One Brain's journey

I have been a fan of natural health products since I managed to lower my blood pressure with Omega 3 capsules and so am a little more friendly to reports such as this one from a study conducted at the Center for Learning and Memory at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Guosong Liu, the center’s director, found that magnesium, “led to significant enhancement of spatial and associative memory in both young and aged rates.” Magnesium is found in some fruits and most leafy vegetables but the study made use of a new magnesium compund–Magnesium-L-threonate (MgT)–but the new compound was just a more efficient way of delivering magnesium to the brain. Mr. Liu said, “Half the population of industrialized countries has a magnesium deficiency which only worsens with age.” He went on to say, “If normal or even higher levels of magnesium can be maintained, we may be able to affect cognitive function.” Mr. Liu is a former professor at MIT in Boston and is co-founder of Magceutics, a California-based company developing pharmaceuticals for the prevention and treatment of age-dependent memory decline and Alzheimer’s disease. He claims that if you consume less than 400 milligrams of magnesium per day, you could be at risk for allergies, asthma and heart disease.

Just last week, I was telling a friend about this research and he mentioned that he had been told by a natural health practitioner to take a magnesium supplement for Restless Leg Syndrome, (RLS) a condition in which, legs at rest, usually when you are just lying down to go to sleep, feel as if they are twitching. I have RLS and thought that perhaps a magnesium supplement would improve my cognitive functioning as well as my sleep if it could stop that dreadful sensation of leg twitches. I would love to report at the end of this post that I immediately went out to the health food store and got some but…I forgot.

Today I came across a website called Ethiopian Review which presented a number of interesting, if counter-intuitive, health tips. I have nothing against Ethiopians but it is not the first place that would come to mind to search for this kind of information. However, like this site, much of the research there is sourced from authoritative sources with commentary by the authors.

Swearing Eases Pain
Researchers at Keele University discovered that subjects who swore could withstand pain better than than those who used less offensive words.

Getting Angry Is Good For Blood Pressure
Generally accepted wisdom is that getting angry raises your blood pressure and therefore is ill-advised. At Carnegie Mellon University, scientists found that people who were irritated in high-stress situations and responded by getting angry, produced a stress hormone called cortisol which acts to lower blood pressure. The worst way to respond to a high stress situation, according to findings of the study, would appear to be fear which resulted in higher blood pressure.

Stress boosts Memory
This is the item most appropriate to this blog and the information comes from a study conducted at the University of Buffalo where researchers found that a brief period of stress can boost memory and learning capabilities. Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Zhen Yan trained lab rats to complete a maze and then one half of the group were put through a stressful, 20-minute swim. The wet rats made fewer mistakes when re-running the maze than the ones who did get the stressful swim.

Coca Cola (R) Works To Prevent Cognitive Decline

Soda pop has a bad name in most circles but neuroscientists at Glasgow Caledonia University found that fizzy drinks with 25 grams of sugar (the same as a can of Coke(R)) helped  subjects with memory.  In fact those subjects who had the drink were able to recall about 17% more information than the control group.  This is a bit of a no-brainer since the brain uses glucose as fuel.  It is what the body does naturally in stressful situations where good recall might be a beneficial in surviving but the mechanism tends to decline with age and therefore, what the older you get the more you should drink.

By now, two weeks into the new year, some of you may already have made and broken at least one New Year’s resolution. Don’t despair. If your resolution involved forming a new habit, like going to the gym at least twice a week, it may take just a little longer than two weeks to become fully formed. Neuroplasticity research indicates that new habits can rake three to four weeks to become part of your daily life. I have written about the dark side of neuroplasticity in previous posts but the lessons are these for breaking old habits and forming new ones:
1. You can do it but it will take time and effort and, most importantly, planning
2. You will have to go about it very deliberately
3. You will have to persist–three or four weeks or longer
4. If you revert to an old habit, just try again…persist

For myself, I am renewing a resolution I and a friend made last year. We had done our grading for first degree black belts in karate two years previously, and were going to go for our second degree. We didn’t make it. His health had worked against him and as for me…well the teachers who were guiding us didn’t think I was ready. So this New Year’s resolution is the same. Just last week I ran into another black belt that went for the grading as my friend and I and he told me he did the second degree grading last June. I was dismayed and amongst the many thoughts that ran through my head was one about dropping out of karate altogether. That one saddens me since I took up the martial art in the first place to improve my cognitive functioning. I didn’t entertain that thought for long and have now recommitted.

More on this at a subsequent date…

I had promised another post more-or-less on the same topic as the last and the one I propose I think is appropriate for this time of year. I have often spent too much on a Christmas gift, or more selfishly, bought something for myself that was too expensive or unnecessary or both. The resultant feeling of anxiety can be overpowering. If I am lucky when this strikes, I can take the item back for a refund but more and more I have been shopping at places that don’t allow refunds or exchanges. I did it last Saturday. Ostensibly I bought a bluetooth headset for a friend for Christmas at a discount electronics store. When I got it home I realized two things. My friend is useless with anything electronic and that, knowing this, I really bought it for myself.  Buyer remorse then set in unrelieved by a return to the store which was expressly forbidden on the receipt. I already had a bluetooth car speaker system. I bought it on an impulse but there is something creepier in there and that is that I knew it would make me feel better. Anyone with ADHD (and perhaps a couple of other disorders) can identify with this trick. But the trick can backfire, as was happening in this case, and make you feel worse. I tried to rationalize that it was a Christmas gift from me-to-me but my conscience wasn’t buying it. And I’m stuck with it. Well, I thought, at least I’ll get a post out of it.

It is called buyer remorse or, more correctly, cognitive dissonance and I came across an excellent explanation of it here.  Essentially cognitive dissonance according to this blog describes “the negative tension that results from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one’s beliefs.”  Wikipedia says the cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.  It goes on to say that beliefs often change to match behavior when beliefs and behavior are in conflict.  Buyer remorse is a well-known consumer phenomenon and with high-ticket items, the manufacturers’ often include a folder or card that explains to the buyer why they have made a wise choice.  The point is, of course, to keep them from returning the item.

There are far more serious consequences though in terms of addiction and cognitive dissonance then expresses itself as denial.  The plays out in the scenario where the individual is getting drunk, or stoned, everyday.  Addicts get stoned everyday.  I can’t be an addict so therefore getting stoned everyday is okay.

To make this whole post even more relevant you could say that the world is living in a time of global warming.  Governments, and individuals, aren’t doing much about it.  Therefore, if we are all sane, then doing nothing must be okay.  Or even better, since we aren’t doing anything about it then global warming can’t be happening.

Addiction and the accompanying denial are the downside of neuroplasticity.  Neural pathways can keep us in habits that are self-destructive.  To change this requires deliberate and continuous action to move us in the opposite direction.

I’ve taken this far from just a bit of Christmas shopping and in so, in keeping with the most positive actions of the season, I will stop and wish you all a great holiday.  (Or is breaking off here just more denial…)

An interesting post on the blog tweetingdonal on wordpress here, quotes a study about working memory looking at its effects on other cognitive functioning, specifically decision making. The effect according to this site is known as cognitive load theory. The study asked volunteers to memorize two numbers and then walk down a hallway and, at the end, choose a dessert, either chocolate cake or fruit salad. A different sample was asked to memorize a seven digit number (pretty well the limit on working memory capacity) and then walk down the same hallway (while saying the number to themselves) and also choose from the same two desserts. Almost twice as many people in this sample chose the chocolate cake as compared to the previous sample who had only memorized two digits. The theory is that when working memory is filled to capacity, it either has to jettison one of the bits to access other cognitive functions such as decision making or suffer the consequences.  In this case it would be “just give me the damn cake.” The blog does not speculate on why the choice was the cake but perhaps it was the most visible or the easiest to say. The important point, of course, is not the choice but how it was made without contemplation or consideration

This is scary to a person with working memory problems, namely me, as it suggests that my decision, perhaps even important ones, are not a result of choice but of expedience. I like to think that everything I do represents who I am and, more importantly, who I want to be. I believe the conclusion from the study based on what I do know about the way working memory functions. There is another down side to this and I’ll pursue it in the next post…