Keep your brain from declining after age 30 — Transcript

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1. 0:01What you do with your body affects your brain.
2. 0:04And what you think with your brain
3. 0:06also has an effect on the physiology of your body.
4. 0:09It works both ways.
5. 0:19People have known that experience can change the brain
6. 0:22ever since it became known that the brain
7. 0:23was the seat of consciousness, thought and experience.
8. 0:26The brain must undergo change to grow and to be plastic.
9. 0:30Memory tends to decrease with age
10. 0:32because our brains, like the rest of our body
11. 0:35tends to age and function does not continue
12. 0:38the way it does when we're young.
13. 0:40One of the things that you can do to keep your brain happy
14. 0:43and functioning well as you get older
15. 0:45is to have a mentally engaged lifestyle.
16. 0:47Every single time you move your body
17. 0:50you are giving your brain
18. 0:52what I like to call a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals.
19. 0:56Those neurochemicals include dopamine
20. 0:59serotonin
21. 1:01noradrenaline
22. 1:02endorphins.
23. 1:04Here's the good news: You don't have to be a marathon runner to get this,
24. 1:08because even ten minutes of walking will start to give you immediate
25. 1:13benefits in terms of decreasing anxiety levels, decreasing depression levels.
26. 1:18The longevity that comes with exercise,
27. 1:22that's what everybody needs right now.
28. 1:32So there’s different kinds of cognitive and memory loss that occur with aging.
29. 1:35Certain kinds of memory loss, such as forgetting where your car keys are
30. 1:38are part of the normal process of getting older.
31. 1:41And in fact, memory peaks surprisingly early at the age of 30
32. 1:44and then declines gradually with time.
33. 1:46If you forget where your glasses are, that's normal memory loss.
34. 1:49If you forget the fact that you wear glasses, that's dementia.
35. 1:52It's not well understood exactly what physically underlies this.
36. 1:56Although plausible candidates are loss of the brain's ability
37. 1:59to form new connections or to easily modulate the weight
38. 2:03of the connections between nerve cells, those are called synaptic weights.
39. 2:06And so those would be candidates
40. 2:07for why the brain seems to be less plastic in certain ways as we get older.
41. 2:11You can look in the brains of people who, after death, are diagnosed
42. 2:14as having Alzheimer's disease, and they have plaques and tangles
43. 2:17that appear to be either the causes of cell death
44. 2:20or perhaps the residue, the aftermath of cell death.
45. 2:23One of the best things you can do to keep your brain alive
46. 2:25and healthy is simply improving blood flow to the brain.
47. 2:29Another major mechanism that's been suggested is the secretion
48. 2:32of a signaling molecule
49. 2:34called brain derived neurotrophic factor.
50. 2:36It's a factor that's made in the brain that causes neurons to grow.
51. 2:41And that factor has been demonstrated to improve plasticity in dendrites.
52. 2:45The idea that exercise, by triggering the secretion of BDNF,
53. 2:49this neurotrophic factor, may lead to
54. 2:51increased plasticity and improved brain function.
55. 2:54When challenged, we can do more.
56. 2:56And everyone knows this.
57. 2:57And in the absence of challenges
58. 2:59we don't necessarily reach our full potential.
59. 3:01And the current goal is to try to find ways to stave off
60. 3:05those cognitive losses by even a few years,
61. 3:07because as we live longer, having a few years becomes very important.
62. 3:17The biggest problems are not so much
63. 3:19with long-term memories, but really the short-term memories.
64. 3:22So we can remember
65. 3:24our first kiss when we were in high school
66. 3:27but we may not remember what we had for lunch.
67. 3:29And because we have shrinking of the brain
68. 3:32brain cells actually start to function less efficiently
69. 3:36and do die over time.
70. 3:38The connections between the brain cells diminish
71. 3:42and the neurochemical transmitters
72. 3:44seem to have problems.
73. 3:47So all of those kinds of physiological changes contribute
74. 3:50to problems with memory as we age.
75. 3:52And what happens is that memory is basically stored
76. 3:55in little neurochemical packets in the brain.
77. 3:58So they can be changed and our memories can deceive us very often.
78. 4:03It's actually possible to improve our memory ability
79. 4:07with relatively simple strategies and techniques.
80. 4:10I often recommend that people find things that they prefer personally.
81. 4:15Things that are mentally challenging but not too difficult.
82. 4:18So the point is to train but not strain the brain.
83. 4:21Whether it's crossword puzzles, learning languages, playing musical instruments.
84. 4:25It's important to try out different things
85. 4:28and do what works for you and what's enjoyable.
86. 4:34Here’s why there's hope for everybody
87. 4:37and that is the principle of brain plasticity.
88. 4:41Brain plasticity is this idea
89. 4:43that the brain has an extraordinary capacity
90. 4:47to change or modify its wiring based on the environment
91. 4:52that you put the brain in, including the physical environment.
92. 4:56Are you walking a lot?
93. 4:57Are you running?
94. 4:58Are you keeping yourself physically active?
95. 5:01These result in what I call positive brain plasticity.
96. 5:05What is the difference between a sedentary brain and an active brain of a runner?
97. 5:11Well, the runner's brain has higher levels of dopamine and serotonin
98. 5:16boosted every single time that runner goes for a run.
99. 5:19It elevates general mood state.
100. 5:23Studies that I did in my lab showed that people
101. 5:26that went to three months of spin class had overall higher mood states
102. 5:31than people for three months who played video Scrabble.
103. 5:35Those people in the exercise group
104. 5:37also have much more growth factors going through their brain.
105. 5:41I like to think of it like a watering can of growth factors
106. 5:44all up and down your hippocampi.
107. 5:46What's happening?
108. 5:48They’re growing, popping shiny new hippocampal cells
109. 5:51and they're making their prefrontal cortex work better.
110. 5:54But again, everything is fluid with brain plasticity.
111. 5:58Even if you've been sedentary all your life, you can start moving
112. 6:02towards what I like to call bigger, fatter, fluffier and happier brain
113. 6:07with just ten minutes of walking.
114. 6:10We found the same kind of benefits.
115. 6:12Better mood, decreased anxiety, depression levels and better focus.
116. 6:17Physical activity is the most transformative thing
117. 6:21that you could do, not only for your body
118. 6:24but for your brain as well.