Boost Your Brain (24 page)

Women in their late forties to midfifties can expect to go through menopause, which can cause temporary brain fog and memory and attention lapses. Men can also suffer from low testosterone, which can affect memory. (A simple test can detect low testosterone, a treatable condition.) This is the stage of life during which the normal aging process begins to chip away at brain size, often without any obvious symptoms other than lapses in memory (like the keys you lost last week). Therefore, at this age you should . . .

Stay Physically Fit
It’s not too late to run a marathon or train for a triathlon, but extreme fitness efforts aren’t necessary. Join a walking group, enroll in a dance class, or learn how to step up your tennis game.

Stay Emotionally Fit
This is a good time to check the health of your relationships—with your spouse, your coworkers, your friends, and your children. Ensuring they’re stable and rewarding can help you stay in the alpha zone. Stress reduction is as important as ever. Try yoga, meditation, or calm breathing exercises.

Sleep
As we age, sleep problems become more common. Often we set up conditions that make sleep deprivation a way of life. If you’re working until midnight every night and getting up at five in the morning, you may find that you routinely short yourself on sleep. Be sure you’re getting seven to eight hours of quality sleep every night.

In Your Sixties and Beyond

With age, your risk of developing many chronic health problems increases. Not only that, but your brain also encounters more of the effects of normal aging. To offset that reality . . .

Stay Physically Fit
Sixty-, seventy-, and even eighty-year-olds continue to astound their peers with what they can do in sports. But some slowing down physically is a natural part of aging for many people. Find an exercise—walking, water aerobics, dance—that still works for you. And work it!

Stay Healthy
Be sure to monitor your health and work with your doctor to aggressively treat conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, high blood cholesterol, and heart disease. The elderly also may have trouble absorbing certain nutrients, so be sure you’re on top of health measures for factors that can affect cognitive function (vitamins B12 and D and thyroid function are a few).

Take DHA
This is important at any age but particularly so as we age.

Stay Socially Engaged
Eighty is the new sixty. Elderly people today find themselves drawn more than ever to participate in social engagements; they don’t have the burden of child-rearing and have the physical and financial capacity to be highly active. Join this new movement and sign up for group travel, cooking classes, social networking, and more.

Week Two

Exercise

Track 1:
Increase your walking time to fifteen minutes, three times a week.

Track 2:
Increase your walking or jogging time to thirty minutes, four days a week. If you’re walking, try to jog at least some of the time. Increase the amount of time you jog versus walk over the next ten weeks.

Track 3:
Continue with thirty minutes of uninterrupted aerobic activity, five days a week. Bump up your muscle building to ten minutes, three days a week.

Diet

Track 1:
Continue to stay away from junk food, and now cut down salt and cholesterol. Choose lean meat and eat it no more than once or twice a week.

Track 2:
If you drink coffee, cut back to one cup in the morning and none in the afternoon. Instead, add a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Track 3:
Continue with DHA supplementation. Don’t forget to get adequate water. Your brain needs water to function well, so be sure to drink six to eight glasses a day. Add a glass of wine per day several days a week.

Mindfulness

Track 1:
Continue with my 7–7–7 breathing exercise and add one session of meditation.

Track 2:
Meditate twenty minutes a day, four days a week, and add a tai chi or yoga class once a week.

Track 3:
Continue with your mindfulness practices and set aside three half-hour stretches to write down the things that bother you. Fill out an ABC chart for each and challenge your assumptions about your belief system. Ask yourself,
Why am I unhappy? How can I change my perception?
Come up with strategies to change or decrease your exposure to the things that make you unhappy.

Cognitive Stimulation

Track 1:
Practice remembering a list of twelve random words a day, three days a week.

Track 2:
Practice remembering four names and faces a day, four days a week.

Diet Tips

TRACK IT
Most adults need between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day. Consider tracking what you eat each day for one week, using a food journal or one of the many available phone apps or online tools. Tracking what you eat is helpful in two ways. First, it forces you to be more aware of what you’re putting in your body. Second, tracking your food consumption can help you identify patterns in your eating (too few leafy greens?) that you need to address.

CUT THE COFFEE
If you have a serious coffee habit, slowly reduce your coffee consumption until you’re drinking just one cup a day. Add one cup of herbal tea in the afternoon as well.

STAY HYDRATED
Your body—your brain included—needs water to function well, so make an effort to consume six to eight glasses of water daily.

AVOID HIGH-CARB DIETS
A high-carbohydrate diet can cause a spike in your blood glucose level, which damages blood vessels and neurons and has been associated with inflammation and weight gain.

Track 3:
Pick a new hobby or take a new class. Spend one hour this week learning a new skill: maybe a new language, wine tasting, bird watching, photography, dancing—whatever you like. Remember, the best options are those that cross-train both your body and brain.

Week Three

You’re almost into habit territory. Keep up the good work, increasing your effort in all brain-boosting areas.

Exercise

Track 1:
Increase your walking time to twenty minutes, three days a week. In addition to your scheduled time, find ways to work activity into every day. Take the stairs, park at the far end of the parking lot, walk to lunch, go for a hike instead of going to the movies—do anything you can to replace sedentary moments with activity.

Track 2:
Increase your walking or jogging time to thirty minutes, five days a week. Gradually increase the intensity of your workouts. Ideally, you want to get to a level of intensity to achieve 60 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate. If you’d like, you can substitute a stationary bike, swimming, or another aerobic activity, or you can substitute a one-hour game of tennis (or another intense activity) for two of your thirty-minute sessions.

Track 3:
Continue with thirty minutes of uninterrupted aerobic activity, five days a week. Bump up your weight lifting to fifteen minutes, five days a week. Increase the intensity of your workouts as needed so that you’re improving your physical fitness. Consider adding high-intensity interval training (HIIT), consisting of five bursts of vigorous exercise during the last fifteen minutes of your exercise routine (five bursts for one minute each, followed by two minutes of less intense activity). You should feel tired after you finish your exercise.

Diet

Track 1:
Continue with the cuts you made in weeks one and two and work on reducing your serving sizes and limiting caloric intake. If you haven’t already, try tracking your calorie intake for one week through an online tool or app. Seeing just how much a bagel and cream cheese “costs” you in calories can help you convince yourself to tuck into a bowl of yogurt with blueberries instead.

Track 2:
Focus on adding salmon or other fish to your diet, and add more fruits and vegetables.

Track 3:
Continue with DHA supplementation, and continue to eat healthy portions and brain-friendly foods. Try new flavonoids you’ve never tried before.

Mindfulness

Track 1:
Shift from breathing exercises to twenty minutes of meditation, four days a week.

Track 2:
Continue with meditation and add to your week one more session of tai chi, yoga, or another relaxing activity.

Track 3:
Give yourself a Sabbath. From sunset one day until sunset the following day, promise to do no work. This is your fun time, so fill it with things that make you happy.

Cognitive Stimulation

Track 1:
Practice remembering twenty random words a day, three days a week. Try to incorporate cognitive stimulation into your daily life as well. Think of it as the equivalent of taking the stairs rather than the elevator: add numbers in your head, play around with your electronic gadgets to see what new functions you can perform with them, read the directions and figure out how things work!

Track 2:
Practice remembering five new names and faces a day, five days a week.

Track 3:
Learn to memorize a deck of cards. Nelson Dellis explains his method online (http://climbformemory.com), but other mnemonists describe different techniques online and in books. Pick one and start practicing!

Mindfulness Tips

LEARN A TECHNIQUE
Seek out a meditation, yoga, tai chi, or drumming class locally, or through online instruction, or a CD or DVD.

FIND A SPACE
Find a quiet, comfortable practice place with few distractions. You can also try walking meditation, which you can do in a garden or quiet neighborhood.

OPEN YOUR MIND
For meditation to work, you’ll need to have an open mind and the ability to let go of any distractions or negative thoughts as you meditate. Practice this; it becomes easier over time.

LIVE IT
Once you’ve learned meditation techniques, use them to shift yourself into the alpha zone throughout your day. Your goal is to frequently feel focused, calm, and alert. Smile as often as you can.

DO YOUR ABCs
Schedule time to do the ABC technique I described in
chapter 6
. Think about how you can challenge your beliefs and reduce anxiety; it’s your ticket to the alpha zone.

Week Four

Congratulations, you’ve completed the first three weeks of the program, building habits—and your noggin—as you go.

If you ended week three on track 1 or 2, move up to the next track this week. If you ended it on track 3, simply repeat week three of track 3 for the remainder of the program, adding intensity and variety whenever possible.