The Brain's Way of Healing

Posted on September 23, 2020 by Mahdis Rezaei, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

How many people here would like to live to be at least 80? Let’s imagine that we’re all 85 now. Sadly, a few of us will have Alzheimer’s disease or if not may be a caregiver.

According to an Alzheimer’s association, one in 10 people over 65 develops some form of dementia. Despite decades of research and studies, unfortunately, we still have no treatment or cure. BUT What if I told you, we could change our brain’s destiny, not only for Alzheimer’s, also for Parkinson’s, and learning disabilities without waiting for the medical cure BUT by changing the brain itself.

In this article I want to talk about the fairly new science called Neuroplasticity — which is the ability of brain to change and grow over time.

Case in point:

The Nun Study of Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease begun in 1986 to examine the onset of Alzheimer’s. The study consisted of 678 nuns, 75 to 107 years old. They were known for their absence of debilitating dementia. All donated their brains to science after their deaths. The results showed some of the brains had dementia, yet they didn’t express visible symptoms while alive. The nuns constantly challenged their minds with puzzles, card games, and other mental activities. So the observations of the their cognitive well-being while alive and the postmortem brain study were designed to examine the relationship between cognitive stimulation and neuroplasticity.

The term plasticity was first used by psychologist William James in 1890 in relation to the idea that the brain is not a fixed entity, but rather one that has the capacity to change itself. This idea went largely ignored for many years. Almost a century!

Until the 1960s, researchers believed that changes in the brain could take place only during infancy and childhood. The neuroscientist Michael Merzenich overturned the conventional wisdom that plasticity ends in adolescence. Through his groundbreaking brain-mapping experiments he showed that the adult brain remains plastic at any age.

So how does neuroplasticity work?
If you think of the brain as a dynamic connected power grid, there are billions of pathways lighting up every time you think, feel, or do something. Some of these pathways are well-traveled. These are our habits — our established ways of thinking, feeling and doing. Every time we think in a certain way, practice a particular task, or feel a specific emotion, we strengthen this pathway. It becomes easier for our brains to travel this pathway. If we think about something differently, learn a new task, or choose a different emotion, we start carving out a new pathway. If we keep traveling that new road, our brains begin to use this pathway more. And this new way of thinking, feeling, or doing, becomes second nature. The old pathway gets used less and less and weakens. This process of rewiring the brain by forming new connections and weakening old ones is neuroplasticity.

So now the question is: Can we control neuroplasticity?
The answer is yes. Through continued learning, maintaining physical activity and diet, we can boost neuroplasticity. Here are some examples:

Learning new skill such as:
- Learning a musical instrument
- Non-dominant hand exercises.
- Expanding the vocabulary

Case in point:
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities. As a child, she read and wrote everything backward, struggled to comprehend language, and constantly got lost. But by relying on her formidable memory, she made her way to graduate school, where she was inspired to invent cognitive exercises to “fix” her own brain. She is now an author, entrepreneur and lecturer. She is also the founder of the Arrowsmith School in Toronto for children with learning disabilities.

Physical activities such as:
- Dancing
- Running
- Walking

Case in point:
John Pepper’s Parkinson’s disease was diagnosed in 1992, when he had to give up his job. In 1994, two years after his diagnosis, he started a fast walking program. Four years later, he discovered that he could overcome his walking problems by using his conscious brain to control his movements. By 2002, his condition had improved so much that he stopped taking his medication. He now teaches Parkinson’s patient how to walk normally again.

Diets such as:
- Caloric restriction
- Intermittent fasting — spacing your meals.
- Omega-3 fatty acids – contained in Salmon

Case in point:
In a study at the University of Munster, 50 healthy, elderly subjects were divided into 2 groups: (1) caloric restriction, (2) relative increased intake of unsaturated fatty acids. Before and after 3 months of intervention, memory performance was assessed under standardized conditions. They found a significant increase in verbal memory (memory of words) scores after caloric restriction. No significant memory changes were observed in the other group. This interventional trial demonstrates beneficial effects of caloric restriction on memory performance in healthy elderly subjects.

To Conclude:
Our brain CAN renew themselves and we can help the process along by continuing to learn, and increasing cognitive and physical activity.