Sharp As A Tack: How To Boost Your Brainpower and Restore Your Memory

From Biocentric Health Research Team of
(First in A Two-Part Series)

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 article 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)