the difference between mental and physical health is embedded in language. Common parlance continues to use the term “physical” to distinguish some forms of health and illness from “mental” health and illness. People continue to see mental and physical as separate functions when, in fact, mental functions (e.g., memory) are physical as well.

Mental functions are carried out by the brain. Likewise, mental disorders are reflected in physical changes in the brain. Physical changes in the brain often trigger physical changes in other parts of the body too. The racing heart, dry mouth, and sweaty palms that accompany a terrifying nightmare are orchestrated by the brain. A nightmare is a mental state associated with alterations of brain chemistry that, in turn, provoke unmistakable changes elsewhere in the body.

A more appropriate and neutral distinction is between “mental” and “somatic” health. Somatic is a medical term that derives from the Greek word soma for the body. Mental health refers to the successful performance of mental functions in terms of thought, mood, and behavior. Mental disorders are those health conditions in which alterations in mental functions are paramount.

Somatic conditions are those in which alterations in non-mental functions predominate. While the brain carries out all mental functions, it also carries out some somatic functions, such as movement, touch, and balance. That is why not all brain diseases are mental disorders. For example, a stroke causes a lesion in the brain that may produce disturbances of movement, such as paralysis of limbs. When such symptoms predominate in a patient, the stroke is considered a somatic condition. But when a stroke mainly produces alterations of thought, mood, or behavior, it is considered a mental condition (e.g., dementia).

The point is that a brain disease can be seen as a mental disorder or a somatic disorder depending on the functions it perturbs.

Fixing the body can fix the mind and fixing mind can fix the body

There is plenty of evidence showing that mental disorders, especially depressive disorders could be caused by many chronic “physical” diseases including diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and obesity.  At the same time, many risk behaviors that give rise to chronic diseases are physical inactivity, smoking, excessive drinking, and insufficient sleep whose underlying cause is mental health.

Then Why the Stigma to Mental Health Issues

Stigmatization of people with mental disorders has persisted throughout history. It is manifested by bias, distrust, stereotyping, fear, embarrassment, anger, and/or avoidance. Stigma leads others to avoid living, socializing or working with, renting to, or employing people with mental disorders. It deprives people of their dignity and interferes with their full participation in society.

Explanations for stigma stem, in part, from the misguided split between mind and body first proposed by Descartes. Another source of stigma lies in the 19th century separation of the mental health treatment system in the United States from the mainstream of health. These historical influences exert an often immediate influence on perceptions and behaviors in the modem world.

So, what is Optimal Mental Health?

Just as in the case of Optimal Physical Health, absence of disease, or in the case mental health, absent of mental illness does not seem to be quite adequate to define Optimal Mental Health.  Given that mental illness and mental health is a continuum, it begs some sort of scale to measure one’s mental health.

Here is one scale to calibrate your mental health during a specific time frame:emotional-scale-2

With this scale, if I  yesterday  I was feeling bored that would be a score of -1 for yesterday. Today I am feeling confident, that would be a  score of +2. Etc. For a while, using this scale, I used to keep a journal of my daily emotional state. 

This scale can be a good way to measure impact of any lifestyle changes on your mental or emotional health. For example, if you just added daily walk or daily meditation to your lifestyle, or started taking certain supplements, you could track impact this way.

 

Well-Being as Measure of Mental Health

Another way to measure and monitor is in terms of a more holistic term called Well-Being. Researchers from different disciplines have examined different aspects of well-being:

  • Physical well-being.
  • Economic well-being.
  • Social well-being.
  • Development and activity.
  • Emotional well-being.
  • Psychological well-being.
  • Life satisfaction.
  • Domain specific satisfaction.
  • Engaging activities and work.

A website, you can use to quantify your personal Well-Being and benchmark it against others is: http://www.nationalaccountsofwellbeing.org/engage/. After answering, 50 questions (it only takes 10-15 mintues) you can receive a plot like the following and an overall Well-Being score. You can then compare you score with others. or how it progresses. More importantly, you can explore area of opportunities where you would like to grow and focus your attention for improving your well-being.

about-your-profile-results-_-your-results-_-explore-_-national-accounts-of-well-being

Jack Kornfield on Optimal Health

Jack Kornfield, a bestselling American author, yoga-mediation teacher and Buddhist monk has an interesting definition of Optimal Mental Health.  On his website he has the following description:

We have within us an extraordinary capacity for love, for joy, and unshakable freedom.  Buddhist psychology describes this as optimal mental health. I have seen this optimal wellbeing in many of my teachers. Ajahn Jumnian describes his mind as completely steady, silent and free throughout both his waking and sleeping hours.  He says, “I haven’t experienced a single moment of frustration or anger for over twenty years.” I’ve also observed that he sleeps only one or two hours a night. Ajahn Jumnian describes his inner life quite simply, “When I am alone, my mind rests in pure awareness. I am simply at peace.  Then whenever I encounter people and experiences, the awareness automatically fills with loving-kindness or compassion. This is the natural expression of pure awareness.”  Those around Ajahn Jumnian feel his free spirit and unshakable joy.

Now that is taking Optimal Health to whole different level!

Bottom Line:

We laid the foundation of some fundamentals on how to define and measure optimal mental health. In the next blog post, we will get down to methods for achieving Optimal Mental Health.

A quick summary of what we covered here:

Throughout life, mental health influences how we make decisions, manage stress and interact with others.

Mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. Mental health includes:

  • Emotional well-being
  • Psychological well-being, and
  • Social well-being

Mind and body are NOT separate.  Each influences and controls the health of the other.  It is a historical quirk in the evolution of medicine that we treat the two separately.  This separation has also led to much stigma to the mental health issues and separation of medicine applied to mind vs. the body.

We could calibrate mental health by using some scale like the one presented in this post to measure mental health as emotional health and track impact of introducing changes in lifestyle.

Ideally, to understand Optimal Health, we need to track total Well-being. You may want to use the nef website to calibrate your total Well-being and explore opportunities for improvement.

Long term meditators and Buddhist Monks define and are able to demonstrate Optimal Mental Health as a state of pure awareness that is full of compassion and love, and is above the daily swings of emotions.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

Would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.

 

 

Post #41 – So, how to measure how close to optimal is your health? Or, how quickly are you aging?

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in Aging, Dying, Life-Span, Living to 120, Mental Health, Nutrition, Optimal Exercise, Puposely Living, Vitality, wellness

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“How old are you?” someone asks. Number of years since birth is the generally the answer – that is your Chronological Age or CA.

But how hold do you feel? How old do you act? How old do you look? That is your Biological Age or BA.

Wouldn’t it be nice to actually be able to measure your biological age?

CA and BA is the difference between being 40 year old and going on 60. Or, may be being 60 year old and going on 40.

Wouldn’t it be more useful to have a single number like BA, than understanding individual factors like your total cholesterol, HDL, A1c, VO2 Max, etc?

Recently, in the media there has been a buzz about a recent research published by scientists led by Duke University School of Medicine about measuring biological age. For example, see the article in WSJ: How Quickly Are You Growing Old?

Now there are a quite a few websites, where you answer a bunch of question and they will tell you, your biological age as compared to your chronological age.

For example, here are three such sites, I tried (my CA is 60.9 years):

http://www.biological-age.com/ calculated my biological age as 36

https://www.sharecare.com told me my BA was 53.6.

http://www.growyouthful.com/gettestinfo.php said my BA was 46.

Each of the sites followed up with advice and helpful hints on what I could start or stop doing to further increase my expected health and lifespan.

Unfortunately, none of these websites show exactly what they do with the information you provide and how they arrive at the number they call Biological Age.

But this recent study, “Quantification of biological aging in young adults”, by Daniel W. Belsky et al, is very rigorous treatment of this subject and gives you all the details behind the curtain. And, for me, these details are not only fascinating but actually quite useful to understand what matters for biological age to start diverging from chronological age. In other words, what slows down or speed up aging.

The study calculated the aging rate of 954 men and women—taking various measurements of their bodies’ health—when they were each 26, 32 and 38 in chronological years. By analyzing how these measures changed over time, the researchers were able to see who aged faster and who slower than normal.

To measure the pace of biological aging, which the study defined as the declining integrity of multiple organ systems, the researchers relied on 18 separate biomarkers, summarized in figure below.

These ranged from common measures such as HDL-cholesterol levels and mean arterial blood pressure to more obscure ones like the length of telomeres—the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that shorten with age.

Go on in Years

Chronological age of all participants was 38 years. However, researchers found that the biological ages varied from 26 years to 60 years.

For measuring how fast people aged, they calculated aging over 12 years. About 30 percent aged biologically one year for every calendar year. There were those who aged as much as 3 years for every calendar year. And, there were four members of the group who aged not at all or actually got biologically younger during the 12 year period.

BOTTOMLINE:

Finding one’s Biological Age is a fascinating concept and can be very useful in optimizing health and life span. However, this is not an exact science just yet, although good strides are being made in research.

However, if you want to focus on living optimally, you can focus on changing your lifestyle to optimize the basic 18 or so biomarkers used in this study. Most of these can be impacted by lifestyle choices. Only 20% depend upon genetics.

Proper food, hydration, exercise, supplements and medical care are the key methods to managing these primary biomarkers.

Websites that compute biological ages also suggest additional actionable items that seem to strongly correlate to optimal health span and life span. These include:

  1. Optimal sleep (7 to 9 hours)
  2. Reduced stress (meditation, perspective management)
  3. Reduced exposure to toxins (organic food, reduced use of chemicals, clean water)
  4. Increased social contact (having friends, family, living with a life partner)
  5. Purposeful living (satisfying work, hobbies, social endeavors)

What is your take on this subject?

Please feel free to leave comment to share your perspective.

Post #36 – What is most important for Optimal Health – Body, Mind or Spirit?

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Functional Medicine, Life-Span, Living to 120, meditation, Mental Health, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress

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Let me first define each of these three terms. Starting point could be our handy-dandy Merriam Webster dictionary.

Body, it says, is “A person’s or animal’s whole physical self.” So, that is straightforward – Arms, legs, heart, head, arteries, liver, hands, toes, and so on, make up the Body.

Mind, again according to the dictionary, is “the part of a person that thinks, reasons, feels, and remembers.”

Spirit per the dictionary is the force within a person that is believed to give the body life, energy, and power.

So, which one is most important for optimal health?

Or, in other words, if I were to focus on living the longest possible and the healthiest possible which one should I focus on first?

Writing this blog post, at this point I got stuck. I did not know where to go with this topic.   I took a long break and when I returned to my writing I found website for The Bravewell Collaborative, which has been doing pioneering work in Integrative Medicine as a catalyst of change in healthcare.

When I read the article The Connection Between Mind and Body on their site, I felt it perfectly captured my sentiments and thoughts on this topic, albeit from a much more authoritative source. So, here I share this article verbatim. Bold highlights are mine. There is, of course, a lot of additional good stuff on the The Bravewell Collaborative website.

Modern scientific research supports this age-old tenet of medical wisdom [of mind-body connection]. It began in the 1920s, when Harvard scientist Walter Cannon, MD, identified the fight-or-flight response through which the body secretes hormones called catecholamines, such as epinephrine and nonepinephrine. When they enter the blood stream, these hormones produce changes in the body—i.e. a quickened heart or increased breathing rate—that put the person in a better physical state to escape or confront danger.

In the following decade, Hungarian-born scientist Hans Selye, MD, pioneered the field of stress research by describing how the wear-and-tear of constant stress could affect us biologically. Since then, scores of scientific breakthroughs have illuminated the mind-body connection in health.

Experimental psychologist Neal Miller, PhD, discovered that we can be trained to control certain physical responses, such as blood pressure, that were previously considered to be involuntary. This discovery gave birth to biofeedback, which has now been found to be effective in the treatment of anxiety, attention deficit disorder, headache, hypertension, and urinary incontinence.

Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson, MD, identified the flip side of the stress response, which he called the “relaxation response.” Benson demonstrated that meditation, yoga, and other relaxation techniques can bring about physiological changes including a lower heart rate, lower breathing rate, and decreased muscle tension along with positive changes in brain waves. Mind-body techniques that elicit this relaxation response have been successful in treating many stress-related disorders.

Research by psychologist Robert Ader, PhD, at the University of Rochester provided a link between the brain, behavior and immune function, and founded the new field of psychoneuroimmunology, which researches ways to increase immune function through the use of the mind.

Based on a Buddhist meditation practice, Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts, developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a mediation technique that has successfully reduced physical and psychological symptoms in many medical conditions, including pain syndromes.

“When we are on automatic pilot, trying to get someplace else all the time without being attentive to where we already are, we can leave a wake of disaster behind us in terms of our own health and wellbeing, because we’re not listening to the body. We’re not paying attention to its messages; we’re not even in our bodies much of the time,” explains Kabat-Zinn. “Mindfulness—paying attention on purpose in the present moment nonjudgmentally—immediately restores us to our wholeness, to that right inward measure that’s at the root of both meditation and medicine.”

Guided imagery, which utilizes the power of imagination to heal, has been shown to reduce anxiety and pain in people with a wide range of medical conditions, including asthma, back pain, and headache, and to help patients better tolerate medical procedures and treatments. “Imagery utilizes the natural language of the unconscious mind to help a person connect with the deeper resources available to them at cognitive, affective and somatic levels,” explains Martin L. Rossman, MD.

Innovative research by Dean Ornish, MD, and his colleagues found that a program integrating mind-body techniques such as yoga, meditation, stress management, and group support with diet and exercise reversed coronary artery disease. “What we are finding is that comprehensive lifestyle changes may ‘turn on’ the beneficial parts of the genome and ‘turn off’ the more harmful parts,” says Dr. Ornish.

Today, these breakthroughs in our understanding of the mind-body connection have translated into effective therapies that support a patient’s journey through illnesses and trauma. Virtually every major medical center now has a stress management or mind-body clinic, and practices such as meditation, yoga, and group support are woven into the medical treatment of heart disease, cancer, and other serious illnesses.

James Gordon, Director and Founder, Center for Mind-Body Medicine, has conducted mind-body skills trainings for patients and health care practitioners around the world. Gordon has said, “Mind-body medicine requires that we ground information about the science of mind-body approaches in practical, personal experience; that we appreciate the centrality of meditation to these practices; and that we understand—experientially as well as scientifically—that the health of our minds and the health of our bodies are inextricably connected to the transformation of the spirit.”

So, looks like to me that Body, Mind and Spirit are all EQUALLY important to Optimal Health. These three are inter-connected. And, we need to focus on all three of these in an integrative fashion for Optimal Health.

What do you think?

What is your experience on this topic?

I would love to hear about your thoughts.

Post #33 – What can you do to maintain optimal health of your brain? Or, How my sons got me playing video games?

18 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in Aging, Living to 120, Mental Health, Optimal Health, Vitality

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In most of my past blogs, I have talked about maintaining optimal physical health – staying physically fit, keeping all chronic diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure, cardiovascular issues and such at bay. Also, I have talked about developing, building and maintaining lean mass, strength, balance and flexibility.

But, what about the brain? How to keep brain in top shape as we age, while keeping Alzheimer disease and dementia far away from ourselves? What is in our control that we can do?

After all, living to 120 (or to whatever your target is), without full cognitive faculties won’t be much fun.

Researching this topic, I found that National Institute of Health (NIH), National Institute of Aging, has a very good chapter “The Changing Brain in Healthy Aging” in their publication “Alzheimer’s Disease: Unraveling the Mystery”. The following is excerpt from that chapter.

As a person gets older, changes occur in all parts of the body, including the brain:

  • Certain parts of the brain shrink, especially, the prefrontal cortex (an area at the front of the frontal lobe) and the hippocampus. Both areas are important to learning, memory, planning, and other complex mental activities.
  • ­Changes in neurons and neurotransmitters affect communication between neurons. In certain brain regions, communication between neurons can be reduced because white matter (myelin covered axons) is degraded or lost.
  • ­Changes in the brain’s blood vessels occur. Blood flow can be reduced because arteries narrow and less growth of new capillaries occurs.
  • ­In some people, structures called plaques and tangles develop outside of and inside neurons, respectively, although in much smaller amounts than in Alzheimer Disease
  • ­Damage by free radicals increases – free radicals are a kind of molecule that reacts easily with other molecules­
  • Inflammation increases  – inflammation is the complex process that occurs when the body responds to an injury, disease, or abnormal situation.

What effects does aging have on mental function in healthy older people?

Some people may notice a modest decline in their ability to learn new things and retrieve information, such as remembering names. ­They may perform worse on complex tasks of attention, learning, and memory than would a younger person.

However, if given enough time to perform the task, the scores of healthy people in their 70s and 80s are often similar to those of young adults. In fact, as they age, adults often improve in other cognitive areas, such as vocabulary and other forms of verbal knowledge.

It also appears that additional brain regions can be activated in older adults during cognitive tasks, such as taking a memory test. Researchers do not fully understand why this happens, but one idea is that the brain engages mechanisms to compensate for difficulties that certain regions may be having.

For example, the brain may recruit alternate brain networks in order to perform a task. Th­ese findings have led many scientists to believe that major declines in mental abilities are not inevitable as people age. Growing evidence of the adaptive (what scientists call “plastic”) capabilities of the older brain provide hope that people may be able to do things to sustain good brain function as they age. A variety of interacting factors, such as lifestyle, overall health, environment, and genetics also may play a role.

Another question that scientists are asking is why some people remain cognitively healthy as they get older while others develop cognitive impairment or dementia. Th­e concept of “cognitive reserve” may provide some insights.

Cognitive reserve refers to the brain’s ability to operate effectively even when some function is disrupted. It also refers to the amount of damage that the brain can sustain before changes in cognition are evident. People vary in the cognitive reserve they have, and this variability may be because of differences in genetics, education, occupation, lifestyle, leisure activities, or other life experiences.

Th­ese factors could provide a certain amount of tolerance and ability to adapt to change and damage that occurs during aging. At some point, depending on a person’s cognitive reserve and unique mix of genetics, environment, and life experiences, the balance may tip in favor of a disease process that will ultimately lead to dementia.

For another person, with a different reserve and a different mix of genetics, environment, and life experiences, the balance may result in no apparent decline in cognitive function with age.

Scientists are increasingly interested in the influence of all these factors on brain health, and studies are revealing some clues about actions people can take that may help preserve healthy brain aging. Fortunately, these actions also benefit a person’s overall health. Th­ey include:

  1. ­Controlling risk factors for chronic disease, such as heart disease and diabetes (for example, keeping blood cholesterol and blood pressure at healthy levels and maintaining a healthy weight) ­
  2. Enjoying regular exercise and physical activity ­
  3. Eating a healthy diet that includes plenty of vegetables and fruits
  4. ­Engaging in intellectually stimulating activities, and
  5. Maintaining close social ties with family, friends, and community

So, actions 1, 2 and 3 suggested by NIH NIA are the same as for keeping physical body fit and in good order. That is a good news!

But there are also additional actions 4 and 5 one can take, that are good to keep brain fit and in good order.

Piano Lessons at 60:

To increase my intellectually stimulating activities, as I was turning 60, I decided to start taking piano lessons. I have been very left brain focused on my intellectual pursuits – STEM or Science Technology, Engineering and Math education. So, I figured, it is high time I did something to develop my underused right brain. And, there is a lot of evidence in research of the benefits of learning music on the brain.

For the last six months, I have been finding piano lessons very pleasurable and at the same time very intellectually and physically demanding. One half-hour lesson a week and daily practice of half hour to an hour, is what it takes for me learn and get comfortable with a piano piece my teacher introduces in the lesson. Initially it was just one piece from the “techniques book”, for the last few weeks, there is an additional piece from a popular “songs book”. All this piano playing got be doing something good for my brain, since week after week, it seems that I am learning with my brain and in my muscles new stuff.

How my sons got me playing video games:

Until now, I have completely resisted playing video games.

For Christmas, our twin sons, Daniel and Justin, gave us a present of family membership to Lumosity. Lumosity exploits research to-date in neuroplasticity. Research has found that certain types of activities may impact the brain more than others. It’s believed that as an activity is repeated, the brain tends to fall back on the same set of existing neural pathways. To continue changing, the brain must be exposed to novel, adaptive experiences that challenge it to work in new ways.

Drawing on this idea, Lumosity is designed to give each person a set of exercises that challenge their cognitive abilities.

Lumosity “games” are based on a combination of common neuropsychological and cognitive tasks, many of which have been used in research for decades, and new tasks designed by an in-house science team. Working with experienced game designers, Lumosity neuroscientists have transformed these tasks into over 40 challenging, adaptive games.

Lumosity’s game-based training program is designed to expose your brain to gradually increasing levels of challenges, adapting game difficulty to your individual ability level. As your scores increase, you may encounter new or more difficult games. Modeled from the concept of a physical personal trainer, Lumosity pushes you to operate at the limits of your abilities and stay challenged.

They also report measures of your performance, so you can see how you are improving in speed, memory, attention, flexibility and problem solving and how you compare with others in your age bracket. A metric called LPI is a consolidated metric of these five factors. Also, you can use a test called Baseline Test to see how the scores translate to other situations you don’t play in the games.

I have been playing these games for two weeks now. It is definitely fascinating, how various skills of speed, memory, attention, flexibility and problem solving improving. With this rate of progress, who knows, I may get good enough to play some video games against Justin and Daniel!

What are your thoughts on this subject of keeping brain fit and in optimal shape?

What strategies or techniques do you use to keep you brain fit?

Please leave a comment in the blog; I would love to hear from you.