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!

By Simon J. Evans, PhD

The title question may be a bit of a stretch, but you only need to connect a couple of research dots to get from childhood obesity to reduced brain fitness in older age.

Belly Fat and Brain Fitness are Related

First, a recent meta-analysis from researchers at Johns Hopkins University verified that the odds of getting Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia increase as you gain weight. A meta analysis takes all previous studies on a particular topic and looks at them together to improve the statistical power over any one study by itself. This particular meta analysis looked at all studies that evaluated whether or not risk for Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia is increased in obese individuals.

Some studies evaluated obesity status of people in their mid-forties, others looked at people in their mid-sixties or seventies. In any case, obesity in mid-life or late life increased odds of getting Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias anywhere from 10 to 30 years later. Importantly, researchers controlled for socio-economic status, lifestyle choices, genetic factors and other illnesses so that the condition of obesity itself, seemed to be the culprit.

Adolescent Weight Problems Lead to Adult Weight Problems

The second dot to connect is that being overweight in childhood dramatically increases the odds of battling a weight problem throughout adulthood. So giving in to your kids’ demands for cakes, cookies and sugared cereals now, is not doing them any favors down the road.

There are really two ways to pack on the pounds. One is to make more fat cells, and the second is to store more fat in the fat cells you already have. An important study from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, discovered that the number of fat cells you will carry throughout your adult life is really set during your adolescent years. After the age of 20, your number of fat cells will stay about constant.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that your weight is set after age 20. You can still lose weight or dramatically gain weight. It’s not uncommon to gain weight in your 30s and 40s, as your activity level and metabolism slow down, especially if your food intake doesn’t change. You can always lose or gain fat in the cells that you already have. However, if you gain too much weight in adolescence, when you are actively making more fat cells, you are going to set yourself up for a tough battle for the rest of your life. So as parents, we should do everything possible to regulate our kids weight while it’s still somewhat in our control.

If you connect these two lines of research, you can see that increased weight gain in childhood predicts increased obesity in adulthood; and increased obesity in adulthood boosts your odds of Alzheimer’s and dementia in your 70s and 80s. There have not been any research studies following kids all the way from adolescence to old age to look directly at the relationship between childhood weight and dementia, but they will come eventually. Personally, I won’t be surprised if these studies find increased odds of dementia with childhood obesity.

It’s difficult to think of our kids as old people, but that is who they will become. We must think proactively and do everything we can to boost their odds of life-long cognitive success. If you have concerns about your own children’s weight, work with your pediatrician to design a diet and exercise program and get it under control while you still can. If you struggle with a weight problem yourself, don’t give up. The more effort you put in to bringing your weight under control, the better your odds of a fit brain down the road. Even if you only drop some of the weight you want to lose, every little bit helps boost those odds.

References:

Nature (2008) Jun, 453(7196):783-7

Obesity Reviews (2008) May, 9(3):204-18

By Simon J. Evans, PhD

Does your job have anything to do with your odds of getting Alzheimer’s disease down the road? Studies have come out recently linking intellectually challenging careers to reduced risk of dementia. Other studies link education level to cognitive health in later years. Overall, people with more education have lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease than those with less education.

This really isn’t that surprising if you think about it. We know that the more you use your brain, the stronger it gets. Just like muscles in your arms and legs, the brain gets more fit when you work it out. Higher education usually means more mentally stimulating jobs and that keeps your brain fit.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to go to graduate school to stay mentally active. Big studies look at large groups of people. On average, when you look at lots of people those with higher levels of education have more intellectually challenging jobs. So overall, they have lower rates of dementia. However, you can be a high-school drop out and still do what’s necessary to keep your brain fit. Just don’t be average.

You can maintain an active mind by committing yourself to life-long learning. It doesn’t take a formal education to teach yourself new skills, read new books and continually challenge your mind – it ain’t rocket science.

There is, however, a flip-side to this coin. Even though higher education predicts lower odds of getting Alzheimer’s disease, those with higher education who do get Alzheimer’s, decline much more rapidly and die sooner than those with less education. Remember, again, this is based on big number averages and is not necessarily predictive for any one person. Still, on average if you have an intellectually challenging career, your odds of getting dementia are lower, but if you do get it, your odds of rapid decline are greater.

At first, this might seem paradoxical. But I think there is a likely explanation for these seemingly odd data. It all relates back to the cognitive reserve theory, which we have discussed in the past.

Essentially, cognitive reserve is something you create throughout your life. The more you learn and the more you experience, the more you create cognitive reserve. This is like ‘extra’ brain circuits to accomplish intellectual tasks.

Think of it like a city building multiple bridges across a river. If you only have one bridge to cross the river and it gets knocked out by a freak storm, you can’t get traffic to the other side. If, however, you’ve created reserve routes to cross the river with multiple bridges and one gets knocked out, you can divert traffic across the other bridges.

This is the same with brain circuits. If you’ve created multiple circuits through a variety of experiences you have different ways to accomplish the same task. If one takes a hit due to age-related damage, you can divert thoughts through different circuits and not really notice a problem.

So people with higher education and more challenging jobs may have reserve brain circuits. That means that even though we may all experience the same age-related damage, someone with more cognitive reserve will show less cognitive decline. There are also ways to minimize the age-related damage through healthy living, but that’s another topic.

So why would people with more reserve show more rapid decline once dementia sets in? Again, this makes sense if you think about it. People with high levels of reserve who get dementia must have experienced severe damage that took out all their bridges. Damage of this severity will take them down quickly.

However, it’s an illusion. Since studies only compare people diagnosed with dementia, they may be comparing apples to oranges. On average, the people with high reserve (mentally challenging careers in these studies) who have Alzheimer’s disease have likely experienced a lot more damage than, on average, the people with low reserve who have Alzheimer’s.

This would explain why people with more challenging careers would have fewer cases of Alzheimer’s; and also why people with higher levels of education who do get Alzheimer’s, decline much more quickly.

Overall, it’s better to boost your odds of not getting dementia in the first place by doing what’s necessary to challenge your mind on a daily basis. Commit yourself to life-long learning and stay mentally active to build more bridges. Couple this with quality nutrition, plenty of exercise and enough sleep, and you will also minimize the storms that create the damage that can damage your bridges.