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Yesterday, you were encouraged to regularly lace up your tennis shoes. A cute pair of athletic shoes will make you look and feel younger instantly. Plus, did you know exercise isn’t just good for your emotional and physical health? It’s great for your brain too. “The best advice I can give to keep your brain healthy and young is aerobic exercise,” says Donald Stuss, PhD, a neuropsychologist and director of the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto.2
Your brain cells, or neurons, have branch-like connections between them that are essential to thought. As you get older, these connections weaken. But brain research shows that exercise may slow down this mental decline. Aerobic exercise pumps more blood, nutrients, and oxygen into the brain, making for a healthier brain.
Studies by brain-health researcher Arthur Kramer at the University of Illinois have produced two significant findings: Fit people have sharper brains, and people who are out of shape but then get into shape sharpen their brains.3 How exciting that exercise helps you not only fit into your skinny pants, it helps you remember where you stored those skinny pants in the first place.
Sadly, research shows that your brain starts slowing down at the young age of 30. But hold on, there’s good news too. Several studies have shown that people of any age can train their brains to be faster, turning back the clock in their favor. The brain is a learning machine that responds positively to mental exercise. Neurologists say the brain is highly adaptable. If you ask it to learn something new, it will.
To keep your brain young, try any of these power activities:
• Learn a new language, instrument, or dance.
• Build a model airplane.
• Memorize a Bible verse and meditate on it throughout the day.
• Read a book that’s completely different from what you typically read.
• Learn how to cook a new recipe.
• Do Sudoku, crossword, or jigsaw puzzles.
• Learn one new fact every day.
• Look up a new word in the dictionary.
• Find a problem in the newspaper and think about how you would solve it.
• Try doing things with your nondominant hand, such as opening the door or using keys.
• Use a different route to go to the grocery store.
• Memorize the words to a new song.
Memory-training specialist Harry Lorayne says in his book, Ageless Memory: Simple Secrets for Keeping Your Brain Young,
Perhaps it’s true that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. That’s dogs, not people. I agree with Benjamin Franklin, who wrote, “No one is ever too old to learn.” I try to learn something new every day. I sure tried to “learn something new” when I decided to get “involved” with computers when in my seventies. I was interested, enthusiastic to learn, and certainly curious to see what everyone was talking about. You need to set up some “mental push-ups.”4
Have you been doing any mental push-ups lately? Like Harry Lorayne, are you interested, enthusiastic to learn, and curious about life? Maybe you want to learn, but you’re wondering how to find the time for additional activities. Here’s an easy tip: turn off the television. HGTV and the Food Network will go on without you. Instead of watching TV for even ten minutes, spend that time doing something that will feed your brain and keep it young.
It’s important to challenge your brain with problems to solve and new things to learn, but it’s also important to feed it a steady diet of positive affirmations. Olympic athlete Beverly Buffini (member of the 1988 U.S. volleyball team) has a simple and profound motto for her family of six children: “I Can, I Will, I Believe.” I know from observing her that the motto is working as her children excel spiritually, academically, athletically, and socially.
If a sister could listen in to your thought life, what would she hear? Positive words of affirmation (The best is yet to come), or words of doom (My life is over). Your thoughts steer the direction of your life. Speaker and author Pam Farrel tells a story about Robin, her best friend and colleague in ministry:
In midlife, it’s easy to start complaining about aches and pains. Robin and her husband, Jack, have this rule. Anytime they’re tempted to complain, they say “Think Young.” They write “Think Young” in their calendar. It’s posted in their house. Just having that little reminder to “Think Young” helps them decide to do things that are young. You don’t want to put yourself in the old folks’ home too early.5
Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (NKJV), so think young. Danna Demetre, RN and author of Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, says we change bad habits and adopt healthy habits through healthy mental programming. “It really starts with what we think about most often. If a woman of any age says, ‘I can’t stop eating. I hate to exercise,’ her behavior will live out those lies.”
On the other hand, when you speak words of life—“I love eating healthy food,” and “My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit”—those affirmations will result in a positive change in your behavior.
When you put a doughnut in your mouth, you might wonder about its impact on your waistline, but do you ever think about its effect on your brain? The same weight that slows you down as you climb the stairs also slows down your brain from making quick replies and witty comebacks. High blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity all make life tough for the brain.
Colorful fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, spices, and (thankfully) dark chocolate contain antioxidants that are good for the brain. But there’s another powerful nutrient that you may be lacking in your daily diet.
According to Danna Demetre, many women miss out on the benefits of an essential fatty acid called omega-3. Omega-3 fats stimulate the brain, revitalize the skin, slow down aging, improve fat metabolism, decrease inflammation, and protect your heart. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for that? The best sources of omega-3 essential fatty acids are salmon, sword-fish, tuna, shark, pecans, almonds, walnuts, soy nuts, flax seed, and deep green vegetables such as kale and turnip greens. But since most of us don’t eat a serving of salmon every day, Demetre suggests supplementation:
Many compelling studies are revealing that omega-3 supplementation decreases aggressive behavior, diminishes depression, protects against Alzheimer’s disease, and fosters mental clarity. Just imagine your brain as healthy, well-nourished, and firing on all cylinders as opposed to undernourished like a car in bad need of a tune-up or needing a jumpstart to perform simple tasks. That jumpstart would be coffee and sugar, perhaps?6
To end on a positive note, older people are better at solving problems than young people because they have more mental history to draw from. There’s a reason why the president of the United States must be 35 years of age or older, and why many people in their fifties and sixties are running the largest companies in America. As Barry Gordon, a neurologist at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of Intelligent Memory: Improve the Memory That Makes You Smarter, says, “It’s nice to know some things get better with age.”7
Make a list of things you like about your brain (for example, I am very good at remembering names; I am a great problem solver; I am creative):
Act of eXpression
Pick one Power Activity for the brain from today’s reading and do it today.