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The Exercise That Protects Your Brain
Plus: how to navigate the healthcare system better
The 10almonds Team
April 16, 2024
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Top tip for healthy blood sugars: don’t drink your calories!
While we don’t generally advocate for calorie-counting, drinking calories usually means consuming simple carbs in the way that they are most quickly and easily absorbed into your bloodstream, causing a blood sugar spike, contributing to insulin insensitivity, and ultimately increasing one’s risk for metabolic disorders.
So, while alcohol should certainly be first on the skip-it list, you might also want to say no to that caramelatte mocha frappuccino, and yes, juices (even pure fruit juice) are not great for blood sugars either.
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Regular 10almonds readers will know that exercise is good for the brain, what kinds are best and how?
Today’s main feature learns from specialist Dr. Wendy Suzuki about the exercises that not only boost neurotransmitter levels, but also actively build key parts of your brain, making them larger and stronger.
As a bonus, this also helps protect them from neurodegeneration, because a larger/stronger starting point means it takes a lot longer for cognitive decline to reach the kinds of levels we’re most likely to worry about.
Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.
Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!
Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive
🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE
 | Patient Partners?Navigating the health-care system is not easy, but you don’t have to be alone. |
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
How To Easily Eat Enough Fiber (2:41)
Prefer text? Check out our previous main feature:
Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖
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❓ MYSTERY ITEM
All A Board!
Hint: today’s mystery item will help a lot in your quest to become world Twister* champion!
*we jest, being the jesters that we are, but in all seriousness, good mobility is critical as we get older, and especially in that position of “when on, or almost on, the ground”!
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🧠 MAIN FEATURE
The Neuroscientist In The Gym
This is Dr. Wendy Suzuki. She’s a neuroscientist, and an expert in the neurobiology of memory, as well as neuroplasticity, and the role of exercise in neuroprotection.
We’ve sneakily semi-featured her before when we shared her Big Think talk:
Today we’re going to expand on that a little!
A Quick Recap
To share the absolute key points of that already fairly streamlined rundown:
Exercise boosts levels of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin (and, which wasn’t mentioned there, noradrenaline)
These are responsible for motivation, happiness, and focus (amongst other things)
Persistent exercise boosts certain regions of the brain in particular, most notably the pre-frontal cortex and the hippocampi*
These are responsible for planning and memory (amongst other things)
Dr. Suzuki advocates for stepping up your exercise routine if you can, with more exercise generally being better than less (unless you have some special medical reason why that’s not the case for you).
*often referred to in the singular as the hippocampus, but you have one on each side of your brain (unless a serious accident/incident destroyed one, but you’ll know if that applies to you, unless you lost both, in which case you will not remember about it).
What kind(s) of workout?
While a varied workout is best for overall health, for these brain benefits specifically, what’s most important is that it raises your heart rate.
This is why in her Big Think talk we shared before, she talks about the benefits of taking a brisk walk daily. See also:
If that’s not your thing, though (and/or is for whatever reason an inaccessible form of exercise for you), there is almost certainly some kind of High Intensity Interval Training that is a possibility for you. That might sound intimidating, but if you have a bit of floor and can exercise for one minute at a time, then HIIT is an option for you:
Dr. Suzuki herself is an ardent fan of “intenSati” which blends cardio workouts with yoga for holistic mind-and-body fitness. In fact, she loves it so much that she became a certified exercise instructor:
How much is enough?
It’s natural to want to know the minimum we can do to get results, but Dr. Suzuki would like us to bear in mind that when it comes to our time spent exercising, it’s not so much an expense of time as an investment in time:
❝Exercise is something that when you spend time on it, it will buy you time when you start to work❞
Read more: A Neuroscientist Experimented on Her Students and Found a Powerful Way to Improve Brain Function
Ok, but we really want to know how much!
Dr. Suzuki recommends at least three to four 30-minute exercise sessions per week.
Note: this adds up to less than the recommended 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, but high-intensity exercise counts for twice the minutes for these purposes, e.g. 1 minute of high-intensity exercise is worth 2 minutes of moderate exercise.
How soon will we see benefits?
Benefits start immediately, but stack up cumulatively with continued long-term exercise:
❝My lab showed that a single workout can improve your ability to shift and focus attention, and that focus improvement will last for at least two hours. ❞
…which is a great start, but what’s more exciting is…
❝The more you're working out, the bigger and stronger your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex gets. Why is that important?
Because the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus are the two areas that are most susceptible to neurodegenerative diseases and normal cognitive decline in aging. ❞
In other words, while improving your heart rate through regular exercise will help prevent neurodegeneration by the usual mechanism of reducing neuroinflammation… It’ll also build the parts of your brain most susceptible to decline, meaning that when/if decline sets in, it’ll take a lot longer to get to a critical level of degradation, because it had more to start with.
Read more:
Want more from Dr. Suzuki?
You might enjoy her TED talk:
Prefer text? TED.com has a transcript for you 😎
Prefer lots of text? You might like her book, which we haven’t reviewed yet but will soon:
Enjoy!
A QUICK QUESTION…
What is your opinion of primary care telehealth?By “primary care” we mean the initial consultation with a non-specialist doctor, before receiving treatment or being referred to a specialist. By “telehealth” we mean by videocall or phonecall. |
We’ll then talk about this on Friday!
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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
How to Stay Sane – by Philippa Perry
First, what this book is not: a guide of “how to stay sane” in the popular use of the word “sane”, meaning free from serious mental illness of all and any kinds in general, and especially free from psychotic delusions. Alas, this book will not help with those.
What, then, is it? A guide of “how to stay sane” in the more casual sense of resiliently and adaptively managing stress, anxiety, and suchlike. The “light end” of mental health struggles, that nonetheless may not always feel light when dealing with them.
The author, a psychotherapist, draws from her professional experience and training to lay out psychological tools for our use, as well as giving the reader a broader understanding of the most common ills that may ail us.
The writing style is relaxed and personable; it’s not at all like reading a textbook.
The psychotherapeutic style is not tied to one model, and rather hops from one to another, per what is most likely to help for a given thing. This is, in this reviewer’s opinion at least, far better than the (all-too common) attempt made by a lot of writers to try to present their personal favorite model as the cure for all ills, instead of embracing the whole toolbox as this one does.
Bottom line: if your mental health is anywhere between “mostly good” and “a little frayed around the edges but hanging on by at least a few threads”, then this book likely can help you gain/maintain the surer foundation you’re surely seeking.
What did you think of today's newsletter?We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by! |
Wishing you a healthy brain (and a healthy rest-of-the-body),
The 10almonds Team
