By Simon J Evans, PhD

I ran across and interesting study recently suggesting that if we think faster we might feel better. There are plenty of anecdotes to back up this theory. People with bipolar (manic depression) disorder feel high levels of elation and positive mood during their rapid thought firing manic phases. Drugs that induce fast thinking states, like caffeine or amphetamines, also typically elevate mood. However, the new study asked whether we could deliberately improve our mood by engaging in fast thinking activities.

Researchers from Princeton and Harvard published their findings supporting this notion in a recent issue of the journal, Emotion. They recruited college students and set them up in various tasks that required either slow and careful thought or rapid fire brainstorming and then tested their mood and feelings of self-esteem right after the experiences.

What they found was that over six different kinds of experiments that manipulated thought speed, subjects in the ‘fast thinking’ group had improved mood every time. The fast thinkers also showed improved creativity, and self esteem and increased energy and sense of power in most of the tests.

These findings are easy to relate with. If you think about times when you really feel great and unstoppable, they were probably times when your mind was working clear and quickly. The cool thing about the research is that it suggests you can manipulate your mood (for the better) by deliberately doing things that require rapid thinking, like fast paced games, intense conversations or even rapid fire brain storming on your own.

Now, it’s likely that the benefit of fast thinking only applies when such thinking is beneficial. We’ve all had the experiences, lying awake at night, trying to shut off our brains and go to sleep. These times are certainly not mood elevating and are usually very frustrating. But during waking functional hours, this little trick may be a good tool to break out of negative mood states.

I think this actually ties nicely into another theory that I wrote about several months ago, put forth by Kelly Lambert from Randolph-Macon College. In her theory Dr. Lambert suggests that the lack of effort required for our survival today is partially responsible for increased rates of depression. After all, we don’t really have to work very hard to find food and shelter anymore. Dr Lambert suggests that this robs us of the rewarding feelings of success from overcoming challenges in our daily lives.

Both of these lines of research relate to quick thinking associated with problem solving. Both also point to the activation of the brain’s ‘reward centers’, controlled mostly by dopamine (which are also stimulated by many drugs of abuse).

When I look at these two lines of research I am reminded of the old adage “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” We have spent centuries developing technologies to make our lives easier, but are we really benefiting from that? Some philosophers argue that human struggle is necessary for happiness. I’m sure there are entire volumes written on this topic, so will just leave it at that.

So if we’re not going to drop out of modern society and go live off the land, what can we do? Maybe we shouldn’t always look for the easy road. That message certainly applies to your physical health. No one has found the magic pill for diet and exercise yet. Maybe that message should apply to our emotional health as well.

Reference:
Emotion. 2008, 8(5):597-612

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By Simon J. Evans, PhD

The benefits of green tea have received a lot of press lately. Several studies have shown that green tea drinkers perform well in several measures of health, including some of those relative to brain fitness. But can green tea also help you lose weight? Researchers asked that question recently and found some interesting results.

A study published in a recent edition of the Journal of Nutrition, evaluated exercise-induced weight loss in 132 overweight and obese adults who also drank green tea extracts during their weight loss regime. All adults in this study participated in exercise programs and half were given a caffeinated beverage with green tea extracts (catechins, pronounced kat-i-kins) while the other half drank equal amounts of a caffeinated beverage without the green tea.

All participants in the study lost weight due to the exercise program, however those drinking the green tea extract containing catechins lost a little more. The interesting thing about this is that the fat lost by the green tea extract drinkers was specifically belly-fat. Other areas of fat loss were fairly even between the two groups.

Why is this important? Recent research has discovered that belly fat is particularly bad for your health. Excess belly fat releases hormones that have all kinds of negative effects, including reducing sensitivity to insulin, which is a major problem. Insulin sensitivity controls many aspects of brain and body health, including risk for diabetes, and maybe even depression and late-life dementia.

So it’s very cool that the catechins found in green tea helped folks in this study lose more belly fat in response to their exercise programs since it will probably feedback on many other systems in their bodies to improve their health. In fact, those in the green tea group showed better improvement in measures of triglycerides and total cholesterol as well.

Some societies have known about the health benefits of green tea for centuries and use it as a regular part of their diet. Western science is really just catching up to explain why this beverage is a powerful component of your overall approach to health. And the best part is there are no real side-effects, as long as you don’t overdo it. Remember, it is a caffeinated beverage so still should be drunk in moderation.

If you’re a regular coffee or black tea drinker, consider replacing an occasional cup with some green tea instead. Coffee and black tea themselves have been shown to have some health benefit, when used in moderate amounts of a cup or two per day, but green-tea seems to beat them both for overall health. As in any health plan, the enjoyment factor is huge, so don’t try to adopt strategies that you really don’t like. But if you’re not a regular green tea drinker, why not try a cup or two to see how you feel.

Before signing off of this particular article, it must be pointed out that everyone in this study was exercising, and green tea just made the exercise a bit more effective. You’re not likely to lose that body fat with green tea alone, you still have to move.

Reference:
Journal of Nutrition (2009) 139:264-270

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By Simon J Evans, PhD

Why is it that some people freak out when presented with challenges in their life while others handle them calmly and responsively? This is a question that psychologists have pursued for years and it essentially boils down to your coping skills. Now, a new study suggests that these skills may also help protect you from developing dementia in your later years.

We all freak out occasionally, but we’re talking about stress so consuming that you become temporarily unable to deal with life. Some people experience this kind of stress on an almost daily basis, while others rarely let life push them out of control. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

Related to this personality trait, researchers in Sweden followed 506 older people (average age of 83) for several years and looked for things that predicted who would develop dementia over the course of the study. They honed in on a couple of things that were important when considered together. First, was their level of social activity and second, their level of neuroticism, which in this case can be thought of as coping skills to reduce stress.

The new study found that those folks who were less socially active and had poor coping skills had twice the risk of developing dementia. In this small cohort, either social isolation or poor coping skills was not enough to increase risk, but the double whammy was significant. However, prior larger studies have found negative effects of each of these independently.

Previous research has shown that social isolation puts folks at higher risk for dementia and that poor coping skills increase risk for depression. Importantly, depression and dementia seem to frequently go hand in hand in older individuals. So regardless of which is worse or how social activity and coping skills combine, it’s likely that having social support and good coping skills is good for your brain in multiple ways.

The cool thing about these is that you can do something about them. Researchers call these types of factors ‘modifiable’ risk factors, meaning you have control over them. You can increase your level of social activity and improve your coping skills through a variety of techniques. If you feel isolated, unless you live in the middle of nowhere with no transportation, you can increase your level of social activity just by getting involved with your community. Over time you will make more friends and increase your social circles. As for coping skills, there are hundreds of books, classes and websites that can help you learn to handle stress more effectively.

The four cornerstones of brain fitness that we discuss in detail in our book, BrainFit for Life, will also help you develop coping skills. Specific nutrients, physical and mental activities and getting optimal sleep all control brain circuits that regulate stress and your ability to deal with it. The more you focus on these fundamentals, the more you will be surprised by the power that they have over your daily experiences and the more you will get out of life with a fit brain.

Reference:
Neurology (2009) 72, 253-259.

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By Simon J. Evans, PhD

Stress exposure can be a major problem for people. Exposure to violence through war, terrorism, rape or domestic violence can leave your psyche damaged and haunt you for years to come. The prevalence of global conflict and our awareness of it due to instant media access are causing psychologists to seek effective treatments for stress exposure to minimize the harm.

A recent study looked at the possibility of reducing post-traumatic stress disorder using the computer game, Tetris. While this might seem fantastic at first glance, let’s take a closer look at their reasoning and their findings.

Traumatic experiences are typically remembered in some visual and spatial way. The images of the event are reconstructed later by your brain as ‘flashbacks’ that can be triggered by some similar environment, a noise, a smell, or sometimes nothing at all. However, these images aren’t acquired by your brain immediately. There seems to be about a 6 hour time window following the event when the memories are consolidated and stored.

This is the first fact that researchers and clinicians can possibly take advantage of. If you can somehow disrupt those memories from forming in the 6 hour window, you might be able to dampen any long-term harm, or even prevent it. In fact, strategies have been used to do this, often using drugs that temporarily interfere with the brain’s chemistry and prevent memory formation.

The problem with this approach is that it can make all memories of the event unreliable. Sometimes having such memory can be beneficial. First, it can help prevent exposure to such events in the future. Second, you may need those memories to aid the prosecution in a criminal case. So what other approaches could researchers try?

Enter Tetris. Tetris is a visual-spatial game so uses the some of the same brain resources used to encode memories of a traumatic event. This was the reasoning behind trying to use it as way to interfere with traumatic memory consolidation. So did it work?

Researchers took 2 groups of healthy adults and showed them real videos of violence and death, which is a standard psychological tool to mimic exposure to trauma. After the videos, half the participants did nothing, while the other half played Tetris for ten minutes. Then throughout the next week participants were asked to keep track of any flashbacks they had relating to the violent and disturbing video exposure.

The Tetris player group had less than half the flashbacks of the non-player group, suggesting that playing Tetris interfered with their ability to consolidate the traumatic memories. But here’s the cool part. There was no difference between the groups in their ability to remember things about the videos. This means that the emotional impact of the experience was dampened, but the ability to recall facts about the experience was not.

Now, this study is not claiming that they can cure post-traumatic stress disorder by having soldiers or victims of violence play a little Tetris after a traumatic experience, although it may help a little. However, the study opens up the potential to develop new methods for helping victims of violence better cope in their future.

Current methods, including debriefing, can sometimes amplify the experience and actually make it worse, so psychologists are looking for new tools and this study may help lead to them.

In the short-term, maybe you should encourage your kids to wind down with a little Tetris after a hard battle playing Call of Duty:)

Resources: PLOS One, 2009, 4(1) e4153

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By Simon J. Evans, PhD

Not too long ago, scientists believed that adults couldn’t grow new neurons in their brain. However, work over the last several years has debunked this myth. We now know that adults continue to grow new neurons throughout life, a process called neurogenesis. Yes, new growth slows down after middle age but it continues. However, there are things you can do to help keep a higher rate of new brain cell birth, which we’ll get into in a minute.

Continuing to grow new brain cells can help in a couple of ways. First, cells are mostly born into a region called the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and memory. Maintaining neurogenesis helps maintain memory function. Second, keeping those new neurons coming seems to help with depression. The hippocampus is also crucial for stress regulation and neurogenesis is a necessary part of the way anti-depressants work. So, new brain cell birth is important for cognitive and emotional functions. We have referred to these in the past as your IQ and your EQ.

It’s also been known for some time that exercise increase the rate of neurogenesis. Many studies show that lab animals who are allowed to exercise increase the rate of new neurons born into their hippocampus, relative to those animals that don’t get to exercise.

Although these studies are difficult to do in humans (for technical reasons) several studies suggest that the same thing is going on. In human trials that compare groups who exercise to control groups, the exercisers consistently show improved cognitive skills and increased function of specific brain areas, including the hippocampus.

A new study by Wu et al. published in the September 18th, 2008 edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology also shows that exercise may increase the connectivity of new neurons. It’s not enough to make new neurons. You also have to wire them up to other neurons to get them fully integrated into brain circuits so they can do their thing.

On average, every neuron in your brain makes about 10,000 connections. It’s no good if a neuron is just sitting there talking to itself. It must become part of a network to have real value. When you learn things, you actually increase the connectivity between neurons, and that’s what’s most important.

In fact, the number of connections in your brain is probably much more important than the number of brain cells when it comes to retaining cognitive function. The new study by Wu shows that exercise increases both. It increases the number of new neurons being born and the amount of branching that each new neuron forms.

Neurons are shaped kind of like trees. The more branches they have, the more connections they can make. In Wu’s study, exercise increased the number and length of branches on new neurons.

Finally, the most important part of the new study looked at how exercise affects the rate of new brain cell growth and amount of branching as we age. Essentially, the researchers confirmed that the rate of neurogenesis declines as we age and that exercising in early middle age has a large affect on boosting the rate of new brain cell birth. Exercising in older age also increases neurogenesis, although to a lesser degree.

However, here is the interesting part. In their experiments, the sedentary rats had about the same length of neuron branches in middle age and in old age. But the exercising rats had much longer branches. In fact, the old exercisers had longer neuron branches than the younger sedentary rats. This is great news since many studies show that branch length and connectivity may be a better indicator of cognitive health than the number of new neurons born.

We know that life-long learning is one way to promote more neuron branching and connectivity. Now this new study shows that exercising can also do this for older aged adult brains.

The bottom line: physical exercise is a great way to keep your brain fit.

Reference:
Journal of Applied Physiology (2008) 105:1585-1594

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by Simon J. Evans, PhD

In 2006, the total cost of health care in the United States was 2.1 trillion dollars, which is more than the gross national product of China. Yes, we spend more on healthcare than China spends on everything.

We’ve all heard that the war in Iraq costs the U.S. taxpayers about $10 billion per month, which is $120 billion annually. That means we are spending close to 20 times more on health care than we are on the war in Iraq. In fact, we spend more on healthcare than the entire defense budget. A big chunk of our taxes go to health care spending, and we’re not even doing a very good job at it given that 47 million Americans are still uninsured.

Here’s the real kicker, 70 to 80% of health care dollars are spent treating chronic preventable illness. Yes, preventable. If we all chose to live a little healthier, basically, eat better and exercise more, we could save so much money as a nation that we could afford to invade another country, maybe Canada.

The Obama – Biden administration is inheriting a lot of problems, including war and a financial crisis. As everyday citizens, it’s difficult to influence policies that will help remedy these situations. Not to mention that most of us (me included) would have no idea how to fix them anyway.

However, every one of us has significant control over our own health, which is the largest drain on our economy. So, can you lower your taxes by going for a walk – probably. According to a talk I attended recently by Emanuel Ezekiel, the Director of the NIH Bioethics Department and author of Health Care Guaranteed, approximately one third of most state taxes support healthcare. Not to mention the obvious burden on employers, which translates into reduced wages for employees.

So…what can we do to lower our taxes? Live with greater attention to our personal health.

If we choose to continue to ignore health issues, it may actually cost us significantly more. In 2011, Alabama will begin charging state workers who fall into the obese category an extra $25 for the health coverage. Since Alabama has one of the highest obesity rates in the country, with nearly 1 out of 3 folks packing on those kind of pounds, that’s going to sting. I don’t really agree with this approach and I think it will open up all kinds of legal challenges. However, the fact that one state is going down this road should be a wake-up call to us all.

The bottom line is that our health care crisis is getting out of control, but is largely within our control. Politicians spend big chunks of their time trying to figure out how to deliver more care to our citizens. But wouldn’t this attention be better spent trying to figure out how to stop so many people from getting sick in the first place? Maybe we should stop looking to the policy makers for answers and take our health into our own hands. Maybe it’s time for a little personal responsibility.

We will always have illness. Even if we did everything right, some folks would still get sick. That’s just the nature of our biology. But it seems to me that an 80% reduction in illness, which is what a better diet and more exercise could do, and which translates into a savings of about 1.6 trillion dollars a year, is a no-brainer.

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