Longevity Lifestyle Matters

Today begins the first-ever 12-week seminar based on the book I co-authored entitled: Longevity Lifestyle Matters—Keeping Your Brain, Body, and Weight in the Game. It is being presented by the Pacific Health Education Center in Bakersfield, California, with CEO Steve Horton, MPH, Sharlet M. Briggs, PhD, and yours truly. For at least the last decade, emerging research has strongly suggested that lifestyle matters more than you may think; in fact it matters at least as much as genetics in most cases. Half the factors that influence aging are within your partial of not complete control. In fact, it may matter significantly more than genetics. According to Drs Roisen and Oz, 70% percent of how long and how well you live is in your hands. The authors and a group os wellness coaches will be working with the very first class, a group of individuals who have decided to take into their own hands what they can impact--and are committed to doing so for as long as they live. They will also have the option of becoming charter members of Club 122 Longevity. Stay tuned for periodic updates.

Use it or Lose it

Common wisdom is that muscle tissue changes with use. People who have been on forced bed rest for several weeks are often amazed at how much muscle strength and tone has been lost and how much needs to be rebuilt. THis gave rise to the saying: use it or lose it. Turns out that although the brain is not muscle tissue, per se, it operates on a similar principle: use it or lose it. Use it in ways that studies have shown to be challenging and stimulating to the brain, and this brain activity will lead to various parts of the brain growing larger and stronger. In other words, you can change your brain’s anatomy as well as some of its chemical and electrical patterns and activity. This is so powerful that 30 minutes of challenging brain stimulation every day, 10 minutes of reading aloud, and 12 minutes of meditation/prayer may even slow the onset of symptoms of aging. What are you waiting for? If your schedule doesn't include these three brain gifts, it’s a good time of the year to get started . . .

Eavesdrop on Your Brain

One way to get a handle on your self-talk is through meditation (prayer is a form of meditation). It changes your brain. MRI scans have shown that people who meditate regularly show an increase in size in several parts of the brain. They have large frontal lobes (where the brain’s executive functions are located), they increase the amount of gray matter in the midbrain (that handles functions such as blood circulation and breathing) and in the prefrontal cortex (involved with active memory), and so on. And only 12 minutes day of contemplative prayer has been shown to strengthen the frontal lobes of the brain—an anti-aging strategy. Studies have even shown that people who meditate or pray regularly have less brain atrophy. Every brain is different so every brain’s meditative experience will be different. I like to take a few minutes to “eavesdrop,’ to “listen in” to my brain. After all, I won’t know if I don’t eavesdrop!). Then I bring my thoughts to focus toward something I have chosen to contemplate. 

Your Self-Talk Patterns

You can choose to do something about your thoughts and self-talk patterns only when you know what they are. Some researchers suggest “listening in on your brain.” Sit quietly for just a few minutes, awake but with your eyes closed, and “listen” to the conversations going on in your brain. That’s step one. Next, you need to decide if what you “hear” is the message that you want to give to your brain. If not, you can choose to alter what you are thinking and saying. That’s one of the benefits touted by forms of meditation. Some also advocate that you develop a pattern of talking to your brain as “you.” They think this acknowledges that the mind and brain, although connected, may also be separate in function. Instead of, “I am exercising this morning for 15 minutes,” try, “You exercise this morning for 15 minutes and you feel great.”  

Your Brain's Conversations

What you think consciously impacts what happens subconsciously. What you think and say shapes and redirects your brain’s chemical and electrical activity, to say nothing of changing your brain’s anatomy. That is what is so critical about your self-talk. Whether you say it aloud or just think it quietly and internally, your brain hears what you say and think. That speaks to the old axiom: if you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. The brain can only do what it thinks it can do—and what it thinks it can do is impacted by your thoughts and self-talk. Many people are believed to limit themselves of what they could do or be or contribute because of their limiting self-talk, their belief in what they are not and cannot do. What can you do about your self-talk patterns? 

The Brain's Rewiring

The brain spends energy in rebuilding, rewiring, and renewing itself. According to Dr. Edlund in The Power of Rest, this includes rebuilding the rest of the body. (Remember, everything starts and ends in the brain.) Except for some brief periods of sleep, cells and organs in the body continually communicate with the brain. Yes, this is below your level of consciousness, but it is happening nevertheless. Dr. Marcus Raichle coined the term “default mode,” a label to describe the electrical and blood flow patterns seen when the brain is passively resting. Although a tremendous amount seems to be going on in default mode, scientists don’t quite know what most of it is—at least not yet.

The Brain's Dark Energy

Estimates are that the brain uses about 20-25 percent of the body’s total fuel consumption (even though the brain is about two percent of your total weight). What does it use this energy for, what does it do with it? According to Matthew Edlund, MD, in The Power of Rest, “most of the time and energy the brain uses is spent “talking to itself.” He references work by Neuroscientist Marcus Raichle, reported in an article in Science magazine (“The Brain’s Dark Energy”). He used the metaphor of dark energy because so much of what the brain does is unknown. In fact, Dr. Raichle estimates that between 60-80 percent of the brain’s total energy consumption is used communicating between individual neurons and their support cells. It would be fascinating to know exactly what they are saying to each other.