Lesson 14a. Lifestyle Matters: Effects of Stress

School is stressful. Students also commonly must deal with emotions arising from boy-girl problems, over-bearing parent problems, bullies, worries about school, frustrated attempts to be popular, and their future. College students have enormous adjustments to make in the transition from leaving home and the cloistered environment they were used to in high school. Older adults returning to school have to cope with paying the costs, finding time for the family, and for the job.

The aspects of lifestyle that have the greatest direct effect on learning deal with stress, exercise, and sleep. This post explores stress.

Stress

 All learning at some point involves stress. Acute stress, which releases adrenalin, can be a good thing. It pumps you up and promotes focused attention. However, chronic stress impairs learning. When students struggle to improve, chronic stress ensues and creates a vicious cycle in which the stress impairs performance, which produces still more stress.

I have written numerous science-based posts on the bad effects of chronic stress on the brain. To review these and type “stress” into the search field of this blog.

Scientists have long known that chronic stress is bad for your brain. Adolescence seems to be an especially vulnerable time. Not only is the adolescent brain still being built, the brain is being re-built during the teen years.

Human imaging studies show the cerebral cortex shrinks during adolescence. In a recent study of "adolescent" rats, researchers found that the cortex shrinks in both males and females, and there is a loss of neurons in the ventral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain humans use to make rational decisions and do higher-level thinking. More loss occurred in females than in males.

Until now, the reason for brain tissue loss has not been clear, but we may be able to explain it by considering the stresses that afflict teenagers, who routinely endure peer dismissiveness and bullying. Numerous animal studies show that stress impairs brain function and memory. Even single bullying exposures can be damaging.

Similar results have been reported in multiple humans studies. Here is a very real example of stress-related memory impairment from human bullying in schools that few may realize. In the study, young healthy men were tested for their ability to recall lists of 10 positive, 10 neutral, and 10 negative words. The men were given two minutes to learn the lists and were then tested immediately. Thirty minutes later they were given a psychosocial stress which included a fictitious job interview in front of live interviewers and counting backwards in steps of 17 in front of judges. Control groups did a five-minute speech and did the same counting, but not in the presence of judges. The next day, subjects were tested again (delayed recall) 10 minutes after cortisol injection. Other psychological tests were administered and the amount of cortisol in the saliva was measured at several key points in time.

The stressed group had elevated cortisol levels even though the stress was mild. Recall of both negative and positive emotionally arousing words was impaired, but there was no effect with neutral words. These effects could not be attributed to decreased attention or working memory span, which memory tests showed were not affected by the stress. Providing cues for recall eliminated signs of the stress effect on emotionally charged words.

So, this study shows recall of emotionally charged information can be impaired under stressed conditions. Imagine how great the deleterious effect of stress could be in situations where there is real stress, as in witnessing car accidents, crimes, or dangerous situations in which recalling what happened could be very important. Studies like this are consistent with many real-life observations with eye-witness accounts, where what is remembered may well be false.

The most obvious stressor for students comes from examinations. “Test anxiety” causes students to choke, typically failing to recall information they know they know, but just can’t dredge up under stressful test conditions.

A couple of studies have shown that test scores rise if anxious students are allowed to write about their test worries for 10 minutes just before a test. It also works to write down attributes of successful problem solving just before a test.

Why does this writing alleviate test anxiety? One study showed that such writing increased student engagement in the test. That is, students who were anxious were distracted by their anxiety and did not fully engage in solving the problems in the test.

Such writing before an exam is only beneficial for students who suffer from test anxiety. Other students don’t need this, and may in fact do worse by such a distraction. The best way to deal with choking on tests is to: 1) thoroughly know and understand the material being tested, and 2) develop long-term confidence by a string of test successes. If you truly “know your stuff” and believe in your ability as a student, there is no justification for test anxiety.

 Next Lesson: 14b. Lifestyle Matters: Exercise

Stress Sources:

Merz, Christian (2010). Stress impairs retrieval of socially relevant information. Behavioral Neuroscience. 124 (2), 288-293.

Newcomer, J. W., Selke, G., Melson, A. K., Hershey, T., Craft, S., Richards, K., et al. (1999). Decreased memory performance in healthy humans induced by stress-level cortisol treatment. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56, 527–533.

Vogel, Susanne (2016). Learning and memory under stress: implications for the classroom. Science of Learning 1(1), 16011. DOI: 10.1038/npjscilearn.2016.11

Young, A. H., Sahakian, B. J., Robbins, T. W., & Cowen, P. J. (1999). The effects of chronic administration of hydrocortisone on cognitive function in normal male volunteers. Psychopharmacology (Berl), 145, 260-266.

Zoladza, Phillip R., Ashlee J.Warneckea, Sarah A.Woelkea, Hanna M.Burkea, Rachael M.Frigoa, Julia M.Pisanskya, Sarah M, Lylea, Jeffery N.Talbotb (2013). Pre-learning stress that is temporally removed from acquisition exerts sex-specific effects on long-term memory. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. 100, 77-87 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2012.12.012

Sleep Is Good for Your Heart

What are you doing to prevent a heart attack? Perhaps you do the things cardiologists typically recommend: exercise, eat less saturated fat, take statins and omega-3 supplements. Now, there is another recommendation: get 6-9 hours high-quality sleep each night.

One recent report of over 400,000 people who were evaluated over seven years  revealed that people who slept 6-9 hours a night had a 20% lower risk of a heart attack than people who slept less. However, sleeping more than 9 hours had a 34% higher risk.

Napping also seems to be a good idea. A group in Switzerland just reported from 3,462  people that

Source: Unsplash.com

those who had two or more naps a week had significantly less cardiovascular disease than those who did not nap. The benefit was unrelated to the length of napping.

The reason sleep is beneficial has not been established, but two lines of reasoning could explain it. The heart gets a rest during sleep. Heart rate and blood pressure typically go down during sleep. Also, sleep gives us a break from the stressful events of the day, events which release hormones and activate the "fight or flight" system that put a strain on the heart.

As to the paradox of the harmful effects of too much sleep (> 9 hours), one possible cause is too much dreaming, which is tied to the amount of sleep. During dreaming, blood and heart rate can spike, depending on the nature of what one is dreaming about.  The incidence of unpleasant, and therefore stressful, dreams should increase with increasing amounts of sleep time. By the way, I published a theory that asserts that the purpose of dreaming is the brain’s way to tell itself it has had enough sleep and it is time to wake up.

Another cause of excessive sleep can be poor quality sleep. For example, insomniacs may need more sleep because they are not getting enough of good, restful sleep.

Sleep apnea is a proven cause of bad sleep. Apnea is extremely stressful and can raise blood pressure on a continual basis, even during wakeful hours.

So, sleep well, with pleasant dreams. If your dreams are disturbing, program your brain to stop that. Tell your brain its job is to nurture you, not beat up on you. See my Psychology Today post on "How Nightmares May Affect Us, and What We Can Do about It."

Sources:

Daghlas, I. et al. (2019). Sleep duration and myocardial infarction. J. Amer. College of Cardiology. 74, 1304-1314.

Häusler, N. et al. (2019). Association of napping in incident cardiovascular events in a prospective cohort study. Heart. doi: 10.1136iuheartjnl2019-314999 (Sept. 9)

Klemm, W. R. 2011. Why does REM sleep occur? A wake-up Hypothesis. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 5 (73): 1- 12. Doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2011.00073

Learn How to Breathe for Better Health

What? I’m not kidding. Sure, you knew how to breathe as soon as you were pushed out of the womb. But you didn’t learn to breathe right. If you were slapped on the butt by the doctor, you probably learned to breathe too shallow and too fast, maybe even hyperventilate. All that screaming and crying you did after leaving the comfort of the womb taught your brain that stress and anxiety go with rapid, shallow breathing. So when faced with adversity as you got older, your automatic reaction is to breathe too fast and too shallow. This is a case of classical conditioned learning. That kind of learning actually helps sustain the stress, because your brain has learned that rapid, shallow, breathing is supposed to go with stress. The brain thinks this is normal.

About a month ago, I was having a large, benign growth on my neck removed by local surgeon, Dr. John Mason. The area was locally anesthetized, but so much tissue was involved that as he had to cut deeper, I felt pain. The nurse said, huffing and puffing with staccato rhythm, “Breathe. Breath in, breath out.” After several such reminders, I blurted, “Is there any other way?” Then, I realized the risk I was taking if my surgeon started to laugh while holding a scalpel to my neck. Dr. Mason did a great job. And I was reminded that there is a right and a wrong way to breathe under stressful conditions.

There are three principles to correct breathing for reducing stress:

1.      Breathe deeply. This means abdominally. As you inhale, the abdomen should protrude, filling the lungs better because the diaphragm contraction expands the chest cavity for more lung inflation.

2.      Breathe slowly. Common breathing rates are around 16-20 breaths per minute. This is fine when you are very active physically, but remember that the brain has spent decades of conditioned learning to associate rapid breathing with distress. When you are trying to relax, you can shut down stress by slowing down to three to five breaths per minute.

3.      Exhale through the mouth. A good way to automate this method is to slightly open the mouth and move the tip of the tongue behind the front upper teeth during inhalation, then relax the tongue during exhalation.

You can use these principles in two well-known breathing techniques:

1. The Navy Seal box technique. When they are not raiding a terrorist cell or on another similar stressful mission, Navy Seals train themselves to stay calm by taking a four-step breath cycle of inhale, hold breath, exhale, hold breath, and then repeat the cycle. Each step lasts 4 seconds. This would yield a total breathing rate of about four per minute. With practice, you can make each step last 5 or more seconds. Now you would be breathing like a Yogi.

2. The hum technique. Here, the idea is to make a soft, guttural humming sound throughout each exhalation. You can even do this during the exhale stages in the Navy technique. This may have a similar effect as using a mantra during meditation. Sometimes, people tell me I am humming when I had not been aware of it. I guess I have learned to associate humming with calming down and feeling good. Perhaps it is similar to why cats purr. Cats purr for two seemingly conflicting purposes. One is that the purring sound has a conditioned association with a calm state. When the cat is calm, it purrs. The other cause of purring is anxiety. In an anxious cat, the anxiety acts as a cue that retrieves the memory of associated purring, which then helps to calm the cat.

If you are trying to train yourself to be calm, I recommend that you employ and combine the three principles and the two techniques during mindfulness meditation. All of the principles (deep and slow breathing, and exhaling via the mouth) and the two techniques (4-step and humming) can be synergistically combined during mindfulness meditation. In such meditation, the idea is the block out all thoughts in order to focus on breathing. You can achieve further synergism by mediating in certain yoga postures, which have their own mental relaxing effects. If you are like me, you are stiff and sore when you awaken in the morning. I deal with this by combining yoga stretches with mindfulness meditation and stress-relieving breathing. It is a great way to start each day.

                                                                                                  

There is a biological explanation for why all these ideas work, but few scholars explain it. The whole constellation of beneficial effects is attributable to the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a huge nerve that supplies most of the visceral organs: lungs, heart, and the entire gastrointestinal tract. Usually, when biology or physiology teachers explain the vagus nerve, they focus on its “motor” effects, that is initiating secretions, slowing heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and promoting peristaltic movements in the GI tract. What usually gets left out of teaching is that the vagus is a mixed nerve; it contains sensory fibers. These sensory fibers are activated by all the breathing functions mentioned above. These impulses signal the part of the anterior hypothalamus that contains the neuronal cell bodies of the so-called parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The PNS suppresses the “fight or flight” system of the “sympathetic nervous system,” which is triggered by certain neurons in the posterior hypothalamus. Thus, feedback signals from proper breathing serve to keep the PNS active and in control of a relaxed physical and mental state. So, CALM DOWN. TAKE A DEEP BREATH.

These ideas are part of the issues raised in my new book on mental health, neuroscience, and religion, Triune Brain, Triune Mind, Triune Worldview, by Brighton Publishing, available in paperback or e-book form at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Is Your Brain Older Than You Are?

"You are as old as you think you are," the saying goes. Well, not quite. You, that is the inner you in your brain, is as old as your brain is. But your brain age may or may not correlate with chronological age.

The other day at my gym workout, I again saw a young black guy, built like Captain America, whose workout schedule sometimes overlaps with mine. We had not met, and out of the blue he came up to me and said, “You are my inspiration. You inspire me to be able to work out like you when I get your age.” Wow! I inspire somebody! Then my balloon popped when I realized that he knew I was old just by looking at me. My body may not look like I’m 83, but I guess hair loss and the lines in my face betray me.

The point of this story is that the bodily organs do not have the same rate of aging. Skin ages rather conspicuously in most older people. Specific organs may age at different rates depending on what they have been exposed to, for example skin and sun, liver and alcohol, lungs and smoking, or fat tissue and too many calories. The brain may age more rapidly than other organs if you damage it with drugs or concussion, or clog its small arteries with high cholesterol, or shrivel its synaptic connections by lack of mental stimulation or not coping with stress.

Is there some biological equivalent to tree rings to show how old your brain actually is?  A scientist at the Imperial College in London, James Cole, is developing an interesting approach for estimating brain age. Moreover, the technique seems to predict approximately when you will die.

In the study thus far, MRI brain scans were taken on 2,001 people between 18 and 90 years of age. A computer algorithm evaluated these scans to construct a frame of reference for what is normal for a given age. Then the scans from 669 adults, all born in 1936, were compared against the norms to determine whether the 81 year-old brains were normal for that age.

The people whose brains were older than normal performed more poorly on fitness measures such as lung function, walking speed, and fluid intelligence. They also had increased risk of dying sooner. Predictions became more reliable when the brain-scan data were combined with the methylation of blood DNA, a marker of life experience effects on gene expression.

Another group of workers at UCLA had determined that these kinds of gene changes predict the risk of mortality. This group, headed by Steve Horvath, evaluated these gene expression changes in various tissues of a 112-year-old woman and found that her brain was younger than her other tissues. A "young" brain will help you to live longer and also have a better quality of life.

There are two take-home implications of such research. The first is that lifestyle and environmental influences affect one's age and that not all tissues age at the same rate. The second is that it may now be possible to test which interventions to slow brain aging actually work. We currently think aging brain is slowed by exercise, by anti-oxidants, by healthy diets, by reducing stress. Having objective measures for aging in general and brain in particular will help us decide how well such preventive measures work. There is also the possibility that such measurement tools may help us identify who is aging too fast and why that is happening, which in turn may lead to better therapy. 

While we wait on technology, there is one symptom of excessive brain aging we can all notice: memory loss. As the title of my book suggests, memory is the canary in your brain's coal mine.

Get the most out of life as you age. You can slow brain aging by following the advice in Memory Medic's inexpensive e-book, "Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine." It is available in Kindle at Amazon and all formats at Smashwords.com.

Sources:

Kwon, Diana (2017). How to tell a person's "brain age." The Scientist. May 22.

Cole, James H. et al. (2015). Prediction of brain age suggests accelerated atrophy after traumatic brain injury. Annals Neurology.77(4), 571-581.  doi: 10.1oo2/ana.24367.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24367/full

Why Music Matters

Every generation has its preferred music. In the 1920s, it was classic jazz. In the 40s it was big-band swing. In the 50s it was modern jazz, Elvis, and rock. In the 90s rap and hip-hop became popular. However, some music, such as country and classical music does not seem to be bound to a particular generation.

Whatever your generation is, you likely prefer that generation's musical genre. As we age, we can find great comfort in listening to the music of our generation, often accompanied with irritation at "that terrible noise" of the current musical fad.

Most of us know from personal experience that certain music is profoundly linked to personal memories. When we hear music from our past we not only remember the music, we often remember associated places, events, and people. This was an underlying theme of the highly acclaimed new movie, LA LA Land. If it is music we loved then, we love it now, and it feels good to hear it again. Listening to your favorite music combats the body's response to stress.

You don't even have to wait years for the benefit. I remember in college, I got exposed to modern jazz as a freshman, and years later as a graduate student got much relief from my academic stress from listening to jazz records. Now 50 years later, jazz still has the same effect on me. By the way, there is a formal scientific study showing that listening to jazz raises body levels of the feel-good endorphins and of immunoglobulin, which protects against infections.

Music has therapeutic value. The "right kind" of music soothes our frazzled nerves. Some of that effect comes from the music's rhythm. Biologically we are rhythmic creatures with all sorts of rhythms: heart and breathing rates, hormone cycles, sleep cycles, mental alertness cycles, and so on. Other musical benefits are emotional, for reasons that are sometimes hard to explain.

For seniors with dementia, music is now becoming considered as part of the therapy. A formal therapy program has been instituted by MusicandMemory.org. I have no vested interest in this program, but it seems to have the right idea and practical approach to helping demented patients. In Alzheimer's Disease patients, for example, music can improve mood and thinking ability and memory and reduce the need for psychotropic drugs.

A movie documentary, Alive Inside, is a story of music and memory that illustrates that musical memory lasts longer than other kinds of memory. Even in Alzheimer's and other dementias, favorite music resurrects memories that help to reawaken patients, making them feel like themselves again and socialize. Life is especially confusing to a demented person, and musical favorites provide something interpretable and pleasurable. A podcast is available at http://musicandmemory.org. There are over 3,000 Music & Memory Care organizations in U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe. The program provides iPods and trains volunteers to help seniors listen to their favorite music by creating a personalized iTunes play lists for iPods. The Canadian affiliates report that the program helps people who have been silent or less communicative, sad and depressed. and less mobile.

The organization surveyed its care facilities staff in 2012 who said that personalized music:

·         brought more pleasure to patients (100% of the staff respondents).

·         made their job of care easier (68% of the staff).

·         was effective for patients with depression (58% of staff) and for patients with anxiety (71% of staff).

·         reduced the use of anti-psychotic medication (53% of staff).

A review of the program by Monica Jacquez, of television KXTV, quotes Casey Simon, one of the senior care staff, as saying that "Music really makes everybody happy. It really does, and especially if you hear a song from your past, it brings back those happy memories and puts you in a place of happiness." Simon said the staff got inspired to host dance parties.

The need is great for helping seniors to enjoy life. Loss of happiness is widely experienced by seniors. Friends and spouse may have died. Children may not need you anymore. Food no longer tastes as good. Aches and pains seem to be everywhere in the body. Successful careers are over. The problems may be compounded by having to live alone. Getting old is not for wimps.

You haven't outgrown the music of your teenage years. You just need reminding. So when you are down, bring out the CDS and tapes of your favorite music. It's what I do―and it works!

Readers of this column will be interested in "Memory Medic's" e-book, "Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine" (available in all formats from Smashwords.com). The book is devoted exclusively to memory issues in seniors.

Sources:

Fancourt, Daisy, Ockelford, Adam, and Belai, Abi (2014). The psychoneuroimmunological effects of music: A systematic review and a new model. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 36, 15-26.

Jacquez, Monica (2016). Music program helps seniors with memory loss. ABC10 Connect. November 21. http://www.abc10.com/news/local/sacramento/new-music-program-helps-seniors-with-memory-loss/354733172

Thoma, Myriam V. et al. (2013). The effect of music on the human stress response. PLoS One.  8(8): e70156. doi:  10.1371/journal.pone.0070156

http://parade.com/537316/nicolepajer/stay-healthy-winter-cold-and-cough-survival-kit/

Thwart Stress Effects on Memory

It is well known that stress can impair memory. Everyone has had some experience of this kind. As a student suffering test anxiety, grades are likely to suffer. In high-stakes social or business interactions, the stress may well cause memory to fail us, as when Presidential candidate Rick Perry forgot the name of the agency he wanted to abolish if elected, or when we forget a friend’s name in the process of making a social introduction. How does stress do this? Is there anything we can do about it?

First, we need to know what stressful events do to the body and brain. Brain freezes, like Rick Perry's, probably occur because thinking can get so preoccupied with the stress-inducing stimuli that other thoughts cannot emerge. But other kinds of stress-induced memory impaired come from the well-known “fight or flight” response in which stress activates the release of adrenalin into the blood stream. Adrenalin has many bodily effects that support fight or flight, such as raising heart rate and blood pressure, and increasing arousal perhaps to the point of anxiety and fear. The increased attentiveness may have a fleeting beneficial effect on memory, as has been demonstrated in laboratory experiments. But the other effects of adrenalin on anxiety and distress are likely to impair memory.

The other thing that happens during stress is the activation of the anterior pituitary gland’s release of ACTH, which in turn activates another part of the adrenal gland to dump cortisol into the blood stream. In the short term, cortisol can have many beneficial effects for combatting stress, such as mobilizing white blood cells and enhancing the immune system. But cortisol binds to cells in the brain’s hippocampus, the area that converts new experiences into memory. This binding actually disrupts the memory-forming process. Ultimately, if stress continues, the synaptic regions deteriorate, making the impairment permanent.

The effects of both adrenalin and cortisol were revealed in an interesting study of mild social stress. Here, the focus was on a theory of how stress effects on memory might be thwarted by a learning technique called forced retrieval. Prior research with students, had shown, that the usual study technique of re-reading notes or text is not nearly as effective as requiring the learner to actively retrieve the information, as one might do, with flash cards, for example. Just a few months ago, I posted a blog on this forced retrieval phenomenon as a key element in “strategic studying.”

This new research was aimed at testing the possibility that forced retrieval might protect learners from the memory deficits caused by stress. In the study on the first day, 120 subjects studied a list of 30 nouns or images of nouns one at a time. Then, one half of the group restudied the items while the other half practiced retrieval by recalling as many items as they could (but without feedback telling them if they got it right). One the next day, half of each group were stressed by being required to solve hard math problems and by giving speeches in front of two judges and three peers. Then they were tested. Twenty minutes later they took a second test on items that had not been tested on the first test. The results revealed that retrieval practice yielded better results.

  

On the first test, we see that the stressed learners who just studied the items the day before had fewer of the items remembered on the first test given immediately after the stress. But there was no such effect on the stressed leaners who used retrieval practice during the initial learning. This protective effect of retrieval practice was evident on the second test 25 minutes later. In fact, the retrieval practice effect was better than on the first test, even though different items were tested. You may have noticed that the stressed study group on the second test did worse than they did on the first test. This is attributed to a mild effect of adrenalin, which as mentioned above can have some benefit on memory. Adrenalin’s action is immediate and is apparently swamped on the second test by the delayed release of cortisol, which shows up by the second test. Students might note that the magnitude of difference may appear small, but in percentage terms could equal to more than two letter grades (compare the two stressed groups on the delayed test).

To explain why forced retrieval works, the authors speculate that it provides better initial encoding. That is, the new information is registered more strongly if you make yourself try to retrieve it. This is consistent with the everyday experience that most of us have had wherein information that strongly grabs our attention is more likely to be remembered. Forced retrieval is a way to make ourselves pay better attention to what we are trying to lean.

Readers wanting to learn more about improving memory are urged to check “Memory Medic’s” books, Memory Power 101 and Better Grades, Less Effort.

               

Sources:

Klemm, W. R. (2016). Strategic studying. October 9, http://thankyoubrain.blogspot.com/2016/10/strategic-studying.html

Smith, Amy M. et al. (2016). Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress. Science. 354 (6315), 1046-1047.

The Best Years of Your Life

When I was young, there was no respect for youth.

Now there's no respect for the old.

I missed it both times!

                                Milton Berle (or so he claims)

When you were a teenager, were you ever told, "Enjoy this time, it's the best years of your life?" What a stupid thing to say. Youth is wasted on the young, and for most people, youth is hardly the best years of life.

Ours is a youth-obsessed culture, demanding living in the now with youthful gusto. Who has time for lessons learned and the wisdom that comes with age? Here's one example that only older people know: All this excitement about legalizing marijuana is being fomented by people who know nothing of the exhaustive social and scientific marijuana research conducted in the 1930s and the harmful biological effects in the 1970s.  Older scholars know about this, but younger ones seem woefully uninformed and uninterested in "old" research. Actually, that often applies to old research in all fields.

We are all going to get old, assuming we don't die first. Our friends, relatives, and loved ones are or will get old. As baby boomers retire, older people are coming to dominate the population. Modern medicine and the wide pursuit of healthier living styles have enabled many older people to live longer and remain vigorous and productive in their old age. Yet, in this country and many other Western countries, we shun, neglect, and sometimes abuse the old. This is the theme of a recent blog by the CEO of a medical products company, Sue Chen.

Chen contends that as people age, others lose interest in engaging with them. A recent National Research Council study indicated that older adults are stigmatized as a group. Older people are treated like old people in social groups and in the workplace. Less is expected of seniors. Seniors in turn expect less of themselves. Chen asserts that younger people shun the elderly and don't want to think about aging because they are afraid of their own impending aging. They know that older people become more socially isolated and that the loneliness is magnified when divorce or death causes the loss of a spouse. Children are unintentionally conditioned to have negative bias about older people. Young families often shut out older parents, aunts, and uncles. We seem to have abandoned the "extended family" concept that was so wholesomely dominant only a few decades ago.

Fear of further aging and being sick and lonely grows with each passing year. Fear of aging is unwarranted, at least for healthy seniors with sufficient retirement income. Actually, one's later years can be the best years of life. Helen Hayes, at age 73, said "The hardest years are between 10 and 70." Paul Meyer, upon reaching 70, claimed that "Life begins at 70." By that time we all have accumulated a "rich reserve" of life experiences and lessons learned. He tries to do all the things he has always done. He points out some of the many advantages of old age, such as people expecting less of you. What you do accomplish makes a bigger impression because it isn't expected. At 70 you have more choices. You can act your age or act young. You can do things you didn't have time for in the past, particularly "smelling the roses." You can take naps without feeling guilty. You feel less guilty about the way you raised your kids, because now they know just how hard raising kids is and are having many of the same difficulties and angst as you did. Time becomes precious, because it is running out. You therefore spend it more wisely. You don't waste time on harmful emotions or personal animosities.

Now at 81, my experience is consistent with what Hayes and Meyer concluded.  I am, even though semi-retired, more efficient and almost as productive in my profession as when I "retired." Amazingly, I have discovered more free time to work. And now, I get to do what I want to do, not what others want me to do. But the biggest advantage of aging, as I see it, is that older people have typically learned more about how to cope with disappointment and adversity and how to squeeze the sweet and good juice out of life.

In the absence of debilitating sickness, aging can be a great blessing. There are many things people can and should be doing to make the senior years the best years of their lives. These include eating well, exercising frequently and vigorously, constructing a positive emotional attitude, becoming more active in mental and social life, getting frequent medical checkups, and most of all I think, living with an honorable purpose.

To know more about aging well, check out my e-book, Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine, available at Smashwords.com. My "Improve Learning and Memory" blog is at http://thankyoubain.blogspot.com.

Sources:

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195138931.001.0001/acprof-9780195138931-chapter-4. Accessed Oct. 17, 2015.

Chen, Sue (2015). What you don't know about aging could kill you. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hippo-reads/what-you-dont-know-about-_9_b_8091512.html

Meyer, Paul J. (2000). Making the rest the best. Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul. Deerfield Beach, Fl.: Health Communications.  p. 480-486.

What Jazz Can Do for Your Brain and Memory

I just got back from my second trip to the Katy Jazz festival, run by a school district just West of Houston. It was time for a jazz fix. You see, I am a jazz fan, and though not compulsive, I do need to dash occasionally to New Orleans or go to a festival like the one in Katy.

How does one become a jazz fan, particularly somebody like me who doesn't know much about music and who can't stand 200-year-old church music or the new mind-numbing songs in so many "contemporary" services. For Texas students who live in enlightened districts like Katy ISD, jazz appreciation starts as early as middle school in the larger schools that spin off jazz training from their marching and concert bands.

My fanhood began in the summer when I turned 19. After finishing my freshman year at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a fraternity brother talked me into spending the summer in Hollywood, where his family had moved. He steered me around all the clubs and concert venues, and I saw in person jazz icons like Stan Kenton, Cab Calloway, Gerry Mulligan, Louie Belson, Chet Baker, Shelley Mann, and Shorty Rogers. My buddy and I would even spend a whole evening listening to Dave Brubeck and Joe Morello for the price of one beer, which we managed to take three hours to milk.

At first, I thought what I was hearing was just unstructured noise. My buddy explained what was going on, usually opening with the tune's melody line, then improvising on that melody line, and then gracefully finding the way back home to the tune's opening statement. And I didn't need to know musical details to appreciate the rhythms that flowed through my body like honey on a warm biscuit.

I am since learning a lot at the Katy festival where some 12 schools showed off their jazz bands and subsumed combos. The festival also featured sets from eight professional combos. But the really important part is that the student groups are given critiques by professional musicians, many of whom are or have been college music professors. The critiques are miked so the audience can hear. From such instruction I am learning that really big things are happening in the brain's mental biology as one listens to or plays jazz.

First the listening: the most obvious effect is stress reduction. Stress, as I have explained in early posts, is the arch-enemy of memory ability. In my case, I put my West Coast jazz experience to good use in mastering the veterinary curriculum at Auburn. While classmates were beating their brains up trying to learn all the stuff involved in veterinary medicine (more than in human medicine), I spent a lot of my time listening to jazz records. And I still beat all but four classmates in grades.

Listening is also fun, probably less so than playing jazz, but still a lot of fun. In San Antonio, Jim Cullum's band used to be called the "Happy Jazz Band." Think about where jazz came from. It is uniquely an American innovation, beginning as emotional relief for slaves who found comfort in the blues, which eventually spawned jazz in its happier forms. Wholesome fun promotes happiness. Happy brains learn better. They can also often live longer (remember my blog on the long life span of so many stand-up comedians). Think about Preservation Hall in New Orleans. There and elsewhere around the country, many jazz artists are still performing sophisticated music in their 80s.

 As for mental biology, a jazz player experiences enormous mental stimulation, Even as a listener, after a concert my untrained brain churns out a continuous stream of improvisation in my mind's ear that can include multiple instruments that I have no idea how to play. A player has to engage the brain in multiple ways that classical musicians do not. First, there are added technical requirements, such as playing blue notes, swinging eighth notes, and unusual time signatures like 12/8 and 5/4 or complex African or Latin rhythms.  Then there is the huge challenge of improvisation, which is basically composing on the fly. When improvising, there is a safety net of knowing the proper chord structure and melody, but players have to have a huge musical vocabulary and realize in milliseconds what new notes will fit. They also have to listen hard so they can interact properly with what others in the band are playing. The "call and response" paradigm in jazz is actually musical conversation. I can't think of anything more mentally demanding, especially for youngsters in early stages of learning music. Early middle school is a particularly time-sensitive period for mental development, and I suspect that middle school jazz bands can have disproportionate beneficial effects on brain development.

Learning jazz may be the ultimate in training young minds to think critically and creatively. An earlier blog post after my fist trip to the Katy festival focused on the exceptional teaching skills of jazz band directors. Many teachers protested, saying in essence that anybody can teach good students. Regular teachers get stuck with so many underachievers. Maybe we should consider the possibility that jazz-band students are such high achievers because their jazz training has trained their brains in invaluable learning capacities for hand-eye coordination, the ability to memorize, discipline, patience, critical and creative thinking, high-speed intellectual engagement with the ideas of others, and self-actualization and confidence.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that mental challenge develops new connections in the brain and with it, new biological capabilities. In jazz, such mental enrichment enhances the ability to memorize, not only directly in terms of having to learn a large musical vocabulary and the rules of jazz, but also in terms of basic mental biology. My new book, Mental Biology, explains some of the basic ideas.

Learning To Be Stressed

People are constantly exposed to stressful situations. These may be physical (like participating in marathons, being exposed to radiation, and, perhaps surprisingly, exposed to sedatives or anesthetics). But stress can also be mental, wherein we become anxious and worried over certain events, existing or anticipated. Whether physical or mental, stress activates a brain network involving most directly the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal cortex to release stress hormones. Such hormones include several cortisone-like compounds called glucocorticoids, and the most prominent one in humans is cortisol.

Glucocorticoids have profound effects on both body and brain. Regulation of glucocorticoids is accomplished by the brain, and learning experiences have profound effects on this control system. Most of what was initially known about glucocorticoids was their effect on the body. I had the great thrill of visiting the pioneer in this field, Hans Selye, in his laboratory complex at the University of Montreal. He had a whole room full of medals, awards, and honorary doctorate diplomas. He won practically every research accolade there was, except the Nobel Prize, one of several grievous slights by the Nobel committee. Dr. Selye wrote an autobiography for my book, Discovery Processes in Modern Biology.

Effects on the Body

Selye’s research led him to formulate the widely accepted concept of the glucocorticoid system as accounting for a “General Adaptation Syndrome,” which basically explained how the brain and body respond to stress. He discovered that glucocorticoids are “Goldilocks” compounds. That is, a little doesn’t do much, a lot is damaging, and intermediate levels are “just right.”

A moderate amount of cortisol is what is normally released every morning before you awaken. By the way, this is the reason surgeons want to operate early in the morning. This release helps prepare the body for the day’s activities by mobilizing blood glucose, typically by breaking down fat and, if needed, protein stores. Glucose is especially important for the brain, which has huge demands for energy, and which can only burn glucose for energy. Neurons are energized and memory ability is enhanced. Another useful thing cortisol does is to reduce the release of cellular chemicals that cause inflammation.

However, the hormone also inhibits systems that channel resources for growth and reproduction, impairs bone formation, and inhibits the immune system. Basically, the idea is that glucocorticoids help brain and body to respond to temporary emergencies by assigning lower priority to other physiological needs.

The rub comes when stress is prolonged. Selye discovered that the beneficial adaptation to temporary stress cannot be sustained in chronic stress. The system becomes exhausted and control breaks down.[1] Under chronic stress, body muscle mass decreases because the system has been breaking down proteins in order to generate energy. Inflammation bathes cells in toxic chemicals. Infections increase because the immune system has been compromised. In obese people, glucocorticoid levels cumulatively increase in fat cells, increase fat deposits still further, and increase the likelihood of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.[2]

Effects on the Brain

In the case of brain, persistent high levels of glucocorticoid often causes depression. Memory ability is impaired. Brain degeneration and cognitive decline accelerate. Many neurons are actually killed. What I want to stress here is that chronic high levels of cortisone change the neural circuitry that regulates its release. In other words, the brain learns a new way of functioning if constantly bathed in high levels of cortisone.

Effects of Learning

Few people make the connection between glucocorticoid control and learning. The neuronal circuits that control hormone secretion learn from stressful experience, just as all neurons learn from whatever they experience. What neurons in the cortisol control circuit learn in chronic stress is that the usual controls can’t work any more.

A typical response to a repeated stress of a certain type (for example, constant quarrels with a spouse or repeated job failures) can be habituation. It’s like “tuning out.” Repeated exposure to the same stress teaches the neurons to stop responding as much as usual. Thus, there is less of the benefits that glucocorticoids provide.

At the same time, the hormone control system becomes hypersensitive to other stresses, especially unpredictable or especially severe stresses. The control system learns to over-react to everything other than the stress to which it has habituated. Now, the damaging effect of too much glucocorticoid becomes pervasive, both for body and brain.

Whether the brain learns stress-coping strategies depends on conscious over-ride of hyper-active responses to stress, because the neural system (the limbic system) that operates our emotions also regulates the glucocorticoid control system. We can not only reduce excessive glucocorticoid but also teach our brain better ways to deal with stress by doing the following:

·         Simplify and organize our life,

·         Do one thing at a time and finish it,

·         Find pleasure in the little things,

·         Learn to have a more positive attitude,

·         Laugh and be happy,

·         Suppress anxiety,

·         Be more rational and less emotional,

·         Develop supportive social relations,

·         Reduce exposure to stressors. 

For more on learning and memory in general, see Dr. Klemm’s new book, Memory Power 101, Skyhorsepublishing.com.

Photos courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net, by Artur  84 and Ambro

---

[1] Herman, James P. 2013. Neural control of chronic stress adaptation. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. August 8. Doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00061

[2] Vogelzangs N. et al. 2009. Late-life depression, cortisol, and the metabolic syndrome. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2009 Aug;17(8):716-21. doi: 10.1097/JGP.0b013e3181aad5d7.

10 Ways to Slow Mental Decline with Age

Deterioration of the brain usually sneaks up on us. By the time we realize it, it may be too late. As we get older, we more frequently start asking questions like “Where did I put the car keys?” “What was it I was supposed to get at the store?” “What’s your name again?” Most of us have had to ask questions like this, and it seems to happen more often as we get older. We can’t turn back our biological clock, but there are things seniors can do to reduce the rate of their mental decline. The time to act is while you are still relatively young.

 I have made a career out of studying brain and behavioral research literature, and I know some of this research is relevant to everyday memory problems. I have summarized these findings in my new book, Memory Power 101 (298 pages, $14.95, Skyhorse.com), and keep readers up to date with my blog (thankyoubrain.blogspot.com).

As people age, beginning in early middle age, many of them experience a brain deterioration that progresses silently over the next decade or two, sometimes ending in devastating senility. Behaviorally, aging can cause your reflexes to slow. You walk and act slower. You even talk slower. Our memory starts to fail, especially the short-term form of memory ability that is so crucial for learning new things.

Now that bran-scan technology is widely available, physicians have discovered that the brain usually shrinks as people get older. The shrinkage increases the space between the brain surface and the skull. The cavities that hold cerebrospinal fluid get bigger. Nerve tracts in the brain shrivel, even leaving gaping holes in the brain. The “dendritic trees” shrivel, and these have major consequences because dendrites are the parts of neurons that form the contact points, and their loss reduces brain circuitry. You may also lose 40% or more of your dopamine neurons, and that may lead to Parkinson’s disease

For aging individuals, the challenge is to reduce the rate of their decline. This has created a growth anti-aging industry focused on vitamins and supplements, fad diets, gym facilities, mind training programs.  The good news is that some of these things work, if they are begun while people are in early middle age. Given that our country now has so many baby boomers in the over-50 category, it seems useful to summarize some things people can do to prevent or slow memory decline as they age. I particularly like the summary at this site.

Here is an expanded list of things I think are especially important for people entering middle age.

1. Get better organized. Many things we try to remember do not have to be remembered if we get better organized. Car keys, for example, should ONLY be in the car, your pocket/purse, or the same place in your house. Ditto for many other objects, such as purse, hat, glasses, etc. Life is a lot simpler when you have a place for everything, with everything in its place. Habit relieves the memory.

2. Make a special effort to pay attention, concentrate. Research shows that aging reduces a person’s ability to focus and pay attention. This also means that seniors have to work harder at filtering distractions, such as when we open the refrigerator door and forget what we are looking for because we thought of something else before we opened the door. New learning has to be consolidated to form lasting memory, and this takes a little uninterrupted time and conscious rehearsal right after you learn it. Seniors are especially susceptible to having temporary memories wiped out by distractions.

3. Challenge yourself mentally. Seek out new experiences, an active social life, and mental demands such as learning a new language, playing chess, or getting an advanced college degree. Learning new things always has the benefit of making you feel good about yourself, and this is especially true for seniors who accomplish things most people think they can’t do. By the way, there is abundant research literature showing that a lifetime of vigorous learning helps stave off Alzheimer’s disease.

4. Reduce Stress. Acute stress helps you be alert, pay attention better, and increase your chances of remembering what is happening at the time of stress. But chronic stress, whether caused by the same or different stressors, clearly disrupts memory formation and recall. Chronic stress and the hormones it releases can actually kill neurons and shrink the brain (which shrinks with age anyway, and only gets worse with chronic stress).

5. Eat foods with vitamins and anti-oxidants. Make certain you have a balanced diet. Supplements usually won’t help memory unless you have a nutritional deficiency. But even with a good died, adding vitamins C, D, and E can be helpful. Several research studies indicate a memory benefit from eating foods loaded with anti-oxidants. Blueberries (especially on an empty stomach). Another potent anti-oxidant is an ingredient in red wine, resveratrol, but there is no way you could drink enough; however, resveratrol supplements are now on the market. There is also suggestive evidence for memory improvement from omega-3 fatty acids and folic acid. Pharmaceuticals to improve memory are in the works, but you may have to wait quite a while before research shows which ones really work.

6. Don’t get obese, especially in middle age.

Confocal microscopy reveals that every added pound of fat adds approximately one mile of capillary tubing. Obviously, all these added vascular tubing puts a strain on the heart. A diet that produces new fat may well contribute to hardening of the arteries, which in turn compounds the added workload on the heart. People who are obese commonly have high blood pressure and other risk factors involving metabolism.

Obesity is a common cause of diabetes, which adds its own toll on blood vessels and the heart, as well as on nerve cells. No wonder then that obese people may develop mental deterioration. The problem may be worse in women. The more a woman weighs, the worse her memory. No, I am not a chauvinist pig. This claim comes from actual research —by a woman, no less. Diana Kerwin and her colleagues at Northwestern University studied 8,745 ages 65 to 79 and found that for every one-point increase in body mass index, the score on a 100 point memory test dropped by one point.

A likely cause of mental decline in most people is diminished blow flow in small vessels that are easily plugged by cholesterol and lipids or ruptured by high blood pressure. These “mini-strokes” are probably quite common as we age, and though they go undetected, they cause a cumulative damage which progressively affects our behavioral and mental capabilities. Brain cells are among the most metabolically active of all cells: they constantly fire electrical pulses and secrete relatively huge amounts of secretions (neurotransmitters). The brain consumes about 20% of all the body’s oxygen, even though it only ways about 3.5 pounds.

When brain cells do die or are damaged for any reason, healthy neurons are assaulted by inflammatory chemicals, like cytokines, that are released by the brain’s immune cell system. Fat deposits not only stress the heart, they also increase the amount of cytokines, which are hormones that can cause inflammation. Brain inflammation is also commonly caused by infections such as colds and flu and by diets deficient in anti-oxidants.

7. Exercise the body. Though exercise doesn’t do much to cause weight loss unless you are a marathon runner of tennis singles champion, it has many other benefits (improved circulation of blood to the brain, improved levels of HDL cholesterol) that can directly benefit memory and cognitive function. Vigorous aerobic exercise can improve your circulation and perhaps blood flow in the brain. But there also seem to be memory benefits from exercise that is independent of blood circulation. We don’t know why. Maybe relief of stress and improved mood are factors. We know that positive emotions help memory, but for unknown reasons.

8. Exercise the memory. The more you make an effort to memorize, the easier it seems to get. Practice the memorization tricks used by “memory athletes” that I describe in my book. I describe in my book specific image-based systems (“peg systems”) for performing astonishing memory feats, such as card counting, remembering long strings of numbers, and remembering the gist of what is on every page of a magazine or book.

9. Get plenty of sleep. Many studies show the brain is processing the day’s events while you sleep and consolidating them in memory. This kind of “off-line” rehearsal occurs just for the learning experiences on the day of sleep. Naps help too! How’s that for good news?

10. Believe in your brain’s ability to get better. Of course genes and luck have a lot to do with how well one ages mentally. But genes and luck seem to be more common in people who do the nine things mention above. Too many seniors buy into the popular myth that old dogs can’t learn new tricks. They resign themselves to defeatism. But the bottom line is that, unless you have Alzheimer’s disease, you can improve your mental sharpness. Getting older has enough frustrations. Don’t compound them by tolerating mental decline. Enjoy an improved brain.