De-Stressing Your Brain: A Meditation Primer

In my first post on meditation this week, I promised a follow up with recommended  resources, common types of meditation and what to expect in a beginning meditation practice. That may be a bit of an ambitious agenda for one post, but let’s get started and see how much ground we can cover!

Since meditation has many different forms, it isn’t easy to pin down into a simple definition.  But for our purposes of reducing stress and training the brain to be stronger and healthier,  I’ll define it as a disciplined practice of relaxed yet focused awareness.  One of my teachers referred to the state as “effortless concentration” and I found that the concept described it perfectly!

Types of Meditation

Buddhist Meditations are probably the best known forms of meditation in the US.   Qualified instruction is readily available in most parts of the country, and there are some excellent CD’s and even online courses available.   There are many different practices within Bhuddhist traditions, but the basics focus on developing a disciplined, mindful state of awareness,  compassion and empathy towards yourself and others.  They often use neutral concepts like your  breath, a set of beads, a series of chanted words, or even the motion of walking as a focus point.  The non-denominational, neutral focus makes these meditations are appropriate for everyone, regardless of their spiritual orientation.

Meditation: Breathe, and De-Stress Your Brain

Meditation is a pretty amazing tool for brain health. It’s great for reducing and  reversing the harmful effects of stress on the brain, and it’s even been shown to increase brain size. (How seriously cool is that?)  Meditation is inexpensive, simple, and can be done by anyone, anywhere, without any special props.

So why aren’t more people doing it?
Well…

Some people are a wee bit afraid of meditation.

It’s true. And honestly, I don’t  blame them!
Not that meditation itself is scary (because it isn’t) but some of the louder proponents of meditation make  it sound  all exotic and New Agey, as if it’s always part of some foreign religion or cult.

They associate it with out of body experiences, contacting spirit guides, or other sometimes really wacky ideas (one popular group promotes that you can meditate your way to levitation!) – these sorts of things concern those of us who are more mainstream and conventional, and make us question the sanity of the “meditators”.

But that sense of exotic, spiritual “strangeness” doesn’t come from basic meditation techniques, but rather from how  the particular practices are shaped, and the intent behind them.

5 Common Myths about Age & Your Brain

Sometimes I’m surprised by just how stubborn we can be about our mis-understandings of the human brain.

Below are five of the most common myths about age and the brain, along with how discoveries in neuroscience have put them in the same category as tales of Big Foot and Nessie!

Journal Your Way To A Better Memory

Writing a journal is an obvious  way of capturing memories so they aren’t forgotten,  but did you know that keeping a journal or diary might improve your memory itself?

The very act of writing down your daily experiences helps to transfer them from short term to long term memory – and each time you go back over the material,  and recall the experience, you strengthen the pathways that help you to access those memories.

The Power of Knowing: Genetic Tests For Alzheimer’s Risks

If you could take a blood test to find out how likely you are to develop Alzheimer’s, would you take it?

Would the benefits of knowing  help you to prepare for the possibility, or would it stress and perhaps depress you?

Language Skills And Alzheimer’s: More From The Nun Study

Our favorite nuns, the School Sisters of Notre Dame,  have been all over the news again lately, this time because of a study recently released by Johns Hopkins.

First, a little background…

In 1996,  research on the Sisters revealed that those  nuns who had more complex language skills in their 20′s had lower rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease as they aged.   By analyzing essays the nuns had written when they joined the convent, researcher’s analyzed their early comfort and ability with language.   Comparing those language scores based on their youth with their cognitive function as aging adults revealed  something interesting: the nuns with higher language scores as young adults had a a lower risk of Alzheimer’s as they aged.

Staying Hydrated: Are You Getting Enough H2O?

It’s a scorcher of a summer here in my home state of Texas, with triple digit  temperatures being common so far this year.   And when heat hits, hydration becomes more of  an issue for brain function.

The brain is made up of more than 65% water, and when we get even slightly dehydrated, cognitive function suffers.   The brain cells actually lose volume, and the signals don’t travel as well through the neurons, affecting our attention, focus, short term memory, and other functions.  Headaches are common, and the reduction in brain volume increases the risk of concussion should we have the bad luck to take a tumble while less than adequately hydrated.

The Buzz About Caffeine: Can It Reverse Alzheimer’s?

My newsreader has been full of coffee-endorsing articles these past few days, and I have to admit, the studies behind the media frenzy are intriguing:  they suggest that caffeine may not only protect against Alzheimer’s, but actually reverse some of the damage.

Here’s the deal: Researchers at the University of Florida just published the results of two back to back studies that suggest caffeine may not just offer some protection from Alzheimer’s (as previous studies have shown) but may actually reverse it.

When mice (genetically engineered to develop a  mouse-y equivalent to Alzheimer’s) were given caffeine doses (the equivalent of about 8 cups of coffee a day) at different points in their lives, their development of the disease changed pretty significantly.

The mice who were given the caffeine before their mental functions declined had fewer of the  plaques associated with Alzheimer’s – and they did better on memory tasks.  That wasn’t too surprising, because previous studies have suggested the same thing.

What is surprising is that the mice who were started on caffeine after their cognitive skills had begun to decline also showed memory improvements and a reduction in the Alzheimer’s related plaques – a significant enough change that they performed about as well as normal mice on tests of their memory..

But much of the media buzz (forgive the puns, please!) is misleading.   The studies are on genetically engineered mice, not humans who naturally develop the disease, and the results may or may not translate into real world applications.   And there are many, many other compounds that are being investigated which may be more effective, but don’t get the news coverage.

Why? The public loves it when our vices are justified by science….  similar media frenzies have latched onto the cognitive effects of dark chocolate, nicotine and red wine, for instance.  There is a promising difference, though, with these new caffeine studies -  the amounts given to the mice are not excessive, and many people already consume a similar daily dose through coffee, colas and teas.

So what do you think? Are you likely to up your caffeine intake? Or does the currently accepted wisdom about health benefits of reducing caffeine still make more sense to you?

Let me know in the comments!

Relax. (It’s good for the brain)

Stress is a bit of a puzzle, when it comes to brain function.

In short bursts, stress  can actually help you to think more clearly, but when prolonged (as it often is in modern life) it impairs mental function – affecting blood flow, slowing the growth of new neural paths and new brain cells, and most alarmingly, actually killing off brain cells.  Long term stress can actually shrink the hippocampus, a part of the brain crucial to our memory process, creating memory issues for otherwise healthy people, as well as dramatically speeding the advancement of Alzheimer’s.

The good news is that the effects of chronic stress on the brain appear to largely be reversible; when the stress stops, our brain can once again begin to repair the damage, producing new cells and restoring the hippocampus.