That's Fit

In my family it's well known that my dad has a great "sniffer." He detests perfume so, of course, when I was in high school I wanted to wear perfume terribly! I remember buying some with a subtle scent, then putting on the tiniest bit imaginable while I was up in my bedroom. My father, from downstairs, shouted up to me to "wipe that stuff off!" It was amazing. While I don't think many people have a sense of smell quite as attuned as my dad's, it turns out that most of us can be trained to sense danger through our sense of smell.

Scientists have determined that the human sense of smell can be trained to detect even subtle changes in smells associated with danger. Study volunteers were exposed to two grassy odors and none could differentiate between the smells. The volunteers were then given a mild shock during one of of the smells; after being given the shock they were all able to tell the difference between the two odors. MRI brain scans taken before and after shocks were administered showed a change in the olfactory cortex after the shocks.

It's official... the nose knows!

My son is adopted. While he is kind, incredibly smart, athletic, and way too funny for words, there are some traits which don't come naturally for him. He has little to no empathy for others and doesn't have much compassion either. His lack of those traits comes directly from his birth mom's bad choices while pregnant with him and the traumas and inconsistencies he endured during his first 10 years of life. (I adopted him shortly after his 10th birthday). Teaching him to be empathetic and compassionate is a part of my everyday life. I take every example I can to point out others' emotions in an effort to have him start recognizing others' feelings. It's something that will likely take years and years to teach and will probably never be a natural, instinctive reaction for my son. He has a heart of gold, though... I just have to help learn to bring that out more often.

So I was happy to read this article which states that kindness and compassion can be taught through meditation. People who practice meditation with a focus in those areas actually experience changes in the area of the brain which promotes those traits. The study involved 16 monks and practitioners who had meditated for at least 10,000 hours in their lifetime and 16 novices who had only recently been taught meditation. Those who have meditated more had increased brain response to introduced noises (such as a woman crying).

While it's obviously unrealistic for the average Joe to meditate more than 10,000 hours, I think the finding that areas of the brain can be retrained to be more compassionate is very interesting.

Women drinkers may have something to lament from now on, if they buy into this new research that is! According to psychiatrists, wine causes more damage to the brain in comparison to beer. The study shows that this affects the hippocampus area for women more predominantly than men.

Wine has been touted as a beneficial drink for health reasons, so this could be seen as a bummer for people (particularly women) who may often indulge with a glass. So how exactly does it hurt the brain anyway? Researchers were able to study the brain and assess the shrinkage that this type of alcohol helped contribute to.

The hippocampus was shown to be 10 percent smaller in those who drank wine than the drinkers who preferred spirits and beer. However, I think it's worth taking this study with a grain of salt because the way they got these results was by comparing diagnosed alcoholics to healthy brains. So in other words, this references alcohol dependence and not necessarily people who are moderate drinkers. That's not to say a smaller scale association can't be made, but it's not worth panicking over.

We may be getting closer to HAL 9000 before too long. Scientists have tested a computer which can accurately predict what you are looking at 90 percent of the time. In the study, the system was able to tell what people were seeing just by watching test subjects' brain patterns.

By exposing people to various stock photography, the computer literally "got to know" the person. After it learned a little about how they reacted when seeing fruit, for example, it could simply watch their brains later and tell the next time that person was seeing fruit.

Even if it was a different photo, it could predict what they were looking at. This could be a building block to construct systems capable of reading people's mind in more advanced ways later on. Wouldn't it be neat to peer into dreams at night? We may be able to do exactly that in the future!

Overall fitness is about more than just your body, and although being physically fit will certainly help you do better at work (more energy, more confidence) focusing on your mental fitness will give you an even bigger boost. Better yet, why not strive for both? Here are some easy ideas for sharpening your mind (and body):



Get your dance on (or your kick)
Exercise is great for both your physical and mental health, but when it comes to getting more brain power not all exercises are created equal. The more complex the exercise the more stimulating and beneficial it is for your mind, so things like dance or martial arts classes are the way to go.

Our brains hold a lot of secrets that not everyone totally understands. But that's the exciting thing about some of its mysteries! Here's a list of 10 interesting elements involving the human mind that are not fully explained.

For example, have you ever heard the term "phantom limb?" This references the sensation amputees can relate to when they lose a body part. Specifically, it means they can still feel their missing attachments. A startling number of amputees are estimated to feel itching, pressure and even pain -- on in regards to limbs that don't exist. Why is this? They think it's because the brain is hard wired to function as a whole body, so it acts like a blue-print.

Another "mystery" is the understanding of laughter. Researchers can't quite pin down why people laugh! For instance, why would some people laugh at slap stick humor while others get a rise out of horror movies? They know three areas of the brain are involved with laughing, but the cause underlying this whole effect is still unknown! Check out the rest of the tidbits here.

Living with pain every day of every week can take its toll on any person, but it's not just the constant effect of suffering. Scientists have compared brain patterns of healthy, pain-free test subjects to those of individuals who experience aching all the time. What they found is that suffering all day could adversely alter the wiring of their brains.

When a person is hurting, their brain constantly fires neurons that it would otherwise shut down when doing simple tasks like making a decision. So someone in chronic pain has this effect every day. In other words, the neurons fail to "quiet down."

Researchers argue that this constant firing of connections could permanently damage their wiring. If these areas don't shut down properly, the brain can't keep itself in equilibrium. Thus other problems like sleep and depression set in. Hopefully they can use this research to better treat chronic pain suffers in the future -- perhaps finding a way to medically quiet the neurons!

When you think weight loss, deep brain stimulation is probably the last thing that would come to your mind. But that didn't stop Canadian doctors from trying it on a middle-aged man suffering from morbid obesity. They had tried traditional treatments, and he didn't want gastric bypass surgery. So, they hooked electrodes up to his brain and tried to see if they could stimulate the hypothalamus.

This was meant to try and curb his desire to eat. But instead what they discovered was that the jolt stimulated memories from 30 years ago! The man felt like he was 20 again with memories of hanging out at the park with friends.

After the recollections got more intense, they ran some tests to determine how the deep brain stimulation affected memory performance. With the electrodes on, he did much better on these tests than when they were off. This is an interesting outcome they discovered accidentally, but no word on whether or not the stimulation helped his obesity!

Have you ever run into an acquittance and could not remember his or her name? That mental block happens to everyone. It happened to me just yesterday when I racked my head for 30 minutes trying to recall the name of a person with whom I'd just carried on a conversation. No matter how hard I tried to remember, I couldn't match the face with a name -- even as I was talking to him!

It wasn't until later last night when I was relaxed on the couch that it came to me. It was the iconic "Aha!" moment. Scientists have been studying that mental breakthrough moment for a while now, and they've finally made a connection to mental blocks and the "Aha!" instances that follow.

Well it turns out the best way to remember, is to just forget it! Put it away and try not to think about whatever is giving you such a hard time. The lead researcher on the project says you must be "relaxed, to allow the spontaneous, free-floating ideas to emerge." If you mull over it too much, you're just going to muddy the water even more. This makes perfect sense, because remember names was the last thing on my mind last night.

During a stroke, it is common for a primary function area of the brain to be disrupted. In efforts to compensate for this disruption, the brain sort of kicks into high gear to help reorganize motor and cognitive ability. In some cases, this is the beginning of the recovery process.

Researchers from the University of Oxford took a good, hard look into this "backup" brain region, and how it comes to the aid of the brain during a stroke. Focusing on the region of the brain known as the dorsal premotor cortex (which is known to govern the selection of an action), the researchers used magnetic pulses to stimulate and briefly disrupt one hemisphere of the brain and observed how the other hemisphere reacted. They found that during this disruption, the opposite hemisphere dorsal premotor cortex increased activity to compensate.

A better understanding of this compensatory process may assist doctors in treating stroke patients. For further information, visit www.neuron.org and look for an article titled "Functionally Specific Reorganization in Human Premotor Cortex."

As a general rule talking all the time is considered a slightly negative habit, but if you love to chit chat you might be doing yourself some good: research shows that small talk helps memory. Just 10 minutes of talking with somebody face to face was shown to be just as effective on memory and intellectual performance as spending the same time doing crosswords or Sudoku puzzles.

So if you're not a puzzle person and you've been frustrated because all the "boost your memory" stuff seems to center around doing puzzles, math, or the like -- good news! Now you can talk your way to better mental health!

The world is filling up with people, and that means competition in all kinds of different areas of our lives. But maybe one of the most noticeable, and the most stressful, is the competition that we face in our careers while we're at work. If you're not always on the top of your game and blowing everybody away with your amazing abilities then there's somebody right behind you who ready, willing, and waiting to do just that.

So how do you deal with the pressure? Unfortunately a growing number of working people are looking to boost brain power, productivity, and alertness in all the wrong ways. Sports (most recently baseball) have always struggled with keeping drugs and other unnatural means of performance enhancement out of the picture, but now it seems the trend is moving into the working class. People are doping up in the hopes of doing better at their jobs.

We all know 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week does the body good. Add these steps to your 30-minute routine, and Michael F. Roizen, MD, says you'll keep your brain young.

• Eat Indian. Each week, eat six curry dishes or six teaspoons of dark mustard, or a combination of the two, and you may lower your Alzheimer's risk.

• Teach. You're more likely to retain information if you explain it to someone else.

• Go Tomatoes. Take in 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce (with olive oil and no added sugar). Do this every week and your brain will thank you.

• Laugh. Laughter really is good medicine. It's good enough to improve memory, in fact.

• Drink Coffee. More help on the Alzheimer's front. No cream or sugar allowed.

• Go Fish. Make it fish with low toxins, three to four times per week, or take molecularly distilled fish oil each day.

As the end of the year quickly approaches us, many of us will be resolving to work on our bodies in 2008. But working our mind is just as important--after all, can you imagine what life would be like if you lost it? The key to aging well not only lies in your physical state--it lies in your mental capacity too. So make sure you work your mind too.

Here are some suggestions:

• Use it or you'll lose it. Work on your mental strength by taking on new tasks. Take up a new hobby, sign up for a class or commit to doing a crossword or sudoku puzzle each night. Watching a new TV show or movie doesn't count.
  
• Rest. You need your rest -- make sure you're getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night, and when you feel tired, take some downtime.
  
• Find a way to limit stress. Research shows that stress hormones hinder the function or parts of the brain associated with learning and memory. But this isn't a permanent state -- drop your stress levels and you brain will return to normal.

My kids are split on the fish thing. One little guy gobbles down the fish we serve for dinner -- usually Salmon or Tilapia -- and the bigger guy would rather the stuff never pass through his lips. He's a good sport, though, and eats what we tell him he must eat. It helps that we promise to never serve fish more than once per week -- which we do because we think it's so good for their growing bodies, what with all the Omega-3 fatty acids.

Yep, Omega-3s are beneficial for children, reported delegates at the Joint New Zealand & Australian Nutrition Societies Conference held this month. It seems new research by an international team of nutrition scientists shows conclusive evidence of improved brain growth and development, increased attention, and improved learning. How does fish come into play? Well, of particular interest is a range of health problems among New Zealand children that are being attributed to diets lacking oily fish and other foods rich in Omega-3s.

The effects of Omega-3 are so powerful that experts recommend kids increase their consumption as much as five times their current level. They also suggest healthcare professionals consider Omega-3s as an adjunct to treatment for kids with development brain disorders like ADHD and dyslexia.

And there you have it. My kids need fish. And so I will serve them fish, even if for just one day each week.