Keep Your Brain Young
3 TIPS FOR GOOD BRAIN HEALTH FROM HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
2. Pay attention to your mental health.
THE CAUSE MAY NOT BE WHAT YOU THINK Knee Pain Exercising regularly helps all the muscles and organs in your body, even your brain! A good workout can lower your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol levels, which help your brain and your heart. Harvard Health Publishing, a website of Harvard Medical School, also notes that “animals who exercise regularly increase the number of tiny blood vessels that bring oxygen- rich blood to the region of the brain that is responsible for thought.” As we age, our bodies change, including our mental functions. Cognitive decline is one of the biggest fears of aging, but it’s not inevitable. Though we’re still learning new things about how our brains work, there’s a lot of scientific research that shows how to keep your brain young. If you want to keep your mind sharp throughout your lifetime, then follow this advice from Harvard Medical School. 1. Get a good workout.
Poor mental health can lead to impaired cognitive function. Chronic anxiety, depression, and exhaustion tend to cause low scores on cognitive function tests. But test scores aren’t necessarily a sign of future cognitive decline, and Harvard Health Publishing urges readers to maintain good mental health and get restful sleep, as they are “certainly important goals” for improving cognitive function and overall well-being. 3. Stay connected. It’s not enough to focus on yourself. In order to maintain your long-term cognitive health, you should also focus on your connections with other people. According to Harvard Health Publishing, “Strong social ties have been associated with a lower risk of dementia, as well as lower blood When Tammy (name changed) first came to Mission PT, she was frustrated. There was a sense of hopelessness and she was in pain. Tammy weighed about 400 pounds and was convinced that her left knee hurt because she was overweight. She had already been dieting for months, and while she had seen some progress, she knew she needed to exercise. Unfortunately, any exercise she attempted seemed to trigger pain in her knee. By that time, her knee was bad enough that an orthopedist had recommended surgery. But he also told her that he would not perform the surgery until she had lost some weight. She felt trapped. Then she came to us and we told her the good news. Her weight was only one factor and based on what we saw, it wasn’t the most significant reason she had knee pain. Understandably, Tammy was confused by our assessment. We suggested that if her weight was directly causing her knee pain, her other knee ought to be hurting too, and since it wasn’t, we looked for other possible causes. What we found instead was that the source
pressure and longer life expectancy.” Make new friends, stay in touch with family members, and maintain positive relationships in your life. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is certainly true when it comes to your brain health. Do what you can today to protect your mental functions tomorrow. of the pain was related to the way Tammy moved. There was a specific way she moved that was, at first, merely irritating her knee. Over time, however, this movement began to cause more problems, including her persistent pain. Tammy was skeptical at first, but we were ready to prove it! All we asked for was her trust. She gave us that, and only three weeks later, she was able to do four sets of 20 squats without triggering knee pain. She was glowing — and ready to finally take on exercise. What did we do? We looked beyond the obvious. All too often, pain is caused by the seemingly insignificant movements we make throughout the day, along with the positions in which we sit or stand. Sometimes that movement may seem normal or natural to ourselves and we may be completely oblivious that we’re moving in a way that will eventually cause a problem. It comes down to this: When you correct your movement, you unlock your body’s power to heal itself. And then, like Tammy, you can go from hopeless to hopeful.
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