Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Friday, September 22, 2017
Preventing Dementia and Cognitive Decline: Two Interesting Ideas: Part 2
The two ideas for preventing cognitive decline I will outline here involve a particular food, and a way of living.
The food is chocolate, specifically dark chocolate with at least 70% genuine cocoa. Small amounts. The flavonoids help break up brain plaques, according to an analysis of 14 small studies, reported in a reputable nutrition journal. We all believe that one because it's what we want to be true!!
The way of living that has also been shown to be a powerful preventer (unless, like my mother, grandmother and aunt, you have a strong genetic driver; thank god I'm adopted) is continuing to stress your brain by making it learn new things. The reason I say stress is that stem cells in your hippocampus won't be stimulated to create new neurons if you give yourself challenges that are easily achieved. So take classes at the local universities "senior college." I teach at the OLLI associated with Southern Oregon University, and it's great fun to teach as well. I take tough and complicated classes free online through Coursera.org, a consortium of major universities, including Princeton, Harvard, U of Copenhagen (origin of the universe and life, 12 weeks, incredible) and U Alberta (that amazing 3 course sequence on dinosaurs, OMG!), Caltech, MIT, Harvard - you get the picture. Really fun. Really mentally challenging, even more so than my OLLI, because I have tests during the video lessons and at the end of each week's work. I don't HAVE to pass, that's why it's free, but I WANT to test myself.
Books clubs, if they are run by serious, challenging thinkers, can work the same way. [Some are more opinions than "backing up conclusions with facts" types of groups, so they are social rather than brain-stimulating. Both types have their value!]
Reading non-fiction is something that you can do on your own. Do comprehensive, clearly-articulated "book reports" on your blog or Facebook page. Hell of a lot more interesting for your readers than what you had for lunch or how bummed out and bored you are because it's raining, right? If you don't have friends who appreciate that kind of post, Friend me, because *I* do!
Learning a language is a perennial good idea. It might take you longer to get fluent than it would have when you were younger, but that's not a reason to never start, right? If you travel, set yourself a goal of knowing 10 key phrases and have a vocabulary of at least 50 additional words before you leave. I have found that basic conversation, even if you are stammering and mis-pronouncing, signals to others that you are making an effort to meet them on THEIR ground, and generates reciprocal kindness. Which you need when you are traveling, amen.
Just being able to read signs is a confidence booster. I remember being in Moscow when my host stopped to gas up the car and I tried reading the signs. One interesting one was "motor masla." Motor was a car but masla was butter. Butter in your car? Then my brain crunched on butter, kinda-like oil, and the answer was clear. Or when driving in rural Quebec and saw signs for "Maiz" (or was it maz?). God bless my large English vocabulary. Maize is another name for corn. Yeah! I can read French!
Explore more ideas at www.soaringdragon.biz. Check out my newest book (Oct 2017):
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
The REAL Reason You Are Nervous About Public Speaking. And Maybe Keep Missing Goals as Well? Check this out....
I want to bring my interview with Shirley Dalton to your attention, and for a specific reason. Sure, I mention my new class for entrepreneurs and her fun products, but the REAL reason I want you to listen is because I made a colossal mistake, on the air, and didn't even realize it until after I listened to the recording. It's what I call a Somebody Please Shoot Me (SPSM) moment. We all have them. I am an experienced speaker and have been healing and transforming lives with these specific tools for about 17 years. Yet I goofed and didn't even hear myself do it until it was too late to fix.
And I was totally OK after about 10 seconds of SPSM. I laughed and called my husband who said, "Oh, dear." He grew up in the south. "Oh, no," is as harsh as the language gets.
And this fear of a SPSM moment is 100% why so many people fear public speaking, and so many people want to write books or become rutabaga farmers or train for a marathon - and don't do it. At a very deep level of our unconscious minds, there is a collection of neurons that remember shame and humiliation from childhood and start screaming NOOOOOOOO.
But here's the key: you don't have to feel shame and humiliation. Those feelings arise naturally from thoughts. If you do deep hypnotherapy on the thoughts and eliminate the conclusions that you've been humiliated, that no one will respect you, that you are (fill in the blanks) , then the feelings only come up for 10 seconds - and then you genuinely laugh. Spanish proverb We make plans; God laughs. So I laugh along.
My recommendation for today: journal about what you're afraid of. Dig deep into those barriers. Admit that the barriers exist. Start the process with memories that sting, breathe into them and say, "So what? So, idiots laughed at me. I made a mistake. It happens. Life is good." Keep breathing and reciting until the feelings subside. [Then sign up for a 30 day program with me, and dig that stuff out by the roots and never be bothered by it ever again - and watch career, business, book, exercise or rutabagas soar into the sky.]
And I'm guessing you'd rather know what my SPSM moment was? So you can listen for it? Well, it was a humdinger. I said the green chakra is the throat. It is, and always will be, your heart - of course. Stress does amazing things to brain function..... [See my new book 101 Stress Busters for all the fun ways to reduce stress so you have fewer SPSM moments.]
These moments WILL happen. When they do, laugh. And then let go.
www.soaringdragon.biz
Victoria C Leo
And I was totally OK after about 10 seconds of SPSM. I laughed and called my husband who said, "Oh, dear." He grew up in the south. "Oh, no," is as harsh as the language gets.
And this fear of a SPSM moment is 100% why so many people fear public speaking, and so many people want to write books or become rutabaga farmers or train for a marathon - and don't do it. At a very deep level of our unconscious minds, there is a collection of neurons that remember shame and humiliation from childhood and start screaming NOOOOOOOO.
But here's the key: you don't have to feel shame and humiliation. Those feelings arise naturally from thoughts. If you do deep hypnotherapy on the thoughts and eliminate the conclusions that you've been humiliated, that no one will respect you, that you are (fill in the blanks) , then the feelings only come up for 10 seconds - and then you genuinely laugh. Spanish proverb We make plans; God laughs. So I laugh along.
My recommendation for today: journal about what you're afraid of. Dig deep into those barriers. Admit that the barriers exist. Start the process with memories that sting, breathe into them and say, "So what? So, idiots laughed at me. I made a mistake. It happens. Life is good." Keep breathing and reciting until the feelings subside. [Then sign up for a 30 day program with me, and dig that stuff out by the roots and never be bothered by it ever again - and watch career, business, book, exercise or rutabagas soar into the sky.]
And I'm guessing you'd rather know what my SPSM moment was? So you can listen for it? Well, it was a humdinger. I said the green chakra is the throat. It is, and always will be, your heart - of course. Stress does amazing things to brain function..... [See my new book 101 Stress Busters for all the fun ways to reduce stress so you have fewer SPSM moments.]
These moments WILL happen. When they do, laugh. And then let go.
www.soaringdragon.biz
Victoria C Leo
Monday, April 25, 2016
Being Real
Over a century ago, this American essayist wrote a profound truth about human nature: we don't want to hear the truth about ourselves. We respond to truth from others like we respond to rattlesnakes. We don't tell ourselves the truth. And our conscious mind is so 100% focused on protecting our social selves from any kind of negativity that we suppress all that we could know. But all that energy spent fending off deep self-knowledge, if it were harnessed to the wagon of our dreams? My god, we could rocket to the stars, couldn't we? So much peace of mind,just waiting to be harnessed. Such creativity - blazing fountains of creativity! - if only we could reclaim all that blighting energy.
What are we so afraid of? The scorn of the "world" when we show/admit that we aren't perfect people, in one or all of our roles (entrepreneur/career, parenting, spouse, citizen, Christian/Jew/Muslim/other - every single label that matters to us - and we all have labels that matter to us!) The disappointment of loved ones who see the real us for the first time. [They preferred to put us on a pedestal, so they didn't have to do the hard work of being real, either.
Take one small step nearly every day. Be real in one moment with one person. Eventually you'll be able to fire your social self's internal "safety net" but don't expect to do that today. For today, one person, one moment. As the Buddha said, you fill the pitcher drop by drop.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Why Care About a Math Holiday??
Math is beauty, it is poetry, it is love made manifest in equations. It is relationships of area, of motion, acceleration. It brings moving heavenly bodies together and might even do the same for human beings. When I see all these interdependencies in a an almost-infinite cosmic web, I think "what could be more glorious or more spiritual than math?"
Happy Pi Day! (3.14 every year!)
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
A FUN Human Anatomy Quiz - with answer key and a prize for you!
This is a somewhat different quiz in that you get a huge discount on my comprehensive 18 hour CD (MP3) How Your Body Really Works if you miss at least one of these.
Please note: the real answers here are based on anatomy and physiology as known to science, printed in A&P textbooks as proven by science/medicine. Ideologies may disagree with facts, and if you do, just move on. Facts and opinions can't argue with each other; they are fundamentally different things.
Quiz 1:
1. High blood pressure causes irreparable kidney damage; it shreds the gentle structures in the glomeruli of the nephron. Once your kidneys are wrecked, you die. Get your blood pressure checked. Get it under control. I have ideas....
2. Nope. Bone STORES calcium. It is used by your nerves, to transmit impulses, and by your muscles, as the final GO signal for muscle cells to contract when ordered to by a nerve. This is why if you drink sodas, don't exercise, don't get enough calcium, magnesium and vitamin D, your bones will weaken. The nervous and muscle systems are life-or-death (think about your heart and diaphragm), so bones will give up calcium to preserve them.
3. Metabolism and other chemical reactions only occur in a narrow pH range. Bones, see previous answer. Kidneys release hormones and respond to hormones to release more water or release more ions, to change the pH of the blood. Your lungs will pump deeper and faster to get rid of more CO2 if there is too much acid in the blood. Carbon dioxide is the major contributor to blood acidity under normal conditions; it dissolves in the blood as an acid (not really carried by hemoglobin like they told you in 4th grade).
4. The brain neurons that control thirst are right next to the ones that control hunger. The incoming sensory neurons can terminate in the wrong place very easily. That is why you should always have a nice glass of liquid when you first feel hungry - in case it's really thirst.
Quiz 2
1. Your sympathetic nervous system needs to send a signal to your adrenals and release the adrenal cascade on a millisecond basis to save you from death and danger. Your parasympathetic nervous system has a much harder job: "mopping up" all those stress chemicals through biochemical means takes hours. That's why you can flare up in an instant but take much longer to completely calm down.
2. Vitamin K is an essential element of the blood clotting cascade. A serious intestinal disease, by disrupting Vitamin K production by specific bacteria, can make you more susceptible to uncontrolled bleeding from cuts, internal hemorrhage, etc.
3. Cortisol signals your fat cells to hold on to fat. We evolved in a world where "stress" equaled starvation, not a corporate power grab or nasty in-laws coming to visit.
4. They are talking about System 1 (see Kahneman) or (almost the same) the limbic system, which pre-processes all sensory incoming data, and then decides whether it thinks it can handle it solo or whether it needs advice from the pre-frontal cortex and other System 2 structures. No, you don't have separate brains. We have the same structures as other primates, other mammals, even as far back as reptiles in some cases, but all of these have evolved in their connections and are unique to humans in that sense. The whole reptile/human dichotomy is of limited utility. Read Thinking: Fast and Slow, and learn to talk about System 1 and System 2. Or buy my CD.
If you won the right to the $5 CD, go to www.soaringdragon.biz to learn about it, and then call 253-203-6676 or email victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com with questions or guidance on how to order.
Please note: the real answers here are based on anatomy and physiology as known to science, printed in A&P textbooks as proven by science/medicine. Ideologies may disagree with facts, and if you do, just move on. Facts and opinions can't argue with each other; they are fundamentally different things.
Quiz 1:
1. High blood pressure causes irreparable kidney damage; it shreds the gentle structures in the glomeruli of the nephron. Once your kidneys are wrecked, you die. Get your blood pressure checked. Get it under control. I have ideas....
2. Nope. Bone STORES calcium. It is used by your nerves, to transmit impulses, and by your muscles, as the final GO signal for muscle cells to contract when ordered to by a nerve. This is why if you drink sodas, don't exercise, don't get enough calcium, magnesium and vitamin D, your bones will weaken. The nervous and muscle systems are life-or-death (think about your heart and diaphragm), so bones will give up calcium to preserve them.
3. Metabolism and other chemical reactions only occur in a narrow pH range. Bones, see previous answer. Kidneys release hormones and respond to hormones to release more water or release more ions, to change the pH of the blood. Your lungs will pump deeper and faster to get rid of more CO2 if there is too much acid in the blood. Carbon dioxide is the major contributor to blood acidity under normal conditions; it dissolves in the blood as an acid (not really carried by hemoglobin like they told you in 4th grade).
4. The brain neurons that control thirst are right next to the ones that control hunger. The incoming sensory neurons can terminate in the wrong place very easily. That is why you should always have a nice glass of liquid when you first feel hungry - in case it's really thirst.
Quiz 2
1. Your sympathetic nervous system needs to send a signal to your adrenals and release the adrenal cascade on a millisecond basis to save you from death and danger. Your parasympathetic nervous system has a much harder job: "mopping up" all those stress chemicals through biochemical means takes hours. That's why you can flare up in an instant but take much longer to completely calm down.
2. Vitamin K is an essential element of the blood clotting cascade. A serious intestinal disease, by disrupting Vitamin K production by specific bacteria, can make you more susceptible to uncontrolled bleeding from cuts, internal hemorrhage, etc.
3. Cortisol signals your fat cells to hold on to fat. We evolved in a world where "stress" equaled starvation, not a corporate power grab or nasty in-laws coming to visit.
4. They are talking about System 1 (see Kahneman) or (almost the same) the limbic system, which pre-processes all sensory incoming data, and then decides whether it thinks it can handle it solo or whether it needs advice from the pre-frontal cortex and other System 2 structures. No, you don't have separate brains. We have the same structures as other primates, other mammals, even as far back as reptiles in some cases, but all of these have evolved in their connections and are unique to humans in that sense. The whole reptile/human dichotomy is of limited utility. Read Thinking: Fast and Slow, and learn to talk about System 1 and System 2. Or buy my CD.
If you won the right to the $5 CD, go to www.soaringdragon.biz to learn about it, and then call 253-203-6676 or email victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com with questions or guidance on how to order.
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