Smart moves can keep your brain young

Published 4:57 pm Tuesday, March 3, 2015

This is the first in a series of columns on healthy living By Shape Up Vashon coordinator Laura Wishik.

It was a shock when my mother developed dementia. Nobody in our family had it, so I thought we were immune. She was a profoundly respected leader in the Seattle healthcare community. Now she was trying to put her bra on her foot like a shoe.

Currently, one in six of us will develop some kind of dementia. If the trend continues, one in three seniors will have dementia when they die. Imagine what that could do to our social fabric and our economy.

The good news is you can greatly reduce the odds that you will get dementia. My mother smoked cigarettes. Don’t do that. Even better, take a few simple steps to keep your brain young(ish).

First, some context: Our brains are packed with long, branching cells called neurons. Adults have 86 billion neurons. Scientists used to think we started our lives with a lot of neurons and they died off as we aged. Then they discovered stem cells in our brains, which enable us to grow new neurons and synapses throughout our lives if we provide the right stimulus.

I attended the recent lecture by part-time Vashon resident Dr. Christopher O’Brien, a neurologist and researcher. As he started to explain what affects the aging of our brains, I held my breath. Would he confirm what I had read? Yes. At the very top of the list was exercise.

Our brains produce a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. When BDNF is sprinkled on neurons in a petri dish, they sprout new branches, like Miracle-Gro for the brain. BDNF also increases the strength of signals from one neuron to another and protects them from dying.

So, how can we encourage our brains to produce BDNF? The study that clinched the connection between BDNF levels and exercise involved rats on treadmills. The rats that ran the most had the highest levels of BDNF. But people are not rats (most of the time). Another study showed that people learned new words faster after exercise than they did before and their rate of learning was directly correlated to their levels of BDNF.

The Nurses’ Health Study tracked the diet and exercise habits of over 122,000 nurses for decades. The nurses who exercised the most had the least problems with memory and thinking abilities as they aged. Even those who did a modest amount of exercise, just one and a half hours of walking each week, had significantly better brain functions than those who were more sedentary.

You can actually see how exercise improves the brain. The hippocampus, which helps with memory processing, is significantly larger. Neurons have more branches so they can make more connections. Electric signals through neurons have a higher voltage.

Exercise and the resulting increase in BDNF also helps people suffering from depression. Exercise is now recognized as a treatment for depression that is as effective as medication for some people and that improves the effect of medicine for others.

So put on your walking shoes. You can find people to walk with and share good conversation by going to Meetup.com and searching for Vashon Walking or Vashon Hiking. I hope to see you on the trail.

— Laura Wishik is the volunteer coordinator for Shape Up Vashon and teaches Food for Life, a class on developing healthy relationships with food. She is also chair of Vashon’s school board, an attorney for the City of Seattle and mother of two.