Secreat is out:Repeat in your life too,
21st century Mantra of having the robust Mental Health
Our brain and Memory has only one mantra: You can either "Use it
or lose it"
The biggest challenge as you mature in age is how to keep
engaging your brain in challenging mental activities .The metabolism slows down
, the body matures ,your thinking process ( your Brain) to0 slow down . Only
the vigorous activities like physical
games/exercise involving repetitions ,playing board games ,computer games ,games like chase,solving puzzles which will
involve new pathways etc. slows down
brain-ageing, keeps the brain young & prevents Alzheimer’s disease and
Dementia.
Experimental
evidence: Rats in the
captivity given toys to play with showed that they had more
synaptic neuronal connections compared to those rats that were deprived of such
stimulation.
Applied research:Brain
exercises such as computer games, crossword puzzles, chess, learning music or a
foreign language and memory exercises have been used to facilitate recovery
from brain damage caused by head injury, stroke, diabetes, infarct and chronic
schizophrenia.Even persons who were paralysed
were able to recover with brain-stimulating exercises which proves that Mental
exercises can heal a sick
brain.
Example:Scientist and mathematician John
Nash(famous for his “Game theory and Nobel prize winner in Economics), is a striking example who was seriously
mentally ill, afflicted with schizophrenia for more than a decade. He
attributed his recovery to brain exercises like chess and computer games
and calls this strategy ‘cognitive therapy’.
The silver
population( Senior/ retired ) who carry on working in the same or similar
profession till 75 years of age ,so
doing same jobs doesn’t help the
brain because they are only exercising the pre-existing old neuronal
circuitry.Old memories have had the advantage of repeated mental practice or
recall . They are the last to fade away in dementia and Alzheimer’s. They are
also stored in locations distinctly different from recent memory. It’s during
learning to do new activities , new
neuronal connections are formed in the brain.
What is the secrete of some people
remain active / look young in old age ?
It is not a magic but effect of neurogenesis. It
is not a 'rocket science. You too can look young .Just start trying to change a
carrier in middle age or learning a new language .since it involves learning
afresh like an infant, without the advantage of prior experience at the task.
As our brain has to be in full focus on the task. This is hard work compared to
the brain work required for practicing the old skill. More neurochemicals
acetylcholine and dopamine are released. On such occasions, our brain is
becoming younger, generating new neurons. Learn to change the brain. Because ,
once dead, same brain cells cannot be brought back to life. However, new brain
cells can be formed. This is neurogenesis. And that happens when we learn a new
skill. When we are in the process of picking up a new skill, new nerve cells are
generated in the hippocampus. And depending upon what brain region is engaged
in learning the new task, these young nerve cells migrate to the engaged brain
region and start to function in their new location. It’s in the hippocampus
that new mental associations, new learning occurs before it’s shifted to higher
brain regions for permanent storage. If you can’t practice a new skill
physically, just imagine yourself doing it. Scientists had one group of persons
practice a skill for a week and saw the improvement not only in their
performance, but also in the brain map of the responding brain region. But this
was expected. However, what was unexpected was that the second group that
‘practised’ the same skill in their minds, too showed improvements in brain functions
and map. Admittedly, the changes in the ‘mental only’ group were weaker than in
the first group but the point is that they had both structural brain change and
also improvement in their functional use of the skill.
The brain is not a rigid structure but is easily changeable.
Changes in the level of mental stimulation alter neural circuitry and
consequently, the physical architecture of our brain, keeping it young. So keep
it engaged! Use the mental tools to keep it sharp
Chess: Anatoly Sharansky, the famous Soviet human rights
Activist of the late 1970s was imprisoned for his alleged
spying
against the then-Soviet Union. He was imprisoned for
nine years, During his prison term, Sharansky kept his
brain in
good shape by playing mental chess. He used to plan from
both perspectives—his and opponent’s ,a rare mental
effort. Without the mental
work, all his brain maps would degenerate. Several years
later, when world chess champion Gary Kasparov defeated allother s but Sharansky.
so be active and solve Crossword puzzles:
People who are inactive can sometimes get Dementia and
Alzaimers disease.. The active seniors mostly engaged in physical exercise and
regularly solve crossword puzzles, play board games, read books and newspapers
and participate in group discussions.
Learn to play musical Instruments or singing:
Brain imaging of
musicians’ brains shows that many areas of their brains, such as the motor area
[because they use fingers] and cerebellum, are larger than those of the
non-musicians. Long-time musicians also have thicker fibers connecting the left
and right sides of the brain.
New generation has started teaching their young ones piano, guitar, or giving vocal
music lessons which shows improvement in mathematical abilities.
You may ask why do I need such information,
what do I have too with all this? I don’t have dementia or Alzheimer’s”. It is
observed that dementia doesn’t set in abruptly. It comes gradually. Alzheimer’s
takes ten or more years before it manifests clinically. But soft signs start
over a decade in advance…having one or two from the following list of signs can
be due to normal aging but many or all of them occurring often needs interventions
like having more vitamins B complex from nutrition or the memory boosting
physical and mental exercises.
- Opening
the fridge but forgetting the reasons, “what I needed from fridge?
- Often going
to another room in your house but forgetting why you went?
- Forgetting
the names of people you used to know?
- Frequently
forget where you kept your keys, eye glasses, pen or wallet?
- You
need to use gadgets or a pocket diary to remind yourself of important
appointments or tasks?
- Getting lost while talking…you stray away
get lost in peripheral conversational details and forget the main argument
with which you started?
§ Frequent need to ask the listener
“So where was I or on what point we were we talking”?
§ Having the nagging feeling “the name
of an object or a person is ‘on the tip of my tongue’ and yet, I can’t recall
it exactly?
§ Even in familiar surrounding or hometown, while driving, sudden feeling,
for a moment that you are lost?
It is easier to say and deny memory
problems by refusing to accept that you have a problem and dismiss the failure
to recall recent events or learn new things. It is not wise to declare that we
can recall even old events. The
misconception here is “the older the memory, the more difficult it is to
recall’. But this is misleading. The capacity to learn new things and recall
recent events is lost more easily than the memory for old events. In the above
two diseases, person may recall the name of his school or his friend’s name
from nursery, or kG Classes or mathematical tables but he does not recall the
most recent happenings or the names of his current friends, wife, son or
daughter etc. It will be too late if we wait for the old memories to switch of
completely. As current research demonstrates a significant percentage of
patients with a variety of psychiatric disorders, including depression, have a
deficiency in several vitamins such as thiamine, pyridoxine, cyanocobalamin, and
folic acid. research suggests that nutrition may play a role in the development
or maintenance of depression. There is a direct relationship between depression and need of several
nutrients (carbohydrates, tryptophan, and vitamins) So, start doing remedial mental exercises as soon as you can. To further
boost the best results, provide optimal nutrition for the brain like omega-3
rich foods (fish oil capsules, fish, omega-3 rich vegetarian options like dry fruits-walnuts
and almonds, etc.)
Reference:
1.Nutrition and depression, By Christensen, Larry Christensen,
Larry ,(1996). Diet–behavior relationships: Focus on depression, (pp. 89-108).
Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, vi, 209 pp.
Personality:
18. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6
