Summertime & the Body Is Moving

Exercise and diet seem to be popular topics of conversation these days, probably because summer is just around the bend. The weather has turned warm and sunny, even hot on some days with high humidity. And this change in weather, along with the ending of another school year, brings out the inner exerciser in many of us. To paraphrase the Gershwins: Summertime and the Body Is (should be) Moving.

A 14-year old blogger from my school, in his June 13th blog post, wrote:

Mark is a bit of a health crazy (at least compared to me), so we decided to enter into an arrangement. For these summer months, Mark and I are going to meet and he is going to try to make me at least a little athletic. I’m optimistic, especially if I don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be.

And my 51-year old brother just this weekend told me that the recent death of Tim Russert, moderator of Meet the Press, has inspired him to try and change his eating habits. My brother was shaken by the fact that there were just seven years between their ages.

People have often talked about and made changes to their eating and exercise habits in terms of how they look or what might be good for their hearts. Rarely, though, have I heard people consider these in terms of what might be good for their brains, yet healthy eating is good for your entire body, starting at the top! You can read more about diet specifics at The Franklin Institute’s page on nourishing your brain with a healthy diet.

And while there are many folks who may choose to skip breakfast, the fact is that when you wake up in the morning your brain needs to be replenished with a fresh stock of glucose. Don’t take my word for it; you can listen to NPR’s A Better Breakfast Can Boost a Child’s Brainpower. Just this morning, as my 17 year old was heading off to his English Regents and was in no mood for breakfast, he finally succumbed to the offer of a crunchy peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwich (much to his mother’s delight .)

NPR (National Public Radio) has two additional short pieces on the benefits of exercise. At the younger years, Exercise Helps Students in the Classroom, discusses how brain cells are strengthened by exercise. In the older years, Study: Exercise Lowers Dementia Risk, details the results of a study done on people age “65 and older who did moderate exercise had a significantly reduced risk of developing dementia.” The fascinating part of this study is that folks who had already started to show signs of decline benefitted the most from the exercise. As Eric Larson, the interviewee from the Center for Health Studies – Group Health Cooperative says:

Use it or lose it.
Use it even after you start to lose it!

There have been a number of articles written about the benefits of exercise for the brain. John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has written the book SPARK, which is all about “the connection between exercise and the brain’s performance”. Ginger Campbell has a 2008 interview with Ratey on her Brain Science Podcast.

I’d really rather you stopped reading this post and headed outdoors to move your body! But if you need one more ounce of convincing, read through the rest of The Franklin Institute’s pages devoted to The Human Brain, particularly the Nourish and Renew sections that cover eating, exercise, and sleep.

p.s. Yes, to answer the questions some of you may be posing, I DO get out and move, especially in the summer when I kayak and swim. Our neighborhood has an outdoor pool where 72 laps is a mile. I am up to daily half-miles and am aiming for 3/4 of a mile by July and daily miles by August. Will keep you posted.

p.p.s. Happy 24th Birthday J!

Mussels in Brussels, Bagettes in France

We are spending eleven days in France, where food and culture are tightly intertwined. And if we are talking about food, then we are talking about the sense of taste. Food can be a marvelous entry into memory, the taste of the meal coupled with where it is served, how it is presented, and with who you are eating.

For an overview of how the brain decodes taste, visit Neuroscience for Kids – Taste. Here you will read what you might already know by experience, that the tongue’s taste buds can decipher four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Some researchers believe that a fifth taste may also be present, umami, which has been described as “meatlike”.

A Society for Neuroscience brain briefing on Taste Intensity relates that scientists are researching how taste preferences may impact personal health, in particular looking at supertasters, people who “may experience an overall higher level of tasting ability than others”. Having been a fussy eater as a child (and eating just about everything now!), and having raised two sons, one who still has a highly discriminating palette and the other who has learned to eat almost anything (including raw lobster in Japan!), I know that taste plays a huge role in diet, and that taste and diet can – and often do – change over time.

Taste does not exist in the mouth alone, however; it has a close companion in the nose and smell. The Cornell Center for Materials Research Ask A Scientist article, Taste takes more than just tongues, explains this relationship and also discusses how chemicals – both natural and synthetic – influence our sense of taste. To bring home the relationship between taste and smell, the Exploratorium has a simple experiment you can try with a friend. Check out Newton’s Apple Taste And Smell site for additional experiments and further insight.

But what happens if one or both of these senses does not function properly?

ENT doctors specialize in the treatment of ear, nose and throat ailments. (This is known as otolaryngology, my new word of the day!) The American Academy of Otolaryngology has an informative page on smell and taste – how they work and what happens when they don’t.

Last week we spent three nights in Belgium, including a visit to Brussels, where our friends graciously took us to a dinner of mussels (a Brussels speciality) and then we all attended the Ommegang. My husband and I were last in Europe in 1977, and now we travel with our two sons. Each morning we have a petite dejuner of cocoa, cafe, croissants et bagettes. There is no doubt that the taste and smell of foods from this trip will be indelibly imprinted upon my memories!

Food for Thought

With fresh blueberries just around the corner, I am reminded that every so often the news media touts a food as being particularly good for one part of our bodies or another. You can read more about the benefits of eating blueberries in this Brain Food study done at the Human Nutrition Center on Aging at Tufts University.

Most of us want to improve or at least preserve our body and brain functionality as we go through life, so there is a tendency to accept the latest health news as gospel, especially if it is based on scientific research. While the consumer should always be cocking an eyebrow, the good news is that research on the health benefits of food tends to be corroborated across fields. Turns out what’s good for our brains is good for our bodies.

Proteins and carbohydrates provide our bodies with necessary nutrients which, among other benefits, cause neurotransmitters to be released. The goal is to eat balanced quantities of these foods so that our bodies do not produce an overload of chemicals in responding to food intake. For example, carbohydrates are necessary for the production of serotonin, a calming agent, however, eating too many carbs will make you feel sluggish.

Considering our brains are somewhere around 75 to 80 percent water, drinking plenty of water keeps our brains alert, keeps muscles feeling comfortable, and helps rid our bodies of wastes.

In addition to what we eat, the other “brain food” is sleep. Sleep may not be something we actually eat and digest, but our bodies need about eight hours of sleep each night in order to properly function. Sleep helps to cement learning and memories. In fact, a good time to review something you are trying to memorize is ten minutes before you go to sleep. During sleep your body also makes repairs to itself, beefing up the skin, blood, brain cells and muscles.

The following articles are just two of many on the web that provide more information on brain–body nutrition.

Brain Food
Save Your Brain

You can test your Brain Food IQ on this WebMD page.

Epinephrine aka Adrenaline

I’ve always liked the way these two words conjure up mental images. Epinephrine brings to mind the Epi Pen, a potentially lifesaving device for people who deal with certain types of allergies. Adrenaline brings to mind the Road Runner of cartoon fame, cruising along at break neck speed.

Those images help explain epinephrine’s function, both as a hormone and neurotransmitter, to get the body revved up in response to a perceived threat or excitement. This response is known as “fight or flight” because adrenaline is released when the body perceives an event to which it needs to respond by “fight or flight”.

While not all excitement is negative, the body prepares itself just in case. Adrenaline is released in the adrenal glands (located above the kidneys and not in the brain) in reaction to a message begun in the amygdala. The amygdala does not waste time figuring out if something is a threat or not; instead it responds rapidly with the aim of protecting you if necessary. The signal goes from the amygdala to the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland (all of which are located in the brain) and then to the adrenal glands located mid-body. The adrenal glands then release adrenaline.Thus, your hands might get clammy before making a presentation or performing, and you might wish you could be invisible, but hopefully you are simply excited and not overly threatened, and you manage to go on with the show!

Dopamine

Dopamine functions both as a neurotransmitter and a hormone. It helps control physical movement and also helps regulate information flow to the higher levels of the brain, thus having low levels of dopamine may impact working memory and ability to focus. You might know someone who takes Ritalin. Well, that is a drug which is sometimes prescribed for people who have difficulty focusing because it counters the low levels of dopamine.

When tripled up with serotonin and endorphin, dopamine balances out high levels of norepinephrine, which can cause aggression. These three neurotransmitters also release into the brain when stimulated by exercise (think of a runner’s high, for instance), listening to music you like, smelling smells you enjoy (like freshly baked cookies), and receiving positive feedback, so you can understand why dopamine, serotonin and endorphin are thought of as the “feel good” chemicals.

There is a down side, though, to having naturally produced “feel good” chemicals in the brain. External elements often influence us and how we feel, and some of these elements can have negative effects on the body, such as too much alcohol or indulgence in other types of drugs. This is where addiction comes in to the story, as you can read in this University of Texas at Austin article.

From the Surfari wiki (which I co-authored with a colleague): Did you know that your brain is about 80 percent water? To keep it alert, it is good to drink water throughout the day. Another type of food that feeds your brain is protein. Protein provides amino acids, which help produce dopamine and norepinephrine. Sources of protein include yogurt and cheese (hey, this sounds like dairy products!), animal foods (chicken, meat, fish and eggs), and for those of you who prefer vegetarian foods (beans, lentils, nuts and seeds).

In Parkinson’s’ disease there are decreased quantities of dopamine which result in physical movements that are constant and jerky. An insufficient quantity of dopamine is also associated with Schizophrenia. The pharmaceutical L-dopa can sometimes help neurons to continue producing dopamine.

Acetylcholine

The chemical acetylcholine (ACh) is produced in an area just above the brain stem and is present throughout the brain. It is involved in voluntary and involuntary muscle movement, as well as in the formation of long-term memory. At night, when memory consolidation takes place, there are higher levels of acetylcholine present, and it turns out that many of our dreams are caused by this chemical. Most importantly, acetylcholine assists with communication from neuron to neuron.

So how do you make sure your brain is producing adequate amounts of acetylcholine? Choline is one of the ingredients that goes into producing acetylcholine and is found in eggs, salmon, liver, soy and lean beef. These foods all help raise choline levels because they contain lecithin, which has been connected to having a positive impact on memory recall. Hmm, it looks like not all fats are bad for your health and what you eat actually can make a difference to your brain’s health!

What happens if there are not proper quantities of acetylcholine? Apparently this is what happens to patients with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Aricept is a drug that is possibly slowing the breakdown of acetylcholine in Alzheimer’s patients and you can see a video of how it is believed to work at the Aricept site.