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All Exercise Benefits Your Brain

The stimulation to the brain, created by exercise directly effects the brain function in the several ways, for example, it reduces cortisol in the brain, the stress hormone, letting you think more clearly. ln addition, it produces dopamine, an active neurotransmitter that affects your movement control and your state of well being. Exercise creates new neurons in the motor cortex and cerebellum and generates new connections between different parts of the brain.

Any exercise that you do improves your brain in one sense or another. If possible, we recommend they try both new and more complex exercises. The more the brain perceives the exercise as complex and new, the more brain activity is stimulated.

The idea is to consistently create coordination and concentration through the execution of body exercises. Also recommended is both aerobic and strength training.

Any exercise benefits your brain. But SBSB exercises have been specially targeted to improve your brain at the same time that your body.

Super Body Super Brain (SBSB) is a body exercise program created by Michael Gonzalez­ Wallace, whose objective is to get you in shape and, at the same time, enhance your brain. It is based on the concept that surprise keeps the brain at peak efficiency.

Generally speaking, the stimulation that movement performs in the brain, affects brain function in the following terms:

• It reduces cortisol in the brain, the stress hormone, letting you think more clearly.
• It produces dopamine, an active neurotransmitter that affects your movement control and your state of well being.
• Exercise creates new neurons in the motor cortex and cerebellum.
• It generates new connections between different parts of the brain.

Summarizing, by doing exercise, you can actually get smarter.

Any exercise that you do improves your brain in one sense or another. That is why I recommend to my clients that they perform the exercise that suits them the better. However, if possible, I recommend them to try new and more complex exercises. The more the brain perceives the exercise as complex and new, the more brain activity is stimulated.

That is exactly the focus of the SBSB method: to create a continuous demand of balance, coordination and concentration through the execution of body exercises. Furthermore, Michael’s exercises include aerobic and strength-training moves to rev up your metabolism and make your muscles lean and strong.

The result is a set of exercises that if done for 10 minutes daily, lead you to a better body and a more intelligent brain.

If you want to know more about the complete exercise plan, you may prefer to read the book that explains the whole technique and contains a detailed weekly training plan.

Prevention News
Exercise And Mental Stimulation Prevent Dementia
Smart New Strategies To Ward Off Dementia
Do ’em every day, keep memory loss at bay

A daily walk, a good book, a game of checkers. They’re more than mere simple pleasures, finds new research: These everyday activities might be your best defense against age-related mental decline, according to two new studies presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

In one study, a team from Rush University Medical Center and the Illinois Institute of Technology recruited 152 older adults and measured the structural integrity of each participant’s brain. The researchers then examined how much time each senior spent on mentally stimulating activities, including reading, writing, attending the theater, or playing games like chess.

People who regularly partook in the stimulating activities showed healthier densities of “white matter”-the parts of the brain that transmit information-than those who didn’t. In other words: if you don’t use it, you lose it, says study author Konstantinos Arfanakis, PhD, with the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center, though he adds that it’s difficult to speculate the precise brain mechanisms responsible for the connection. (Want to use your noggin right now?

In a separate study, a UCLA team recruited nearly 900 older adults and measured the volume of gray matter-the part of the brain that manages muscle control, memory, speech, and senses-of each participant. The most active men and women were significantly more likely to have healthy volumes of gray matter, according to study author Cyrus Raji, MD, PhD, a radiology resident at UCLA. They were also more likely to have dodged dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of age-related mental decline.

In fact, those who burned more than 3,000 calories per week during the 20 year study span retained 5% more gray matter than their sedentary peers, which Raji describes as a “tremendous” difference. Why? Exercise increases blood flow, delivering oxygen and glucose to the brain while simultaneously reducing the build-up of harmful plaques, he explains.

So what’s the formula for optimal brain health? Reading a newspaper or book for an hour, writing a letter, attending a play, sitting down for a game of chess or checkers-Arfanakis recommends at least two of these activities every day.

And when it comes to exercise, almost any type of physical activity will do the trick, Raji says. Swimming, biking, hiking, dancing-even mowing the lawn-will help ward of dementia.

Neuroplasticity: how the brain is capable of change

Scientists have historically believed that once a person reaches adulthood, their cognitive abilities are immutable. But beginning in the early twentieth century, that theory has been contested by evidence suggesting that the brain’s abilities are in fact malleable and plastic. According to this principle of neuroplasticity, the brain is constantly changing in response to various experiences. New behaviors, new learnings, and even environmental changes or physical injuries may all stimulate the brain to create new neural pathways or reorganize existing ones, fundamentally altering how information is processed.

The information provided is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be medical advice or a substitute for professional health care. You should consult an appropriate health care professional for your specific needs and to determine whether making a lifestyle change or decision based on this information is appropriate for you.

The term executive function describes a set of cognitive abilities that control and regulate other abilities and behaviors. Executive functions are necessary for goal directed behavior. They include the ability to initiate and stop actions, to monitor and change behavior as needed, and to plan future behavior when faced with novel tasks and situations. Executive functions allow us to anticipate outcomes and adapt to changing situations. The ability to form concepts and think abstractly are often considered components of executive function.

Read more: http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Executive­-function.html

In other words, executive function is a set of mental processes that help connect past experience with present situation/action. We use it when we plan, organize, strategize, notice and remember details, manage time, manage space and control our impulses (for instance curb our desire to say or do something inappropriate.).

Cooking
An activity that you can do in the home could be to have the client pick out a recipe from their own cook book. Have the client write down a shopping list containing everything that is needed for that recipe, and talk about what cooking supplies you should use. If possible, shop for the things together. If not possible, that is also okay. Look in the ads from the grocery stores, to get an estimated idea of the budget for the recipe, help only as little as needed, and in a respectful and kind way, so the client feels competent. You can start out Monday with the planning, do shopping a different day, and the cooking on a third day. You can even prepare some of the chopping the day before the actual cooking. This activity can be tailored from the highest functioning Sapphire to the Emerald, in my experience. Even the other Gems, who can no longer engage in planning, should be involved when possible, even if it means watching you cook while they hold a carrot or something.

Laundry
Laundry is a great activity for planning and strategizing!

We need to sort the clothes, and we also need to look at the sizes of the loads, so we don’t wash a load that is uneconomical because it is too small, right? (Any excuse to get the brain activated works) When do we need the particular piece of clothing?
Can it wait some days, so the load can grow bigger?
Which cycle should we use? How much time do we have today, how many loads. Ask for help even when you don’t need it, just be careful that it is not too obvious …

Most ADL’s can be used in this manner—Appropriate board games for higher functioning clients could be problem solving and sequencing games.

Mastermind (Perhaps only for Sapphire, but we mustn’t forget our Sapphires in our eager to help the other Gems).

Chess—Connect 4 stackers.

Solving problems with the help of clues, like logic puzzles. There are logic puzzles that you can download and print for free on the internet, and they vary in difficulty. Building with blocks, or playdoh really works multiple skills.Often pictures come along with this kind of activity, and you can ask the client to build a replica. This will activate planning, sequencing, attention to detail, and much more.

Texture Dominoes

 

Product Description

Touch-and-match dominoes feature six different textures to develop tactile discrimination. Each end, coded with a color and texture. Set of 28 dominoes (2-3/4″ x 1-3/8″ each). Stores in a sturdy wooden box.

 

Plumber’s Puzzle
Price: $45.50
This set with a hardwood mounting base (11″ x 3-112″),30 pieces of plastic pipe of various lengths, and 24 PVC connectors will encourage creative construction and manipulative motion. An independent activity that’s sure to appeal to you.
Product Number: 9718466C

Wood-Like Foam Blocks
Price: $37.75
Unique lightweight, wood-looking foam block set with block cut shapes for construction and building.
Blocks range in size from 1-1/4″ circle to 5-1/2″ x 2-3/4″ rectangle. Includes BO pieces.
Product Number: SN01819C

The information provided is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be medical advice or a substitute for professional health care. You should consult an appropriate health care professional for your specific needs and to determine whether making a lifestyle change or decision based on this information is appropriate for you.

By: Dr. Pascale Michelon

In addition to genetic factors, the environment in which a person lives, as well as the actions of that person, play a role in plasticity.

Neuroplasticity occurs in the brain:

1- At the beginning of life: when the immature brain organizes itself.

2- In case of brain injury: to compensate for lost functions or maximize remaining functions.

3-Through adulthood: whenever something new is learned and memorized

Plasticity and brain injury

A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of nonnal experience, brain damage or recovery.

In his book “The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science,” Nonnan Doidge describes numerous examples of functional shifts.

In one of them, a surgeon in his 50s suffers a stroke. His left arm is paralyzed. During his reha­bilitation, his good arm and hand are immobilized, and he is set to cleaning tables. The task is at first impossible. Then slowly the bad arm remembers how to move. He learns to write again, to play tennis again: the functions of the brain areas killed in the stroke have transferred themselves to healthy regions!

The brain compensates for damage by reorganizing and fonning new connections between intact neurons. In order to reconnect, the neurons need to be stimulated through activity.

Plasticit, learning and memot

For a long time, it was believed that as we aged, the connections in the brain became fixed. Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops changing through learning. Plasticity IS the capacity of the brain to change with learning. Changes associated with learning occur mostly at the level of the connections between neurons. New connections can form and the internal struc­ture of the existing synapses can change.

Did you know that when you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill will grow?

For instance, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus (in the posterior region) than Lon­don bus drivers (Maguire, Woollett, & Spiers, 2006). Why is that? It is because this region of the hippocampus is specialized in acquiring and using complex spatial information in order to navigate efficiently. Taxi drivers have to navigate around London whereas bus drivers follow a lim­ited set of routes.

Plasticity can also be observed in the brains of bilinguals (Mechelli et al., 2004). It looks like learning a second language is possible through functional changes in the brain: the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in bilingual brains than in monolingual brains.

Plastic changes also occur in musicians brains compared to non-musicians. Gaser and Schlaug (2003) compared professional musicians (who practice at least l hour per day) to amateur musi­cians and non-musicians. They found that gray matter (cortex) volume was highest in profes­sional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in non-musicians in several brain areas involved in playing music: motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas and inferior temporal areas.

Finally, Draganski and colleagues (2006) recently showed that extensive learning of abstract information can also trigger some plastic changes in the brain. They imaged the brains of German medical students 3 months before their medical exam and right after the exam and com­pared them to brains of students who were not studying for exam at this time. Medical students’ brains showed learning-induced changes in regions of the parietal cortex as well as in the poste­rior hippocampus. These regions of the brains are known to be involved in memory retrieval and learning.

The information provided is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be medical advice or a substitute for professional health care. You should consult an appropriate health care professional for your specific needs and to determine whether making a lifestyle change or decision based on this information is appropriate for you.

• In numerous research studies, brain healthy activities have been proven to actually delay cognitive impairment and even Alzheimer’s Disease
• Every 5.7 seconds a new case of dementia in the world
• Every 57 seconds someone is diagnosed with AD
• Any kind of stress can create problems with our memory and destroy neural pathways

Your Brain’s Vital Functions

1. Attention: The ability to increase your “ATTENTION” will in tum, increase both your math and reading performance. In addition, both visual and hearing memory can improve. Attention is what helps us focus on things and shut out the things that aren’t necessary. Attention assists with movement, emotions, and sensations, allowing the brain to make sense of all that is around us.

2. Memory: General memory facilitates the formation, activation, and retention of neurological circuits that contribute to your brain’s optimal functioning. Memory is the veritable bedrock of superior brain health and serves as the basis of your personal identity.

3. Working memory: Working memory is linked with your IQ and is the first brain function to decline as you age. It is central to your ability to manipulate stored information and can easily be improved by practicing a series of simple exercises.

Brain Fitness promotes stronger memory and improves brain function through all ages. Recent studies show that the brain constantly revises itself. “brain plasticity”.

Scientists used to believe that the brain developed all of its major functionality-that is, the “wiring” of the brain that supports hearing, seeing, feeling, thinking, emotions and the control of movements-in early infancy. The “mature” brain was thought to be unchangeable, like a computer with all its wires permanently soldered together.

Our brains have the lifelong ability to adapt and build is termed “neuroplasticity”. The neural pathways, more like the information highways, are the foundation of our cognitive skills which determine how efficiently we are able to process information. Because the brain is always adapting and building, our ability to think, remember and learn is never static, it can always be upgraded and improved!

Ground breaking research in the area of neuroscience shows that regular brain fitness training can provides tremendous benefits to people of all ages, including those who are experiencing cognitive decline due to age, disease, trauma or chemotherapy. Neuroplasticity which enables the neurons (brain cells) to make new pathways with new learning and adaptive experiences.

Brain Flex is a brain fitness program which provides you with a personal brain trainer. Brain Flex includes a variety of activities that will assist in creating these new neural pathways and strengthen the existing ones. Activities are personally designed each one of our clients. The activities provided will provide opportunity to stimulate all areas of the brain and will especially focus on the areas which may prove to need more attention. In addition, age appropriate exercise that increases coordination and balance will also be available.

***Through various cognitive testing, we will personally design a “strategic action plan” based upon the results of those tests.

 

The information provided is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be medical advice or a substitute for professional health care. You should consult an appropriate health care professional for your specific needs and to determine whether making a lifestyle change or decision based on this information is appropriate for you.

By: Alvaro Fernandezblack and white brain

Let’s review some good lifestyle options we can follow to maintain, and improve, our vibrant brains.

1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic understanding will serve you well to appreciate your brain’s beauty as a living and constantly-developing dense forest with billions of neurons and synapses.

2. Take care of your nutrition. Did you know that brain only weighs 2% of body mass but it consumes over 20% of the oxygen and nutrients we intake? As a general rule, you don’t need expensive ultra-sophisticated nutritional supplements, just make sure you don’t stuff yourself with the “bad stuff “.

3. Remember that the brain is part of the body. Things that exercise your body can also help sharpen your brain: physical exercise enhances neurogenesis.

4. Practice positive, future-oriented thoughts until they become your default mindset and you look forward to every new day in a constructive way. Stress and anxiety, no matter whether induced by external events or by your own thoughts, actually kills neurons and prevent the creation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the opposite of exercise: it prevents the creation of new neurons.

5. Thrive on Learning and Mental Challenges. The point of having a brain is precisely to learn and to adapt to challenging new environments. Once new neurons appear in your brain, where they stay in your brain and how long they survive depends on how you use them. “Use IT or Lose IT” does not mean “do crossword puzzle number 1,234,567”. It means, “challenge you brain often with fundamentally new activities”.

6. We are (as far as we know) the only self-directed organisms in this planet. Aim high. Once you graduate from college, keep learning. Once you become too comfortable in one job, find a new one. The brain keeps developing, reflecting what you do with it.

7. Explore, travel. Adapting to new locations forces you to pay more attention to your environment. Make new decisions, use your brain.

8. Don’t Outsource Your Brain. Not to media personalities, not to politicians, not to your smart neighbor … Make your own decisions, and mistakes. And learn from them. That way, you are training your brain, not your neighbor’s.

9. Develop and maintain stimulating friendships. We are “social animals”, and need social interaction. Which, by the way, is why ‘Baby Einstein’ has been shown not to be the panacea for children development.

10. Laugh. Often. Especially to cognitively complex humor, full of twists and surprises. Bet­ter, try to become the next Jon Stewart.

Now, remember that what counts is not reading this article-or any other-, but practicing a bit every day until small steps snowball into unstoppable, internalized habits…so, pick your next battle and try to start improving at least one of these 10 habits today. Revisit the habit above that really grabbed your attention, and make a decision to try something different today!

The information provided is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be medical advice or a substitute for professional health care. You should consult an appropriate health care professional for your specific needs and to determine whether making a lifestyle change or decision based on this information is appropriate for you.