How many times in the last month have you joked about having a “senior moment?”  Have you been late to a meeting or social event because you simply could not put your hands on your reading glasses or car keys? Can you remember what you had for dinner three nights ago?  Are you secretly afraid you may be losing your mind…for good?

Here is good news. This report will outline four simple steps you can easily implement that can help you gradually and permanently improve:

·         Focus

·         Concentration

·         Problem-solving

·         Creativity

·         Learning

·         Short-term memory

Sound too good to be true?  Not at all.  You may not be used to thinking of your brain as a “body part.” Because we include intangible things such as “thought” and “personality” in our concept of our brains, it’s easy to forget that the brain is made up of blood vessels, nerve cells, and tissue. Like any other organ or system of our body, the brain needs proper nutrition, exercise, rest, and hygiene in order to function at peak efficiency. 

You may be conscientious about getting a daily walk for your heart and bones, eating fruits and vegetables to lower your risk of certain cancers , and perhaps taking nutritional supplements to keep your joints flexible and trouble-free. But are you as careful to take your brain for its daily “work out?” Do you make sure it has the nutrients it needs for repair and regeneration? Could an overload of stress hormones be poisoning your delicate brain tissue?

                Chances are that although you have thought—with dread—about the possibility that you might be losing some of your mental sharpness, you probably haven’t given much thought to what you can do to nurture and protect your brain’s health.  It’s not your fault. After all, we’ve been led to believe that mild mental decline is an unavoidable and “normal” part of the aging process.  Once you’ve read this report, you’ll know better.

It usually begins in your 40s or 50s

                For decades, neurologists have believed that we will all inevitably begin to lose some of our intellectual  powers (such as recall, concentration, comprehension) when we hit our late forties or fifties. It has been accepted as fact that almost everyone will exhibit some degree of diminished brain function by the time they are sixty years old. And for an unlucky 4 million or so (at present), these symptoms represent more than just a gentle slide into the mental fuzziness of old age—they are the beginnings of one of the most devastating illnesses that can befall a family, Alzheimer’s disease.

According to conventional medical wisdom, there is little that can be done to prevent the inevitable decline—whether your fate is Alzheimer’s disease or just “normal” age-related intellectual impairment. And once it occurs, there is sadly nothing you can do to reclaim your lost capacity. 

Guess what?  They were just plain wrong.

                Just in time for the graying of the baby boomers, a flood of ground-breaking neurological research has turned everything we thought we knew about aging and the brain on its head. Here are just a few of the popularly-held notions that have been shattered by the most recent evidence:

The Old Myth: By the time you are six months old, you have all the brain cells you will ever have. 

The New Facts:  Adult human beings are, in fact, capable of generating new brain cells.  In 1998, this was elegantly demonstrated by a team of American and Swedish neurologists.  Researchers at the Salk Institute and the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden found proof of new brain cell growth in patients ranging in age from 55 to 70.  The new cells were generated in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory functions.

The Old Myth: We lose our mental capacity as we age because our brain cells are steadily dying off.

The New Facts: Using sophisticated new measuring techniques, researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that older adults have virtually the same number of brain cells as they did in their prime. The conclusion: Diminished brain function in the elderly is not due to decreased numbers of brain cells. Instead, it appears that the tiny, microscopic ‘arms’ on the nerve cells, called dentrites, tend to thin out and become inactive as we age. This is what impairs our ability to retrieve stored information and learn new information. 

The best way to avoid atrophy of the dentrites is to keep them active, by continually stimulating and challenging the brain’s information processing systems.  This bathes the brain cells in a chemical called Nerve Growth Factor, which does just what the name suggests: stimulates the growth of brain cells. Research published in the respected journal Science showed that the neurons (brain cells) of the aging human brain were capable of growing longer dentrites.  Significantly, they also found that patients with Alzheimer’s disease lose this ability.

The Old Myth: Once it’s gone, it’s gone.  After early childhood, we lose our ability to forge new neural circuitry.

The New Facts: There are lots of ways to teach an old dog new tricks.    Recent science has seen that adults do indeed have the ability to adapt their neural circuitry to accomplish necessary tasks.  If your profession requires fine hand/eye coordination, for example, your brain will probably dedicate more of its circuitry to processing visual and kinetic (spatial) information. If you use words and language on a daily basis, your brain may increase the size and activity of its language processing centers.

                Of particular interest is research done at Vanderbilt University (by Dr. Jon Kaas) and Rockefeller University (by Dr. Charles Gilbert), clearly proving that neurons in the adult human brain can generate new connections and new pathways along which to communicate nerve impulses. In short, the aging brain still has a very vibrant ability to grow, change, and compensate for any damage.  If certain neural pathways are shut down, the brain will—with the proper stimulation—find alternate paths for that communication.

So why am I constantly forgetting appointments and
misplacing important documents?

                “That’s all very well and good,” you might be thinking.  “Researchers in some university science lab have declared that ‘senility’ may be preventable, even reversible. But I still can’t remember where I put the electric bill yesterday.” 

Can all of this theoretical neuron-counting help you regain and maintain your peak brain power?  The answer is YES. 

               All of the recent advances in neurology have given us a very different picture of how the brain works as it ages, and what’s really going wrong when it begins to break down.  As it turns out, it’s not so much a matter of genetics or unavoidable biological realities that determine whether we are wise or feeble-minded in our golden years. It turns out that our lifestyle choices have a huge impact on our current and future mental capacity.

Many of the factors that contribute to the deterioration of mental and intellectual capacity are within your direct control.  They include nutritional and dietary habits, how much stress you have in your life and how you deal with it, your overall health, especially cardiovascular health, and last but definitely not least, how vigorously and diversely you use and challenge your brain on a daily basis. 

Here, then, are four simple ways that you can take action today to bolster your brain power today and long into the future.

Brain Power Strategy #1       Stop poisoning your brain with cortisol

“Stress destroys optimal function of the brain, and blots out memory.”
  Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., Brain Longevity

Out of control stress may do more damage to the health and well-being of 21^st century citizens than any other single environmental or lifestyle factor.  We are busier than we’ve ever been, juggling a greater load of professional, social, and family obligations than ever before. High speed travel and high speed communication drive us to try to accomplish ever more in an ever shorter period of time.  We now are likely to change jobs—and even professions--several times during our careers and more than likely to move to new cities, all of which are sources of stress.

The problem is that the effects of stress on the body are subtle and long-term, so we are unlikely to realize the price we are paying for our high-stress lifestyle until the damage to our health is significant.  In particular, stress has a very damaging impact on memory and neurological function in general.

When you  are in a stressful situation,  your body produces a hormone called cortisol—known as the “stress hormone.”  Short occasional bursts of cortisol have no long-term negative effect on the body but when the stress is more or less constant, as it is for many of us, the never-ending flood of cortisol becomes absolutely toxic to the brain. 

First of all, cortisol shifts glucose (energy) utilzation away from the memory center in the brain, making it very difficult to encode new information into short-term memory.  Secondly, cortisol breaks down the production of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that your brain cells need in order to be able to talk to each other, or to retrieve a previously memorized fact.  Finally, cortisol simply kills brain cells.  That’s right—you may be killing billions of brain cells every day simply by allowing your body to be constantly in the grip of overwhelming stress.

Finding a way to manage your stress is the
most important thing you can do for your brain

Unfortunately, eliminating stressors is easier said than done. You can’t quit your job, opt out of the daily commute, or simply drop out of your busy life.  Far more realistic is to find ways to manage your stress so that your brain has regular opportunities to detoxify from the effects of too much cortisol.

There are many ways to induce the ‘relaxation response,’ which is a way of describing a physical state in which the body decreases its output of cortisol and increases brain function.  The important thing is to find something that you find relaxing…and do it on a regular basis.  Exercise, yoga, music, meditating, breathing exercises, prayer—they all work.  Not only do they give your body and your brain a break from the onslaught of stress hormones but the more often you practice a relaxation exercise, the more resilient your body becomes to the effects of stress.

Brain Power Strategy #2       Start feeding your brain the nutrients it needs

“Changes in the diet can produce changes in brain chemistry and function in a matter of minutes.”  
Edward Edelson, Nutrition and the Brain

                For a long time, scientists believed that diet and nutrition had little direct impact on brain function because of something called the blood-brain barrier.  This is a protective layer of cells that surrounds the brain tissue and tightly controls the type and amount of chemical substances that can enter the brain cells.  It was thought that changes in diet would not affect brain chemistry because the blood-brain barrier would only allow nothing but strictly controlled amounts of only the basic nutrients—glucose and amino acids—into the brain.

                In the 1970s, however, work done at MIT under the leadership of Dr. Richard J. Wurtman changed the field of neurology forever.  Wurtman and his colleagues demonstrated that many more different molecules are able to cross the blood-brain barrier than was previously thought. Over the ensuring years, it was found that certain foods and nutrients can have an immediate and dramatic effect on the chemistry and function of the brain.  

Wurtman’s work paved the way for the development of important drug therapies, such as L-dopa for Parkinson’s disease.  He also ushered in the era of using diet and nutritional supplements to affect mood, alertness, sleep, and learning ability.

What are the best brain foods?

What all this means for you is that your daily dietary choices can have a major impact on your present and future brain power. 

Fish  One clear standout among brain-powering foods is fish, especially fish high in Omega-3 essential fatty acids. These include salmon, herring, mackerel, and tuna.  But all fish appears to be a good choice if nurturing your neurons is a priority.  A survey of over 5000 subjects conducted at the Erasmus University Medical School in Rotterdam, Holland, found that those who ate the most fish had the lowest incidence of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease.  The concluded that fish consumption decreases the risk of cognitive impairment as you age. (Kalmijn, S. et al. “Dietary Fat intake and the risk of incident dementia” Ann Neurol 1997 42(5):776-82)

Olive Oil  Large population studies have found that a diet high in monounsaturated fatty acids, such as those found in olive oil, appears to have a powerful protective effect against cognitive decline.  Italian researchers found that of elderly people eating a typical Mediterranean diet, those who had the highest intake of olive oil scored the best on tests of cognitive function, including memory, attention span, and other skills. Another good source of monounsaturated fatty acids are avocados and avocado oil.  (Solfrizz, V et al “High monounsaturated fatty acids intake protects against age-related cognitive decline” Neurology 1999 52:1563-9)

Leafy green vegetables  Doesn’t it seem that leafy greens turn up on every list of good-for-you food?  In truth, they are unbeatable nutritional powerhouses, especially for brain health. They are rich in natural antioxidants, which help protect against oxidation and free radical damage and high in folic acid and other B-vitamins.  Folic acid keeps your homocysteine levels to a healthy level.  Excess homocysteine in the blood stream has been directly correlated to cognitive impairment and Alzheimers disease. (Miller, JW “Homocysteine, Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive function” Nutrition 2000 16(7-8):675-7)

Super nutrients that fuel and fire your brain cells

If the nutrients in foods can help to protect your brain, could concentrated nutrients in the form of nutritional supplements help more?  It appears that this is the case. Nutritional researchers have now studied hundreds of herbs, vitamins, amino acids, and fatty acids to determine which were most helpful in supporting and enhancing brain health.  Here are a few of the superstars.

Gingko biloba increases circulation to the brain by expanding the tiny blood vessels that lead to the brain—flooding your hungry brain cells with needed oxygen and nutrients. It’s also a powerful antioxidant, helping to keep the brain—and the rest of the body—safe from marauding free radicals.*

There are hundreds of published studies demonstrating the brain-boosting benefits of gingko biloba.  Just this summer, the U.S. National Institutes of Health launched their own six-year, $15 million study of gingko’s ability to fight Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, scientists at Stanford Medical School are currently in the middle of rigorous trials to confirm the validity of gingko as a treatment for non-Alzheimer’s memory loss. *

Gingko has been used for centuries in China to ward off age-related memory loss and decline.  European doctors, who are generally more accepting of herbal remedies than American doctors, have been using Ginkgo for decades to improve circulation—especially to the brain. *

Acetyl-L-carnitine stimulates new nerve growth by supporting systemic levels of nerve growth factor (NGF.)  NGF helps to regenerate aged or damaged neurons and also stimulates the production of brand-new nerve cells.  The old belief that you can’t grow new brain cells has been disproved by modern science. You CAN grow healthy, young brain cells at any age.  Stimulating your brain with challenging mental tasks is one way to encourage new growth. (See Strategy #4, below.) Keeping NGF levels high is another. There are other substances that also boost NGF but Acetyl-L-Carnitine is the only one that can cross the blood/brain barrier to work inside the brain, where it can do the most good.*

 Huperzine A protects neurotransmitters from being broken down by enzymes in the brain.  By extending the active lifetime of these important chemical messengers, huperzine helps to increase the amount of information exchanged by your neurons.  There are scores of studies published in major medical journals showing that Huperzine A is highly active in the brain.* 

Huperzine A has been shown to promote long-lasting improvements in learning, memory, spatial orientation, and cognitive performance in animal models of senility as well as healthy adults and adolescents.  It also shows great promise as a nutrient that could be highly beneficial for those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. *

Researchers working at Zhejiang Medical University in China conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of over 100 Alzheimer’s patients, half of whom were given huperzine-A for 8 weeks. In that short time, 58% of the treated group improved in memory, cognitive and behavioral functions, leading the researchers to conclude that huperzine is “a promising for symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer's disease.” *

Phosphatidylserine (PS) helps to activate nerve cells so they can produce strong nerve impulses. This essential fatty acid is found throughout the body, but it is most highly concentrated in the brain, where it has several crucial functions.  In addition to playing an important roll in cell-to-cell communication and recognition, PS is an antioxidant, helping to protect delicate cell membranes from oxidative damage. *

It also helps to maintain healthy levels of Nerve Growth Factor, which tend to decline with age. Finally, it works to regulate levels of the hormone cortisol. This hormone is produced in response to stress.  Excessive stress can lead to excessive cortisol, which can slow the uptake of glucose (energy) in the brain, negatively affecting brain function. *

               One ground-breaking study, published in the respected medical journal, Neurology, found that among subjects 50 and older, daily supplementation with PS led to a 15% improvement in memory and learning after 3 months. Interestingly, those who had scored the lowest on cognitive function tests at the beginning of the test had the greatest improvements.*

Docosahexanoic Acid (DHA) gets the nerve signals through “loud and clear” by increasing the fluidity of the synapses (the gaps that the impulses have to jump across to get from neuron to neuron.) DHA is an omega-3 essential fatty acid that is the primary structural fatty acid in the brain.  It is so important to the formation and growth of the brain during pregnancy and infancy that it is incorporated into baby formula in Japan. DHA is also important for adult and aging brains, helping to prevent the impairment of the neural function as we age.

Several studies have noted that low levels of DHA in the brain correlate to a decline in the brain’s structural integrity and function. *

Brain Power Strategy #3 Get enough exercise AND enough rest

“Fatigue is an important influence on memory simply because so many of us live with it.” 
Cynthia R. Green, PhD, Total Memory Workout

                The health hazards of chronic sleep deprivation have been in the news lately.  Last year there was a widely publicized study, conducted at the University of Chicago Medical Center, in which 11 healthy young men were allowed to sleep only four hours per night for six days.  After less than a week of sleep deprivation, the scientists noted changes in the young men’s hormone profiles that mimicked those of elderly people. In particular, cortisol levels were significantly higher, which can accelerate brain aging and cognitive decline.

                Other studies have demonstrated that fatigue can reduce alertness, concentration, reactions times, and cognitive ability.  A chronic lack of sleep also impacts memory function.

                “Chronic sleep debt is becoming increasingly common and affects millions of people,” writes Dr. Karine Spiegel, in an article for the British medical journal The Lancet.  The average amount of sleep per night has decreased from approximately 9 hours in 1910 to 7.5 hours today.  The good news to come out of the University of Chicago study is that when the subjects started sleeping longer and recovering from their sleep debt, their hormone profiles returned to normal.  You can promote a sharper more vital mind simply by making sure that you make time to get enough sleep. 

Next time you are tempted to steal an hour or two of sleep time in order to fit one more thing into your schedule, just remember that adequate sleep is absolutely critical to your brain longevity.

Exercise is also a habit you cannot afford to be without if you want your brain performing at its peak.  As Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa explains in his book Brain Longevity:

“Aerobic exercise has direct beneficial effects upon the brain and endocrine system.  It increases blood flow to the brain, and even spurs growth of new brain cell “branches.” It also has powerful indirect benefits. It physcially protects the body against the stress response, and also “burns off” harmful stress hormones.”   (p.55)

Brain Power Strategy #4  Use it or lose it

“In much the same way that you can maintain your physical well-being, you can take charge
of your mental health and fitness.”  Lawrence Katz, Keep your Brain Alive

                A spate of recent books with titles like “The Total Memory Workout” and “Keep Your Brain Alive” reflect the growing anxiety of the baby boomer generation as they approach middle age and begin to experience  diminished mental prowess.  These books also make the important point that the brain is a “use it or lose it” kind of organ.  Although it is not a muscle, the brain does get stronger and more flexible the more that is used. Conversely, it will shrink and atrophy if not used.

                One reason that we seem to get slower and less mentally agile as we age is that we very often stop learning new things. Throughout childhood and adolescence, the human brain is absorbing and processing an incredible amount of new information. This is also the time that the brain is at its most powerful.

                As young adults, we may spend several years pursuing higher education or learning the skills of a trade or profession.  During this period of our lives, we also constantly have new and unfamiliar experiences, whether its meeting new people, moving to a new town, travelling, or picking up new hobbies or recreational interests.

                But by the time we reach our forties and fifties—right about the time that we begin to notice our mental engine beginning to slow down—many of us have settled into social, personal, and professional routines that offer very little in the way of new stimulus or learning opportunities for the brain.

                Basically, the brain grows and thrives when it is confronted with new information…new words, new tasks, new sensory experiences. Unused and unchallenged, the dentrites of the nerve cells, which carry the messages back and forth begin to shrink and disappear.  With less biochemical and electric activity buzzing through the brain, the brain produces less of an important chemical called nerve growth factor, or NGF. Even in old age, however, the brain will respond to mental and sensory stimulation by pumping up its production of NGF, which in turn fattens up brain cells and helps them establish new connections.

The cognitive workout—Daily exercises for a mind like a steel trap

1.       Do the daily crossword—word games like crossword puzzles, word scrambles, etc. exercise important information processing centers in the brain.  Studies have shown that doing these activities regularly preserves and enhances communication in the language centers of the brain as well as the ability to recall words.

2.       Play a musical instrument—if you played tuba or violin as a child, get that dusty instrument out of the attic and give it a whirl just for old times’ sake.  Or consider taking piano lessons at your local community music school.  Brain researchers have found that making music can make you ‘smarter’ by stimulating the communication between the right and left sides of the brain. Playing an instrument also improves hand/eye coordination and fine motor skills.

3.       Learn a language—whether its French, Sign language, or HTML for computer programming, learning a language is a powerful way to strengthen tone the ‘muscles’ of your brain.  It also exercises memory and recall as you increase your vocabulary. If you once spoke a foreign language, see if you can find a newstand or bookstore that sells newspapers or newsmagazines in that language, just for practice.  Or check a larger bookstore for foreign language children’s books.

4.       Balance your checkbook by hand—just like music, mathematics stimulate specific centers of learning and neural communication.  If you have gotten into the habit of using a calculator or computer program to balance your checkbook, try taking a few extra moments and computing the balances by hand (or even in your head.).  A few sums a day can help keep your cognitive circuitry sharp and flexible.

5.       Brush off your bridge game—Complex games of strategy, such as bridge or chess, can be a fun way to socialize and strengthen brain skills at the same time.  The challenge of anticipating moves in a chess game or in keeping track of cards played in a hand of bridge can be an enjoyable way to exercise your memory and higher cognitive skills. 

6.       Do familiar things in an unfamiliar way—Brush your teeth or eat your breakfast with the opposite hand.  Try navigating (carefully!) around your bedroom or family room with your eyes closed.  Take a different route to work.  Sort your pocket change or identify your housekey by feel only. These exercises ask your brain to find new solutions to old problems, or to integrate sensory stimuli (sound, touch, sight, smell,) in a new way. In the process, new associative patterns are established in the neural networks, thereby enhancing memory and learning ability.

Additional Resources

Keep your Brain: 83 Neurobic Exercies to help prevent memory loss and increase mental fitness, Lawrence C. Katz, PhD and Manning Rubin. (Workman Publishing, 1999)

Total Memory Workoutt: 8 Easy Steps to Maximum Memory Fitness, Cynthia R. Green, PhD (Bantam Books, 1999)

Brain Longevity: The Breakthrough Medical Program that Improves your Mind and Memory, Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. and Cameron Stauth. (Warner Books, 1977)