Work Family Life

WORK & FAMILY LIFE BALANCING JOB AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES NOVEMBER 2010 VOL. 24, NO. 11 Practical solutions for family, workplace and health issues what’s insidE ELDER ISSUES Alcohol and the aging process 4 PARENTING Sleepovers can be good for parents too 5 ON THE JOB How NOT to forget people’s names 6 A HEALTHY YOU On breakfast cereals, dietary salt and foods for the heart and mind The human mind develops over a lifetime—and it’s never too late to make a positive change. 7 INTERCHANGE Whose “house rules” The latest on how to keep your brain at grandparents? 3 healthy and sharp at every age RESEARCH REVIEW By Susan Ginsberg, Ed.D. example, if you used to play the piano or chess but you stopped years ago, those circuits can be revived. Another reason to turn growing body of research on how the mind ages is off your phone… encouraging. It challenges the conventional wisdom Making the heart-brain connection Happy people offer that the mind inevitably declines as we get older. It more than chit chat A The benefits of an alert, challenged brain and an active makes the connection between physical fitness and mental lifestyle can be found at every age, and the “use it or lose 3 alertness. Brain health is closely related to heart health— it” formula applies to all of us, no matter how old we are. in other words, stronger heart, sharper memory. And it Dr. Restak suggests these positive steps to help us get WE RECOMMEND shows that children’s eating and exercise habits lay the smarter and stay sharper: “The Learning Tree” groundwork for a healthy life as they grow older. 8 We’ve learned that the human mind develops over a Think about thinking. This is called “metacognition” and lifetime, with some abilities peaking early and others kick- it involves becoming an expert on how your own mind Work & Family Life is ing in later. In practical terms, the new research means works. Analyze your memory patterns. What kinds of distributed by companies that no matter how old you may be at this moment, it’s things do you forget and what do you remember? Can and other organizations never too late to change your brain for the better, says neu- you rattle off your student number from college years ago to their employees and ropsychiatrist Richard Restak, M.D. He suggests thinking but can’t seem to remember your new cellphone number? clients. To see the Be your own best critic. Develop plans and strategies to online version, go to of the brain as a “work in progress that continues from workandfamilylife.com. birth till the day you die.” compensate for your specific problem areas. This insight—that the brain retains plasticity across Improve your recall. These days, if we miss a message, E-mail: [email protected] the entire life span—is fairly new. It has also been found Phone: (561) 818-3670 we can usually just click and play it again. But this may that the brain is resilient and has a lifetime memory. For Continued on page 2... The latest... explanation without Go beyond your comfort zone. Continued from page 1… carefully consider- While the brain is adaptive, it also encourage mental lazi- ing the facts in front tends to be lazy, particularly in rela- ness in other areas. We of us. Go to www. tion to intellectual activity. To stay need to pay attention puzz.com or www. sharp, we need to push ourselves to paying attention. For puzzles.com. Or and try things we’re not necessarily example, to remember search online for good at or comfortable with. where you parked your “brainteaser,” “puz- For example, if your training car or left your glasses, zle,” “anagram” or and career is in the arts, learn more take a deep breath and “logical challenge.” about science. Read challenging repeat one location de- These activities are books. Take courses. Travel if you tail out loud. good practice to can. And whatever you get inter- Write down a series help you keep an ested in, look for ways to share of random numbers, open mind. your new knowledge with others. starting with 5 digits. Without looking, repeat S tay (or get) inter- S tay active and eat healthy. In them aloud or in your ested in art and some ways, the healthy brain gets mind, one per second. music. Simply lis- even stronger with age. For exam- Work your way up to 9 tening to music can ple, studies confirm that accumu- digits. Do the same with sharpen your brain, lated knowledge and expert skills words, but spell them says Dr. Restak. He (a.k.a. wisdom) increase as we get backwards. Start with even suggests that older. A recent Duke University easy words and move on Mozart contributes study found that emotional savvy to more difficult ones. Studies show that active kids make better learners. to multilevel think- also appears to grow with age. Here’s another suggestion: move permarket, take a mental snapshot ing. Seeing and studying works Regular exercise helps keep your eyes from left to right for 30 of the people in the next line over. of fine art can also improve your the brain well oxygenated and en- seconds before learning a person’s Turn away and recall as many de- memory and other thinking pro- courages the creation of new brain name. This may sound a little odd tails as you can. Then look back cesses by creating new linkages and cells. Thirty minutes of aerobic ex- but it’s been found to increase one’s and see how well you did. networks within your brain. ercise three times a week have been found to enlarge the “hippocam- ability to recall names. (See On the Creative pursuits help too. Writ- Job on remembering names, page 6.) Make emotional connections. It’s pus,” the part of the brain that important to remember feelings ing poetry, painting a portrait or regulates emotion and memory. Use mental images. It can help that accompanied an experience as improvising on a musical instru- Strength training has been found your “prospective memory”—the well as the experience itself. One ment can strengthen one’s powers to improve “executive function,” ability to remember to do some- way to do this is to look at an old of association that play a key role the brain’s ability to focus, process thing in the future. For example, photo of yourself. Begin a written in remembering information and information and make decisions. every day after breakfast, visualize or mental “dialogue” between your finding solutions to problems. Lifestyle choices can make a yourself taking your vitamin D “former” and “current” selves. An- “Creative thinking gets both sides big difference too. Don’t smoke. supplement and checking your to- other way is to think about your of the brain working,” says neu- Drink moderately (no more than do list for the day. friendships from an earlier time. rologist Alice Flaherty. And it isn’t one a day is best), and eat a brain- To strengthen your visual limited to making art or music. To healthy diet with plenty of B vi- Develop a tolerance for uncer- memory, study the seating arrange- deal with challenges that demand tamins and omega-3 fats—and a tainty and ambiguity. The nor- ment at your next meeting. Then imagination and resourcefulness, minimum of processed foods. close your eyes or look away. See if mal human desire for clarity and it helps us find new strategies and closure often leads us to jump to combine different ideas into new See “Healthy foods for heart and you can recreate it in your mind. mind” on page 7. u Or, as you wait in line at the su- conclusions or accept a simplistic concepts. W hat works for the adult brain works for children too hildren who are physically fit have been found to do better on tests of thinking than But the study found no correlation between muscular strength and iQ scores. And while Ckids who are less fit. Researchers at the University ofi llinois have shown that two there’s no evidence that exercise alone leads to a higher iQ, researchers suggest that parts of the brain are larger among fitter kids. One is the “basal ganglia,” which helps aerobic exercise produces specific growth factors and proteins that stimulate the brain. maintain attention and “executive control,” the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts “More aerobic exercise!” for young people, suggests Professor Georg Kuhn of the crisply. the other is the “hippocampus,” which is associated with more complex memory. University of Gothenburg, senior author of the study. he encourages parents to get working together, these two parts of the brain allow some of our most intricate thinking. kids moving, preferably away from wiis. a long-term study in sweden reported that, among more than a million 18-year-old boys a still-unpublished study from dr. Kuhn’s lab compared the cognitive impact in young who joined the swedish army, better fitness was correlated with higher iQs, even among people of 20 minutes of running on a treadmill with 20 minutes of playing sports- identical twins. the fitter the twin, the higher his iQ. the fittest of the young men were style video games at a similar intensity. Running improved test scores immediately also more successful in their careers than the least fit. afterward. Playing the video games did not. u 2 WFL November 2010 w www.workandfamilylife.com INTERCHANGE Whose rules apply at grandparents’ house? My parents are great with our equipment that has gears.

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