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Maximising the Potential of the Brain: Use It or Lose it!

© Beverley Paine, Jan 2007

I was reminded the other day that mental decay as we age is only natural. I found myself nodding in agreement before my naturally critical mind did a double take and said, wait a minute, that's not right... Sure, it does get harder to solve problems and remember things but that's not because we're dropping brain cells left, right and centre, it's because we choose not to use them and our bodies have a natural tendency to dispose of waste and doesn't discriminate. Use it or lose it is the message we're sending ourselves!

All my life I've been told that children learn faster and better than older people, or that the 'window for learning' occurs in the first few years of life and after that it's a downhill ride! As far as I'm concerned I'm living proof of the fallacy of this remark. I know I've learned just as much, just as efficiently, as an adult. I'm confident that the mental filing system I put together during those childhood years supports a superior learning system, one that can make quick connections between the millions of pieces of information my senses bombard my brain with every day. As a kid I did this without a lot of conscious effort. As a teen I became aware of the process and have celebrated the empowerment awareness brings ever since. I am a learner and I'm in control of my learning processes! There's no way I'm giving in to watching that power erode as I age!

Dr Joseph Mercola, in his regular newsletter, reminds us that "there's no better or enjoyable ways to protect your mind and memory as you age than to take advantage of the many simpler, safer brain-teasers" he has offered readers in the past. He reports that a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association affirms that staying mentally active actually improves "memory and cognitive capacity". The study mentioned above involved giving senior citizens short sessions of "brain exercise" over a period of six weeks. The exercises involved mental training in memory skills, reasoning or mental processing.

All this is good news, but doesn't surprise me at all. What does surprise me is how we continue to ignore the message of "use it or lose it". In my much younger days I often wondered, Alzheimer's Syndrome aside, why some elderly people stayed mentally sprightly and kept their health and vitality while others seemed to be sitting around waiting to die. I came to the conclusion that attitude to learning has more to do with mental decay than growing old.

I'm convinced that the education system our society has developed over the last couple of hundred years effectively dumbs us down, not because the content is forcefully rammed down our throats as children, but because of the underlying attitude to learning. We're taught, from the cradle onwards that there is something wrong with the tool we use to learn, our brains. We taught that without structured input from experts - older, wiser and more knowledgable or skilled people - we won't learn. We're taught that because we're immature our brains haven't developed the skills to learn. We learn to distrust our natural instinct for learning and learn instead to rely more and more on our teachers to solve the problem, give us the answer, show us the correct direction to travel in life: the very opposite, in fact, of the goals of any educational program!

Through schooling we're taught that learning is a chore. What was a simple task as a toddler becomes difficult, almost impossible for some. LIttle by little we stop asking questions, stop developing our critical thinking skills, learn to conform, learn to become lazy thinkers. We do this to fit in, belong, be 'normal'. Over the time the cumulative effect of this atrophy of our brain muscle begins to show and we become less capable of doing those simple calculations, or of confidently making decisions, deriving logical arguments, drawing sensible conclusions or learning from our experiences. Thinking processes slow down; we say our brains are 'foggy' whereas what they really are is 'rusty'! It's time to polish off that rust before the corrosion goes any deeper.

Learning is a life long process. It's as natural as breathing. We're expert at it the day we're born. Don't let anyone take that ability from you. Don't accept the myth that as get older we lose our ability to think sharply. Medical research tells us otherwise, but more than that, common sense tells us otherwise. We all know of scientists, doctors and other creative people who do their best work in their senior years. What do they do that promotes this late age productivity - they continue to think and act creatively throughout life. They don't retire, or look forward to retirement. To them work is play and play is work. It's all a game of learning and learning is intrinsically fun.

In his down to earth fashion, Dr Mercola offers some other "simple guidelines for sharply reducing your Alzheimer's risks:

• Have a consistent source of high quality omega-3 fats like fish or krill oil
• Eat your vegetables.
• Get active with an exercise program.
• Reduce your exposure to heavy metals like aluminium.
• Optimize your diet, and consider applying metabolic typing principles."

He also blames the abuse of sugar in our diets as a leading cause of memory loss. I can attest to that! After binging on sugary foods not only is my memory impaired but also my ability to reason logically to a sensible conclusion. I've learned not to trust decisions I made during such times. Although not for everyone (see metabolic diet types), a low carb diet is the best for optimal brain functioning for me.

There are lots of different ways we can exercise the grey matter in both sides of our brains. It's important to do a variety of different things so that both hemispheres are in use. Many of us have become adept at using the left side of our brain - it's the side traditionally valued in the educational system and workplace. Moving, dancing, singing, creating, hunting: these all draw heavily on the right side of our brain and unfortunately aren't valued very much in the modern workplace. A few of us are privilleged enough to be encouraged to pursue these as hobbies if we're not lucky enough to find gainful employment in these areas. The message we all need to embrace is that it's these hobbies that help keep that brain muscle supple and ready to tackle the most difficult of problems with ease!

It's important to encourage our children to immerse themselves in many different hobbies over their childhood and to feel okay about giving a lot of time to them as adolescences and young adults. It's through participating in our hobbies that many of us eventually meet our soul-mates! Hobbies need greater emphasis in the education of young people. Playing games is another way to keep that brain perpetually 'young'. Solitaire or with company, any kind of game exercises the mind. Doing puzzles - any kind of puzzle - every day is another powerful brain exercise that has been shown to pay dividends. Physical exercise is also essential: playing physical games with your children is probably the easiest way to help develop their mathematical and problem solving skills, let alone improve their memory for all those math facts!

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