Of all the diseases associated with aging there’s one more devastating for most people than all others. Most of us abhor, even fear, cognitive function decline, dementia and specifically Alzheimer’s.(1) But you can discover how to keep your brain healthy and sharp. And all the ways make complete sense.
The Mayo Clinic says about Alzheimer’s:
While dementia is a general term, Alzheimer's disease is a specific brain disease. It is marked by symptoms of dementia that gradually get worse over time. Alzheimer's disease first affects the part of the brain associated with learning, so early symptoms often include changes in memory, thinking and reasoning skills.
And The National Institute on Aging tells us how Alzheimer’s was discovered:
Dr. [Alois] Alzheimer noticed changes in the brain tissue of a woman who had died of an unusual mental illness. Her symptoms included memory loss, language problems, and unpredictable behavior. After she died, he examined her brain and found many abnormal clumps (now called amyloid plaques) and tangled bundles of fibers (now called neurofibrillary, or tau, tangles).
These plaques and tangles in the brain are still considered some of the main features of Alzheimer’s disease. Another feature is the loss of connections between nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. —What Is Alzheimer’s Disease? National Institute on Aging
Many dread the loss of independence from declining mental capacity even more than physical decline. Most people accept it as part of aging and something they can do nothing about. The question of how to keep your brain healthy and sharp doesn’t even enter the mind.
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: See Your Brain as Control Tower
Without question, our brain is our single greatest asset because it’s where health and vitality originate. So brain health is every bit as important as the health of any other part of the body.
Your brain is a control tower that directs the operations of your entire body.
Take a head-first approach in your own healthcare. Don’t make your brain the last place you look to for creating health.
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Seek Out a Holistic Cognitive Function Specialist If you Notice Signs of Decline.
Once the brain begins to deteriorate, evidence shows it can be slowed or halted. A doctor who specializes in holistic healing approaches to cognitive function may be able to help you.
The Institute for Natural Medicine (naturemed dot org) says:
Licensed naturopathic doctors (NDs) have effective approaches for the prevention of cognitive decline based on rigorous training in and an emphasis on addressing the underlying causes of disease.
Functional medicine and chiropractic care can also help. Chiropractic is very much based on the entire nervous—the brain an integral part of that system.
Functional medicine emphasizes food and nutrition for healing and maintaining health of the whole body. It seeks to discover the root cause of disease and helps you find balance with your body’s systems.
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How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Focus on These Two Major Keys in Brain Health.
First you must slow the rate of brain cell death. And second, you need to grow new brain cells to replace the dying ones.
Loss of brain tissue is caused by many factors. Do all you can to reverse these if you have them.
oxidative stress
chronic inflammation
mitochondrial dysfunction(2)
hormone deficiency/imbalance
impaired microcirculation to the brain and
accumulation of toxic protein aggregates (amyloid-beta and tau as mentioned above in the National Institute of Aging quote on Alzheimer’s; these build up around the brain’s synapses and prevent the vital flow of neurotransmitters).
Your brain needs two critical things to be happy and healthy.
Give your brain fuel and your body exercise. That physical exercise will further fuel and balance your brain health.
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Give It the Right Nutrition, Especially Fatty Acids.
Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids are critical for brain health. Get your omega-3s.
Nutrition plays a critical role in mental health. This is because the brain relies on both macro- and micronutrients for development and function.
Optimal brain development and function particularly require omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs). When the brain doesn’t get these fatty acids, it’s a proven fact that any of a number of mental health conditions over a lifespan can occur.
This list includes:
developmental disorders and mental retardation in childhood
depression
bipolar disorder
schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder
an unbalanced response to stress
hostility and aggression in adulthood and
cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in late adulthood.
Omega-3s are important components of the membranes surrounding every cell in the body. Some research shows that people who consume more omega-3s from foods like fish, fish oil, flaxseed and omega-3 specific dietary supplements have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and cognitive function decline.
Fatty acids are key for how to keep your brain healthy and sharp.
There are three main types of omega-3 fatty acids:
alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)
eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and
docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
Get ALA from plant oils of flaxseed, soybean, and canola. ALA is an essential fatty acid. This means your body can’t manufacture it so you need to get it from food.
Find DHA and EPA mainly in fish and other seafood.
Your body can convert some ALA into EPA and then to DHA but only in very small amounts. So getting EPA and DHA from foods and dietary supplements is the only practical way to increase omega-3 fatty acids in brain and body.
Along with encouraging brain health, omega-3s provide calories the body converts to energy. Omega-3s have many beneficial functions in the heart, blood vessels, lungs, immune and endocrine systems (the network of hormone-producing glands).
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Exercise and Especially, Walk.
Exercise, especially walking, is vital for brain health.
Walking encourages the brain to release endorphins—a neurochemical that boosts mental health, decreases sensitivity to stress and pain, and sometimes induces a state of euphoria.
Exercise helps lower the incidence of depression while improving overall cognitive function.
Walking releases the protein Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) for healthy neuron survival and cognitive function.
Science Daily explains that BDNF is a protein:
essential for neuronal development and survival, synaptic plasticity, and cognitive function.
Impaired release of BDNF is associated with neuro-degenerative disorders like Alzheimer's Disease.
A January 2018 study found that walking for thirty minutes at a moderate rate increased production of BDNF in the brains of post-stroke patients. Somewhat brisk walking is key to maintaining a healthy brain and mind.
Walking also clears up cognitive haze. When one group of people age 55 to 80 were studied, they significantly improved their brains’ signaling communication simply by walking regularly.
"As we get older, communication pathways within the brain begin to bog down. But in the study, the brains of couch-potato adults who enrolled in a year-long walking program showed significant improvement in cognitive functioning and communication signaling at the end of the study period.” —Michael Gollust, ShareCare dot com
Walking increases blood flow to the brain and improves creativity. A 2014 Stanford University study found that walking increases creative output an average of 60 percent.
Walking is the quintessential avenue for how to keep your brain healthy and sharp.
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Give Your Brain Mental Exercise.
Certain pastimes and exercises will help you keep your brain sharp and bright.
Even at an older age, learn to play a musical instrument. Researchers find that learning to play a musical instrument enhances verbal memory, spatial reasoning and literacy skills.
Musical instruments force you to use both sides of your brain which strengthens memory power. And the fine motor skills you develop to play an instrument stimulate brain activity.
Learn to speak a foreign language or rediscover more advanced mathematics like algebra.
Or seriously apply yourself in using moderately complicated computer software applications.
This is how to keep your brain healthy and sharp—work your brain. Put it through its paces.
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Practice Tai Chi.
Whatever your age, practice Tai Chi. This martial art is a gentle, low impact ancient Chinese mind-body exercise. It improves balance, strength, and flexibility and reduces anxiety and adverse responses to stress.
A study published in the Journal of Neuro-Imaging shares that Tai Chi promotes neuroplasticity(5), loosely described as a more resilient brain. It also encourages the two most necessary outcomes of a healthy brain mentioned near the outset of this article:
Tai Chi helps your brain generate new neurons (brain cells).
Tai Chi slows the rate of neuron death.
What simpler way other than walking is Tai Chi for how to keep your brain healthy and sharp?
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Exercise the Brain Even More Deeply Through Meditation.
Meditate to increase brain neuroplasticity. A meditation practice also helps create the growth of new neural connections and neurons.
The following study of meditating subjects showed very positive alterations in their brain pattern function. Researchers scientifically assessed these results using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The study found meditation has a very positive impact on mental focus. By measuring alterations in amplitude and synchrony of high frequency oscillations in the brain, the researchers found that meditation plays an important role in connectivity in the brain’s widespread circuitry.
“In a recent visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama gave a speech at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Over the past several years, he has helped recruit Tibetan Buddhist monks for and directly encouraged research on the brain and meditation in the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The findings from studies in this unusual sample as well as related research efforts suggest that over the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours the long-term practitioners had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.” — Richard Davidson and Antoine Lutz in Buddha Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy and Sharp: Think of and Treat Your Brain Like a Muscle. Stay Engaged in Life.
When we don’t consistently use any muscle of our body it begins to atrophy. The very same concept applies to the brain.
Neural circuits not actively engaged in executing certain tasks for an extended period of time begin to degrade.
If you don’t use an area of the brain for a period of time, you’ll lose the function previously stored there.
Stay engaged in life.
As we advance in age, we amass a whole treasure trove of wisdom and knowledge we can share. It’s the very time we should be contributing and sharing that knowledge rather than withdrawing from life.
Withholding your gifts, withdrawing and reducing activity leads to atrophy of both physical health and cognitive health.
Affirm your life, your brilliance and your health and vitality. Keep both body and brain well nourished and active. Participate in and contribute to life.
Discover how to keep your brain healthy and sharp. Practice what you learn and you’ll live long, healthy and well.
…
Endnotes for this article:
Alzheimer’s is named after Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915), the German neurologist who first identified it. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive mental deterioration that can occur in middle or old age as a result of generalized degeneration of the brain. It’s the most common cause of premature senility.
dysfunction of the organelles (specialized subunits within a cell that have a specific function) that generate energy for the cell. Mitochondria are found in every cell of the human body except red blood cells and convert the energy of food molecules into the ATP (Adenosine triphosphate). ATP is a complex organic chemical that provides energy to drive many processes in living cells, e.g. muscle contraction, nerve impulse propagation, and chemical synthesis that powers most cell functions.
DHA levels are especially high in the retina of the eye, the brain, and sperm cells.
The hippocampus is composed of the elongated ridges on the floor of each lateral ventricle of the brain, thought to be the center of emotion, memory, and the autonomic nervous system.
Neuroplasticity describes the brain changes that occur in response to everyday experience.
Sources:
“National Institute on Aging.” National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. Accessed 7 January 2024. www dot nia dot nih dot gov slash health slash alzheimers hyphen and hyper dementia slash what hyphen alzheimers hyphen disease
Davidson, Richard J, and Antoine Lutz. “Buddha's Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation.” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Jan. 2008, ncbi dot nlm dot nih dot gov slash pmc slash articles slash PMC2944261
Sinn, Natalie, et al. “Oiling the Brain: a Review of Randomized Controlled Trials of Omega-3 Fatty Acids in Psychopathology across the Lifespan.” Nutrients, Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Feb. 2010, ncbi dot nlm dot nih dot gov slash pmc slash articles slash PMC3257637
“Office of Dietary Supplements - Omega-3 Fatty Acids.” NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ods dot od dot nih dot gov slash factsheets slash Omega3FattyAcids hyphen Consumer slash
Stansfield, Kirstie H, et al. “Dysregulation of BDNF-TrkB Signaling in Developing Hippocampal Neurons by Pb(2+): Implications for an Environmental Basis of Neurodevelopmental Disorders.” Toxicological Sciences : an Official Journal of the Society of Toxicology, Oxford University Press, May 2012, www dot ncbi dot nlm dot nih dot gov slash pubmed slash 22345308
Morais, Viviane Aparecida Carvalho de, et al. “A Single Session of Moderate Intensity Walking Increases Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) in the Chronic Post-Stroke Patients.” Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Jan. 2018, ncbi dot nlm dot nih dot gov slash pubmed slash 29078742
“Tai Chi May Improve Brain Health and Muscle Recovery.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, psychologytoday dot com slash us slash blog slash urban hyphen survival slash 201804 slash tai hyphen chi hyphen may hyphen improve hyphen brain hyphen health hyphen and hyphen muscle hyphen recovery
Stanford University. “Stanford Study Finds Walking Improves Creativity.” Stanford News, 24 Apr. 2014, news dot stanford dot edu slash 2014 slash 04 slash 24 slash walking hyphen vs hyphen sitting hyphen 042414
Gollust, Michael. “Clear that Brain Fog with this Easy Exercise.” ShareCare dot com. September 2023. sharecare dot com slash exercise hyphen fitness slash walking slash brain hyphen fog hyphen easy hyphen exercise