Written by Simon Evans

We’ve written before about the benefits of Tai Chi for your brain fitness and your immune system. In fact, we go into some detail on this topic in a couple sections of our new book, BrainFit for Life. Now a new study shows some striking effects of a year-long Tai Chi program at dramatically reducing cardiovascular disease risk factors.

The new paper published by Chin Lang et al. in the Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine details the evaluation of 53 patients with clinically problematic high cholesterol or triglycerides. About half of the patients in this study participated in a 12-month Tai Chi program while the other half continued their typical sedentary lifestyle. Since all of the patients were classified as high risk for cardiovascular illness, they remained on cholesterol reducing medication in both groups.

The group that received Tai Chi saw a significant improvement on many fronts. Their blood pressure dropped, their total cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL) went down, their insulin levels decreased and markers of excess inflammation fell as well. The sedentary control group saw a slight reduction in blood pressure but their cholesterol and triglyceride levels actually got worse - even though they remained on cholesterol reducing medication (chalk up another point for exercise).

Beyond these blood markers, the Tai Chi group also experienced improvements on measure of physical fitness. They significantly improved their exercising heart rate, oxygen uptake and ventilation. The sedentary group saw no such benefits, and, in fact, saw a decline in several fitness markers.

This study provides more positive data for the health benefits of Tai Chi. Why is it so good for you? No one really knows the definitive answer to that, but there are likely many factors.

First, Tai Chi involves slow and deliberate movements that help regulate breathing and focus, which contributes to better stress management. A plethora of studies have shown the health boosting benefits of reducing stress, so this alone is a major plus.

Second, Tai Chi provides moderate levels of exercise that mixes cardiovascular with strength training - holding those poses ain’t easy. Even though the movements are slow, practitioners experience a sustained elevation of heart rate. Maybe not as much as shakin’ your booty in a jazzercise class, but elevated all the same.

Third, Tai Chi helps improve balance and coordination. This is a huge benefit for older folks, since falling is the number one cause of injury in this age group. Younger folks glean benefit from this aspect as well, especially anyone engaged in athletics. Balance control is central to performance in many sports.

Fourth, often times, folks perform Tai Chi in a group setting, involving the social support aspect. We have written about the huge benefits of social support in the past. In fact, a couple other recent studies found that social support significantly helps recovery from a stroke or heart attack while social isolation makes it worse.

Tai Chi, considered a ‘soft martial art’, has been around in Chinese culture for a couple hundred years and is now making its way to the rest of the world. It shouldn’t be that difficult anymore to find a Tai Chi class in a community near you. Whether you’re a busy professional needing to reduce some stress, a retired individual needing to keep your brain and body fit or a patient fighting an illness, Tai Chi seems to have a little something for everyone.

Reference: Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2008) 14:7, 813-819.

By Simon J. Evans, PhD

A lot research has focused on omega-3 fats as good for body and brain function. Scientists have scrutinized these fats in everything from heart disease and diabetes to depression, bipolar illness, schizophrenia, ADHD and Alzheimer’s. The latest papers to add to the experimental pile come from a recent edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The new studies evaluate omega-3s in people in their 70s and 80s and relate to cognitive function, mood and mental well-being. The bottom line to the new findings is that having higher levels of omega-3s in your blood protects you from many cognitive problems of old age. The downside is that you can’t just start taking them in your 70s and expect quick results. However, longer use may still be beneficial.

So what’s the best way to boost omega-3 levels in your blood. First, you have to understand that there are different kinds of omega-3s that come from different sources. The kind of omega-3s that are good for your brain are called ‘long-chain’ omega-3s, most commonly DHA and EPA, and fish is the best source for these.

You may have heard that things like flaxseed oil and walnuts are high in omega-3s as well. Although this is true, these foods are only high in ‘short-chain’ omega-3s, which are not the kind that appear to have the most brain benefit.

To complicate things even further, most animals can convert the short-chain to long chain forms, but humans are not very good at this. If we want to increase long-chain omega-3s in our blood and increase our odds of aging with a healthy brain, eating sources of long-chain omega-3s is our best bet. Fish is the #1 source.

If you don’t eat about 3 servings of fish per week, you should really consider taking a fish oil supplement on a regular basis. If you are a vegetarian who does not eat fish at all, don’t fret, there are also algal oil supplements out there that have the long-chain omega-3s. After all, fish can’t make omega-3s either. They get them by eating marine plants (or eating other fish that eat marine plants). Fish are just good at concentrating omega-3s in their meat, so are a great source for us folks that don’t like chewing on seaweed.

Fish has been considered brain food for the better part of a couple of centuries. Whether you like it or not, our bodies are designed to run best on a diet high in marine sources. If you look at the cultures around the world who enjoy longevity and vibrant health into their old age, you will find fish as a staple in all of them.

There is nothing new to this advice. Only that we are now beginning to understand why fish and the omega-3s they give us, are important for many aspects of our mood and metabolism. Once again, science finally catches up to age-old wisdom to support what we have known all along - Fish is brain food, eat it and prosper.

Reference: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2008). 88: pp 595, 706, 714, 722.

By Paul Burghardt, PhD

Here’s one for the notebook. People who exercise regularly obtain greater elevation in mood following a single exercise session compared to people who don’t exercise regularly. This was revealed in a recent study by Hoffman & Hoffman (2008) in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

What?! Who?!?! How?!?!?…. It just doesn’t seem fair. Isn’t exercise supposed to elevate mood for everyone!?!?

At this point, you might be saying to yourself, “There’s no point in starting an exercise program, you only get improvements in mood if you exercise regularly.” Easy there Debbie Downer, there are still plenty of reasons to increase your physical activity or start exercising.

Digression Alert!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Debbie Downer is a character from a Saturday Night Live skit. She could transform anything that anyone said into a completely depressing anecdote. Debbie was not just a ‘glass half empty’ type of person, she was a ‘dirty glass is a three-quarters empty and it dropped and broke on the floor’ type of person. Your can follow this link to check her out. If for no other reason than it is one of the rare occasions on SNL when the cast has a difficult time ‘keeping it together.’

Back to the Science!

To recap, we were talking about how it was unfair that people who exercise regularly experience a greater elevation in mood after a single session of exercise than people who don’t exercise.

There was a couple of interesting things about this study. First, this study looked at people who were, on average, in their early 40’s. It isn’t uncommon for these types of studies to look at college-age kids or people that are in the autumn of their lives. So this snap shot of the middle portion in life is pretty interesting.

Second, this study required people from each group to exercise at the same level of perceived exertion. Everyone performed a warm-up that felt very light, and then ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes at a pace that felt somewhat difficult. An important issue to note is that those who exercised regularly were likely working at a higher absolute intensity compared to people who were sedentary. For example, regular exercisers might warm up at a pace of 4 miles per hour, whereas the sedentary people may have warmed up at 2 miles per hour…but it felt the same to both groups.

This is the main idea behind perceived exertion. There are several tools, questionnaires really, available to measure how difficult exercise feels to an individual. A commonly used scale for exercise is the Borg-scale which measures 6-20. A perceived exertion of 6 would feel like the person was resting comfortably. A perceived exertion of 20 would be a scenario where the person would feel like they are working as hard as they possibly could; for example sprinting uphill. What is really cool about this scale is that you can often match the person’s subjective verbal rating of exertion to an objective measure of heart rate.

What do I mean? Basically you take their reported exertion score on the Borg-scale, let’s say 12, and multiply it by 10 to get the person’s heart rate; in this case 120 beats-per-minute. When researchers do that, they’re typically not that far off from the heart rate actually measured.

Now you might be thinking, “hey, Debbie has a point, if I don’t exercise regularly, then why start? I won’t get anything from it.” Well that’s not true. This study showed that people who exercise regularly obtained a greater enhancement of mood following a single bout of exercise compared to those who don’t exercise regularly. But, those who didn’t exercise regularly still experienced an improvement in mood following a single exercise session.

So you can be an ultra-marathoner, a regular exerciser, or a couch potato and still experience some elevation of your mood after a single session of exercise. The thing you need to realize is that you’ll feel even better if you can make exercise a normal part of your routine. However, is that improvement in mood enough motivation for sedentary people?

The authors of this article raise this very interesting point. Namely, that the elevation in mood experienced by sedentary individuals after a single exercise session may not be substantial enough to surpass that experienced by less healthy activities. To translate, you might get more of a temporary elevation in mood from sitting on the couch eating potato chips and watching TV than if you go out for a walk. That is to say, if you are just starting to incorporate exercise into your daily routine.

This is where it helps to have some foresight and look to the future. You will continually build on your past efforts, your previous investments so to speak. As you develop your physical reserve it pays out larger dividends. It’s very similar to compound interest. The more you save, the more you have available to earn interest on partially due to what you put in, and partially due to what is paid back into your account by your own investment.

An interesting parallel to the benefits of building up a ‘physical’ bank account is the ability to withdraw from what you have accrued. If we’ve built up sufficient savings in our account, for a rainy-day, we’ll be better able to handle the unexpected challenges that life inevitably will through our way. Just remember, it takes some time to build a big enough bank account that you can take vacation for a month.

Hopefully, this information will give you some extra motivation to make it through the initial weeks when first starting an exercise program. I know it’s can be difficult to maintain in the beginning. However, it appears that if you can maintain it you will be rewarded. So take heart, it will get easier and ultimately make you feel better.

Written by Simon Evans, PhD

You probably played the Kevin Bacon game at some point in your life. Someone names an actor and you have to connect that actor back to Kevin Bacon through other actors who have worked together. The theory goes that we are all connected by six degrees of separation or less. I know someone who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows you.

Scientists are now looking at social networks in the world of health behavior. An old Russian proverb says “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are“. Also, personal development gurus claim that we are they average of the five people we hang out with the most. Now, reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, suggest this may be true. Two new studies show social networks have have significant influences on your risk of smoking and becoming obese.

Both studies followed a cohort of 12,067 people for 32 years as part of a huge effort called the Framingham Heart Study. In the obesity report, researchers found that a person has a 57% increased chance of becoming obese if one of their friends plumped up, a 40% chance if a sibling became obese, and a 37% increased chance if their spouse packed on the pounds.

In the smoking report, researchers found similar things. If your spouse kicked the habit, your odds of also kicking it increase to 67%. If your brother or sister quit, your odds of quitting rise to 45% and if a friend or co-worker quit you increase your chances to about 35%. Both of these studies controlled for factors like genetics and geographical area and found that the social networks still had a big effect.

As and aside, it’s interesting that your spouse has the biggest effect on your smoking behavior but the smallest influence on your waistline. Maybe it’s easier to sneak Ho-Ho’s from the snack drawer than to slip outside for coffin nail.

These associations may not be too surprising. The people we hang out with influence us all. But maybe you should take this a little more seriously if you are really wanting to change your health. If you really need to lose weight, quit smoking, increase your level of physical activity, or just spend less time watching Days of Our Lives, maybe you should find some people to hang with that have already had success in that area. Your chances of success are significantly restricted or improved by the folks you choose to spend the most time with. It may be difficult to distance yourself from some people. But then again, for others it may be just the excuse you’re looking for. As Jim Rohn says, “Some people, you can spend an hour with, but not a day. Some, you can spend a day with, but not a week. Some, you can spend a week with, but not a year.”

Take stock of your associations. Who is holding you back or propelling you forward?

References:

N Engl J Med (2008) 358:2249-58
N Engl J Med (2007) 357:370-9

Where have we been? Well, nowhere really. Just buried in life, especially finishing our new book, BranFit for Life: A User’s Guide to Life-Long Brain Health and Fitness. The book turned out great and we’re happy to say it’s at the printer now and will be available in a few short weeks. We spent the last year scouring the scientific data and translating it into a humorous and readable form to help you on your journey to keepin’ your noggin’ tickin’ at top form.

Now is a great time to click the ‘Book’ link above and reserve yourself a copy from the first printing. We haven’t even let anyone know it’s ready yet but orders are already coming in from Amazon the first day it was up there!