How To Keep Your Brain Young, And Slow The Process Of Ageing

                                                               

WE don’t have to age — or at least grow old as fast as we do. That’'s the finding of researchers in the US, where a group of specially trained lab rats equivalent in our years to 60-year-olds became as “young” and healthy as their 20-year-old companions. 

Although our bodies will inevitably decline, scientific evidence presented at the recent international Mind & Its Potential Conference in Sydney suggests that the process can be slowed down by several decades. The things that really matter to us — vitality, libido, memory, and brain power — don’t have to change much into our 70s and 80s. And how can this be achieved? Not through hormones, surgery, vitamins or stem cell replacement.

It’s all about neurogenesis, or our ability to grow new synapses and neurons in our brains well into old age, according to University of California neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, who in Sydney shared advice on how to keep our brains young. “The King of Neuroplasticity”, Professor Merzenich, 72, says that when the brain is rejuvenated it also rejuvenates everything from our skin and organ function to capacity for pleasure and energy. The aim is to “fatten” the brain so the body doesn’t atrophy.

So how do we do this? Merzenich and other leading neuroscientists gave me their best tips for longevity. One of Merzenich’s revolutionary methods would have baby boomers and gen Xers laughing: the silly walk, a la John Cleese and Monty Python. Merzenich finds new and complicated ways to move every day to give his brain huge challenges. He says the brain loves to make decisions and solve problems, and it hates safe ways of doing things. To stay young, he says, don’t make things easy for the brain. Give it big surprises. Get out of the cave. Don’t say “I don’t do that.” Try it.

Exercise is fantastic for overall health, but to specifically grow the brain, the exercises can’t be predictable or routine. So add to the mix Rumba, Tango, gentle acrobatics, and yes, even a silly walk.

Merzenich was one of the stars of eminent psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge’s groundbreaking bestseller on neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, The Brain That Changes Itself. Doidge told me that “What fires together wires together”, and new synapses and pathways are forged constantly as long as the brain is used. With a bit of brain rewiring and practice, a pianist can become a concert pianist; a stroke victim can learn to talk and walk.

The bottom line, says Merzenich, is “use it or lose it”. He warns us to stop using a GPS and other gadgets for simple tasks. “Study road maps, and force yourself to remember where you’re going and the details around you. As primitive beings we survived by roaming the landscape. So listen and look around in a state of mindfulness.” Before sleep he spends five minutes in bed recalling the details he’s seen in the streets that day, in order to stimulate memory. He says to try and remember phone numbers and email addresses rather than using your mobile.

He advocates training the brain with games. Not a big fan of Sudoku or other problem-solving fads, Merzenich has a website of scientifically proven exercises. BrainHQ.com, from Posit Science, was featured in the ABC documentary Redesign My Brain, in which Todd Sampson volunteered himself as a lab rat to test the science of brain plasticity. Sampson turned into somewhat of a genius before our eyes.

Merzenich also praises meditation, which according to experiments by Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of contemplative practices on the brain, opens pathways in unused areas of the mind. Merzenich says we should learn languages, go back to university or do some courses — but to leave our comfort zone. He says try complex subjects you might not be good at, such as maths.

I followed his advice and three years ago went back to university. Despite being a technophobe, I chose to study technical matters such as video production, camera usage, and operating an edit suite. I was often in tears. But I did well, and noticed that my brain improved in other areas of memory and competency. The theory is that if you develop one part of the brain, synapses grow elsewhere.

New hobbies can challenge your brain with enough tension to create small squirts of cortisol and noradrenaline. Unlike dangerous chronic stress that comes from worry, small hits of stress hormones are excellent for stimulating the mind. Perhaps birdwatch and learn the name of new species. Stay curious. Travel is great. After achieving a new skill, reward yourself. Self-praise clinches the lessons and rewires the brain. Positive feedback promotes good habits.

US psychiatrist Stuart Brown was recently in Australia talking about the importance of play in brain health. Activities such as volleyball, running into the sea and ballroom dancing have been shown to trigger parts of the brain associated with social connection and increased intelligence.

Brown first recognised the importance of play by discovering its absence in the life stories of murderers and sociopaths. His research led him to prove that when we play and laugh, we release not only dopamine, oxytocins and other reward neurochemicals but also create synaptic connections.

Social interaction is crucial for wellbeing, according to the “father of social neuroscience”, UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman. He says without love, relationships and community, the deterioration of our health is equivalent to smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. Being with people helps us read facial signs, develop empathy and exercise our prefrontal cortex, which governs higher order functions. It was, and still is, crucial to our survival as a species. So turn off Facebook and go face-to-face.

Neuroscientists have proven that juggling increases thinking speed and one’s ability to focus. Michael J. Gelb, a respected creative thinker from the US, says that while juggling we increase our metacognition — the capacity to think about our thinking processes. This improves motor skills, spatial awareness and problem-solving capacity.

Most of us feel awkward trying new things, which is why we mostly don’t. Tal Ben Shahar, a prominent US expert in positive psychology, says we need to reframe our failures so we see them as “lessons”.

He believes we should not let fear make us shun new things. Developing comes from accepting our failures with grace. “Babies don’t just walk. They need to keep falling down, then they walk,” he reassures those of us who are embarking on a journey towards our full adult potential.

How to jump-start the grey matter

• Find new ways to move or walk every day
• Don’t stay in your comfort zone. Give the brain surprises, decisions and problems to solve
• What fires together wires together. Talent is not important. Practice any skill for 10,000 hours and you’ll master it.
• Stop using a GPS and contact book: memorise maps, phone numbers and email addresses
• Do online exercises such as BrainHQ.com from Posit Science
• Meditate for at least 20 minutes at a time, preferably morning and night
• Study something you are not good at; take up hobbies
• Read, read and read
• Play and increase your social contact
• Before going to sleep, for five minutes recall details of something like the house next door or a friend’s face
• Juggle to increase motor skills and spatial awareness

 By Ruth Ostrow

With thanks to The Australian
ruthostrow.com; Twitter: @OstrowRuth

Jamie Oliver: How Being A Special-needs Student Changed My Life

                                                                 

                                                                      

                                                                      

You don't need to be a university graduate to make a positive contribution to humanity: perhaps the opposite is true?

Neither Bill Gates nor Albert Einstein were university graduates.

I admit I am a Jamie Oliver fan.I had been meaning to write something about him for quite some time and this piece below was the catalyst.

I didn't know Jamie suffered from Dyslexia. 

As an ex-school teacher I had come across pupils who had it. I know their years at school were very difficult, yet some had success in other school activities  like sport, for example.

Many years ago, before Dyslexia was officially recognised these pupils were simply called 'dunces' or worse. 

When I was teaching we knew about it but we didn't know how to deal with it.

It is true many famous, and not-so-famous people have it: actors, singers, and others.

Just look here and here.  And on You Tube also. 

Truly amazing, but I digress.

It is impressive to see what Jamie has achieved. I love to watch him de-construct some seemingly complex meals and make them look so simple to replicate.

I should say I am a very competent cook but have picked up a few very useful tips and become more adventurous with different ingredients!

His enthusiasm and energy are contagious.

His passion seems to be the key to his success and also that of his friend, Jimmy Doherty, both pictured above.

THE air is almost wet with Northernness - a lowering Lancashire sky, a rutted field with a long line of women stout of heart and body, immune to weather and fashion. There's even a brass band. And yet someone has found the soft underbelly of even these people. 

They heard a rumour and came in their hundreds, bearing votive offerings for his blessing - crumbling baked goods in Tupperware containers. He will later lay upon these people his meaty sausage hands. First, I have to get inside the security cordon, and that's when I am singled out.

"Oi, darling," shouts Jamie Oliver. "Get some food down ya. We don't want you back on that train saying ya hungry."

I had been hovering by the TV crew's lunch buffet, wondering if it was impolite to stuff your face while interviewing Oliver or rude not to. We'd not even met, and already I'm following a laddish-yet-friendly, patronising-yet-well-meaning command; hard to dislike and harder to ignore. Why, I think as I dollop potato salad, does Oliver mean so much to us? 

The second biggest-selling British author since records began, bested only by J.K. Rowling; his latest book Save With Jamie surprised no one by being the best-selling cookbook of Christmas, making him the yuletide bestseller for the fourth year running; one of his books was the UK's fastest-selling nonfiction work ever. This all on top of his various restaurant, campaigning and TV tentacles that make him one of our best-known international exports.

We are on location for Jamie and Jimmy's Friday Night Feast, his follow-up to his Food Fight Club series with his friend of 37 years, Jimmy Doherty. I'm glad that he's with Doherty (they met aged one), because he shared with Oliver one of his most formative experiences: his years in the "special needs" room at school. The more you hear about it the more you see it as a driving force in his appeal. Of course, Doherty's presence - sitting next to Oliver, wolfing down food in between excitable riffs that turn to obscene guffaws - also means you quickly start to feel a degree of empathy with their teachers. Why were you two selected for the special-needs stream at your comprehensive?

Oliver: "Because we were the thickest shites who didn't do any work. Basically, the minute I left school, Jimmy got all clever and went to university." He pauses. "But while we were at school, I struggled. Imagine a boys' school. Thirty boys in the middle of English, bang bang bang on the door, 'Can we have Jimmy and Jamie for special needs?' Just us two out of our class."

Doherty: "A lot of our time was spent writing the word knob," and he mimes passing me a note as if right back in the classroom. "When the special needs teacher called for me and Jamie, all the rest of our friends would sing ' Special Needs, Special Needs'."

Oliver: "Yeah, they used to harmonise as well," and here Oliver croons a falsetto, "'Special needs, ooooh yeah'".

What did they do in there?

Oliver: "Mrs Murphy tried to teach us how to spell conclusion. With four cards, con-clu-sion. God no, three cards. You can see now why I was there."

Mrs Murphy, their remedial reading teacher in their teenage years, was quoted in Oliver's biography as saying "To be honest I never thought he would go far", a boy so severely dyslexic he has now only in his late thirties read his first book and who tells me that of the two core subjects of the British system, reading and maths, "I couldn't think of two things that frighten me more."

But, I say, it must be unique to have two boys from the same learning difficulties unit present a show such as this, Oliver with an estimated fortune of pounds 150 million, Doherty a PhD in entomology and a TV presenter in his own right. Watching, earlier, Doherty and Oliver drive across the fields in the trademark car of their TV series - an orange Capri - is seeing an impossible boyhood fantasy come true. I tell them that they're poster boys for all those written off as "thick shites".

Oliver: "Jimmy's passion was for animals and mine was food."

Doherty: "If you get that spark that engages your interest, you're away. That's how you teach."

Oliver: "A few years ago we lived in Los Angeles for three months. My kids started at this hippy school. The first thing they asked our daughter was, 'What do you love?' and Poppy's like, 'Writing songs.' So they taught her through songwriting. I liked that. I think traditional education has got a lot to answer for. Fifty-odd per cent don't leave with five GCSEs, A-C. Not 8 or 10 per cent. In my mind we're half crap at education."

They grew up in the village of Clavering like identical twins, says Oliver: same schools, girlfriends, Kouros aftershave, "haring round to each other on our BMX". They also shared the same feeling of exclusion. By 14, Oliver was already working full-time hours in his parents' pub kitchen, Doherty was using the money he earned washing up alongside him to buy exotic animals.

"Jimmy wanted to work in a zoo," Oliver says. "I'll never forget Jimmy's mum, the offence and confusion in her eyes, as she tried to pull fishfingers out of her new freezer and instead got bags and bags of dead chicks and embryos. I just thought: 'God, it's really hard living with Jim, I'm knackered just being his friend.' I feel sorry for the whole crew. When they put us together in the Capri, they start to look quite frightened."

But, I say, I see male buddies, dads of growing children, I see a sports car, and I can't not think: midlife crisis. "Grab her," Oliver says. "I'll gag her, send her back."

Doherty says: "How old do you think we are? When that happens, I'll dress as a cowboy on horseback, chaps on, nothing else. Now that's midlife."

Your family don't mind? "They hate it," Doherty says.

"When I put shots on Instagram, of me and Jimmy in the Capri," Oliver says, "my wife goes, 'Ah, have you been "working"?' For me, you try to be a good boss, a good husband and a good father; sadly friends get kicked to the back, rightfully so, that's where they deserve to be. But without sounding too camp about it, quite a lot of the documentaries I've done, I've really wanted to be with someone else. Like say, in Huntingdon, West Virginia, they hated me for at least a month, then there's a period of transition. I could have done with saying, 'Jimmy, you have half this grief.'"

I think it is a bit like Malcolm Gladwell's new book David and Goliath, which argues that the high rate of dyslexia among entrepreneurs is no accident, that they were forced from an early age to tackle problems on their own using unorthodox methods. What Oliver does best is throwing himself into a pit of people who hate him most, but most need his help: one of our favourite spectator bloodsports is watching him being eaten alive by dinner ladies. I'm musing on this when I catch Oliver scolding Doherty for his people skills.

"Dude, can I grab a cup of tea? Thanks!" says Doherty to a passing TV crew lackey.

"Dude? You must learn his name one day. It's Dan, isn't it?" Oliver says.

"If you don't know someone's name you call them Big Bollocks," retaliates Doherty.

"I don't! I call them by their name," Oliver says. I ask him if that extends to his use of "darling" for women, and he gets quite serious. "I work with women, most of my family are women. The girls in my life are very much in control of Mr Oliver, at home and at work. They all batter me on a daily basis. That's fine, I allow them to."

Doherty: "I went to your office the other day and it was like 90 per cent women."

Oliver: "I just don't trust men as much. All of our businesses are about things that need to be looked at with a longer view - it seems to be women are better at that. I've never tried to shape it in that particular way. If anything it looks like I'm an old pervert; that's really not intentional."

Is it a relief now to do this show about food that's fun? Oliver said a while back that he was resting his campaigning on school food, although he has maintained a team of staff dedicated to school food for the past eight years. "Now's the time to let people do their jobs and come back if required. The public are incredible with me but if you keep whining at them, everyone gets fatigued. No one likes a whiner."

Is Oliver warming to Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, who drew his rage by allowing academies to ignore nutrition standards inspired by Oliver?

"I always thought he was very charismatic, it's just I don't like him touching our standards. The parents asked us to put them there and there was no logical reason for them to go away: it was a base level that protected our kids. They've essentially been put back in slightly different wording. In some respects I'm happy that we're back where we were two years ago, but also upset we've missed two years."

At this point, Doherty and Oliver start riffing on a bewildering array of topics, from how the Government must "put a tax on sugar " (Oliver) to how the price of food, now too low, will soon rise due to the booming Chinese middle classes (Doherty).

When Oliver flits on to food miles, saying, "When you send over 100 tonnes of beans from Kenya, you're not just shifting beans you're shifting water from somewhere that needs water," Doherty looks at him with a cocked eyebrow. "That is interesting, I've not heard the argument put like that before."

The plates are cleared and the producer pulls us away to give the crowd what they want. Oliver is swarmed, yet never seems flustered: for the men, a well-placed shoulder clasp and matey oven chat; for the old ladies, intense, huggy flirting.

He listens and likes energetically and catholically; he knows how it is. I've seen a lot of celebrities work a crowd. The only other person who could make individuals feel as worthy is Bill Clinton. The chef's latest book is Save With Jamie; the theme of his career could be Saved By Jamie.

In farewell, Oliver draws me aside and says in a lowered voice, half-apologetic, half-triumphant: "We've sidetracked you completely."

Thanks be to Mrs Murphy, for not doing her job too well.

With thanks to The Australian

                                                                 

Related:

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Britain Is A Nation Of Skilled Chefs But 1 in 10 Can't Cook, BBC Good Food Survey Finds
Sri Lanka’s Sirilak Garden: History And Spices
A Japanese Company Is Building The World's First Autonomous Farm
Julia Child’s French Cooking Book Was A Trail Blazer

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