Keeping Your Brain Young

After running into a post in which the author asked if anyone had information/research on keeping memory healthy, I thought I'd post the following article. It is re-published (but authored by me) from my own blog:

In October, 2007, CBS program, 60 Minutes, featured the amazing, 86-year-old, Forrest M. Bird, who invented the respirator that would make the iron lung obsolete. As of the airing of the program, Dr. Bird remained certified to fly his airplane, which he continues to fly regularly. Without re-telling the fascinating life story of the pillar-straight, 6' 4"-tall, Bird, suffice it to say that this vibrant man's mental acuity most likely surpasses that of any number of 30-year-olds.

Forrest M. Bird, MD, PhD, ScD, and founder of Bird Respiratory Care Products, is, of course, no run-of-the-mill, average, guy. That, in itself, offers one clue to ways to retain cognitive functioning in advanced age. Dr. Bird may be unique in his legendary accomplishments, but he is not unique when it comes to being elderly and remaining mentally sharp. The world is full of elderly individuals who show no, or very little, in mental sharpness. Most of us know more than one elderly person who is a whole lot more on top of things in life than a lot of younger people are.

A well known brain study, which was a collaboration between collaboration between 678 Catholic sisters and Alzheimer's expert, David Snowdon, looked at the lifestyles of the aging nuns, who showed lower incidence of dementia. The nuns, who led quiet but social lives, were people who regularly engaged in activities that kept their minds active. A healthy diet was another factor. Probably needless to say, the nuns did not drink or smoke. In autopsies performed upon their death, some nuns, who had shown few or no signs of dementia while alive, were found to have brains that showed the presence of advanced Alzheimer's disease. In other words, they had Alzheimer's Disease but didn't show signs of it while they were alive.

While, of course, information gained from a study like this cannot guarantee the prevention of dementia in the presence of Alzheimer's Disease, it does offer the proverbial food for thought.

Some basic information on the "Nun Studies"/David Snowdon can be found at the following link.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nun_Study

Also, there's a handful of videos on YouTube about Snowdon and the studies. Search "Nun Studies" or David Snowdon".

For the individual interested in reading additional, and more "academic", material on the studies searching something like "Nun Studies, David Snowdon, Alzheimer's" will result in a handful of material that gets farther into the research/studies.

What are, then, recommended practices that could offer the best chance of fending off mental decline? The most sensible and potentially effective practices are as follows:

1. Remain mentally active. Engage in activities that make the brain work. That can be reading, doing crossword puzzles, knitting, challenging one's memory, or any number of activities that involve actively thinking (rather than watching television, which doesn't challenge the brain).

2. Get as much physical exercise as possible. Physical exercise is said to possibly be the most effective protection against any number of medical conditions. Aside from any direct benefit exercise offers the brain, the indirect benefit of keeping a body healthier, longer, should not overlooked. Not all decline in cognitive functioning is related to the presence of Alzheimer's Disease. Some can occur as a result of other medical conditions.

3. Eat a healthy diet. As with exercise, the benefits of a diet that is healthy for the body includes being healthy for the brain. (After all, the brain is part of the body.)

4. Get enough sleep. As with other "standard" health recommendations, getting enough sleep can offer a real edge when it comes to maintaining general health. Not getting enough sleep can have serious consequences, including premature aging.

5. Have Social Interaction. Remaining in touch with family and friends, and even interacting with a beloved pet, has been proven to offer benefits.

6. Don't drink.

7. Don't smoke.

8. Learn how to manage chronic stress. Under chronic stress the body goes into a stress response mode, and living in a chronic stress response mode is dangerous. Learn ways to reduce stress, even when the cause of stress cannot be eliminated. Good coping techniques, mental relaxation techniques, listening to music, getting exercise, getting fresh air, and getting one's mind off one's worries are all ways of reducing the stress response.

Finally, most elderly people who remain sharp and vibrant will tell you that remaining young at heart, and refusing to let chronological age dictate one's thinking, may just be the best place to start one's personal program of fending off mental decline.

Some People Blame Aging When The Real Problem Is Something Else

I'm sixty-one and I still feel the same as I ever did. My kids are all out of the house, but that's how it's supposed to be. They're happy, and we're still close. I used to joke to them that I didn't want to be a grandmother until I was past 50. We joke that they granted that request. Then I started saying I didn't want to be one until after 55. Again, they granted that request. Then I pushed up the (joking, of course) request to 60, so at this point I'm reasonably at peace with becoming a grandmother (although I'm really not looking forward to having more people to worry about).

BUT, my hair is pretty much still brown. I don't have joint "issues" (well except for some major knee/ligament injury that has nothing to do with age), and I love that my family now includes my daughter's husband and others, and that one of my sons is in a relationship. The family is growing, and I love seeing the people my kids have turned out to be. (Not a big fan of the fine lines under my eyes; but I'm grateful for my apparent good health - knock on wood - and for discovering how much "the same" sixty-one feels for me.)

Sometimes, though, I think people equate medical conditions with age; and I know that medical conditions can make a person feel "old". (My kids' father has lived with some for years.)

I'm not bragging or being "macho" here. I'm only hoping to point out that age, by itself (or at least the age that I've reached so far) doesn't always have to feel older (well, again, at least when there's not medical conditions factoring into the mix). On the other side of things, though, I think that I've had so many bad things go on in my life from the time I was twenty on, I developed a kind of fight about not letting time or anything or anyone else take more away from me and my life than "necessary". I don't know. Maybe if you get kicked in the head hard enough, often enough, and early enough, you don't equate the bad stuff with aging anyway. :/

Well, I know a lot of people who live the same kind of life they lived decades ago, sometimes have additional responsibilities with grandchildren etc., and then blame age when they're tired at the end of the eight-hour work-day. Heck, I used to be exhausted at the end of the work-day when I was twenty-six and single.

And (sorry for the long comment here, but...) something else, for me, was that my mother had been through a lot (including illness), and she thought she was old at forty. Then when she was in her seventies she said, "I wish I'd known then how young I was." My mother essentially felt old for the last thirty-plus years of her life - when she didn't have to. She passed away at seventy-six, so she felt old for about half of her life. At the same time, this was a woman who was up every day at - like - 5:30 or 6:-00, who took care of everybody-and-his-brother's kids, who cooked huge dinners for whoever was at her house and needed dinner, cooked huge holiday dinners, and helped all kinds of people in any number of different ways - so she wasn't "walking the walk" when it came to acting old. She was just "talking the talk" - or else "thinking the thoughts". And, she's not the only person over seventy that I've known to keep going that way she did, or to spend her time helping other people.