I love getting feedback from my talks, especially when I can learn something from it.

I recently caught up with a friend of mine who had been to my “All Your Marbles” talk. She said that the one thing that had resonated loudest for her was the acronym N.A.M.E that I use to remind people of the four key areas they need to include on a daily basis to help keep their minds fit.

N. for Nutrition

A. for Attitude and Stress Reduction

M. for Mental training

E. for Exercise.

Everyday she now gets up a little bit earlier, goes for a swim, meditates and is mindful of her diet. She also decided that in order to be able to keep to this regime she would need to shift her starting time for work to 10am instead of 9am.

This is a fantastic routine and I congratulated her for not only initiating it but also sticking with it.

Then she said she follows through at the end of the day by asking herself three questions. And these just blew me away.

She asks herself,

“What I have done today to nourish my body?”
“What have I done today to nourish my mind?”
“What have I done today to nourish my soul?”

Wow! This is taking the meaning of nutrition to a whole new level.
She has embraced the total concept and taken it on board.

I was speechless (for once) and was immensely grateful to her for sharing this with me and it made me realise how absolutely right she is.

Nutrition feeds our body and our mind and our soul. We just often forget that the food we eat has a far great impact on us than just supplying us with the necessary nutrients to keep our bodies working well. And how often to we remember to take the time to nourish our minds and souls with those thoughts and activities that can make a difference to our happiness, our sense of enjoyment and achievement in our lives.

So, I now intend to remember myself to ask those questions at the end of the day.

What are you doing each day to ensure you have complete nutrition?

Are there other areas in your life that need feeding up?
Have you been doing enough things just for fun or pure pleasure?
Have you got enough laughter in your life?
Are you spending enough time with the people that mean the most to you?
Are you giving to others that they may enjoy more in their own lives?

My friend is right. We need to ensure we have complete nutrition for Body, Mind and Soul

There are a number of occupations which incorporate  exposure to high levels of extreme stress.

Think about the Olympic athletes in Vancouver, who have spent months if not years preparing for those few special minutes which could lead to the ultimate dream of winning an Olympic medal.

What about those who are sent out to deal with major road traffic accidents or who provide aid to natural disasters such as the recent earthquake in Haiti?

Then of course there are the soldiers deployed to war zones, to highly dangerous areas with the knowledge there is a high risk to their own life.

It takes a certain type of person who is willing to embrace and take on these jobs and they are not without personal risk to their own physical or mental well-being.

We know that stress kills brain cells.

We know that continued exposure to high levels of stress triggers sustained cortisol release which can lead to a lessened ability to be able to think quickly and effectively and make well thought out decisions.

There have been reports of high levels of post traumatic stress disorder and mental illness in soldiers returning from war.

This week, a study was published by “Science Daily” looking at how mind fitness can be improved by using mindfulness training a group of soldiers prior to their deployment to Iraq.

Soldiers have to be physically fit. They undergo rigorous training to ensure they are at their peak of physical fitness. The study looked at whether increasing mind fitness would produce soldiers better equipped to deal emotionally and mentally with the demands of modern warfare ie they have improved “mental armour”.

So what is mindfulness training?

Mindfulness is described in the study as the ability to be aware and attentive of the present moment without emotional reactivity or volatility.

If you can practice mindfulness you may be able to avoid panic in a dangerous or difficult situation.

You may be able to evaluate, and respond in a rational, logical way to produce the best outcome.

This of course is immensely valuable to anyone, not just those exposed to extreme stress.

The study showed that those who engaged in the mindfulness training over an eight week period developed an increased capacity of their working memory and reduced negative mood.

This would suggest that mindfulness training may be of significant value to all involved in high stress occupations and the spin off from that, may also be that those who work in other high pressure environments, in the corporate sector for example would also benefit from such training.

This is where the value of this study could lead to increasing awareness of the benefit of mindfulness training as a means of improving psychological resilience for the working population at large.

I can see numerous opportunities where mindfulness training could have a lasting and beneficial impact on those who practice it regularly.

Would it help you?

Are there situations you have to deal with on a regular basis which would be made easier if you could assess the situation presented, without emotion, with clarity and rapid rational thinking?

Let me know what you think.

Source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100216101153.htm

Imagine you are in the Doctor’s rooms.

Your check-up has revealed that you are overweight and need to lose weight to avoid developing other disease such as arthritis, heart disease, diabetes or cancer.

What if you were then advised that your obesity was contributed to by your father’s choice to take up smoking at the tender age of 10.

What?

I have been reading a fascinating article written by John Cloud published in Time magazine on Jan 18^th this year.

This well written article explains beautifully how environmental factors can lead to changes in gene expression (without altering the genetic code) that can be passed on to successive generations.

Hang on a minute, the Darwinian theory, which we have adhered to for 150 years proposes that evolution takes place slowly over many generations and is based on survival of the fittest.  Changes in the evolutionary process are therefore slow.

Where is this new evidence coming from that indicates that our lifestyle choices we make today, not only influence our risk factors for disease in ourselves but also for our future unborn children and grandchildren?

Welcome to the world of epigenetics.

Epigenetics is not new, Scientists have been exploring these concepts from the 1970’s piecing together information that supports the concept that the conditions that your parents live under, can influence your health prior to your birth and also into your own adulthood.

Our genes contain our unique individual DNA.

On the top of our genes we have what is called an epigenome and it is this, which can influence our genes by switching the genes on or off, or to be expressed strongly or weakly.

What is emerging is that our environment can influence the epigenome and therefore what our genes express. Our diet and our stress levels can make a difference to the gene expression from one generation to another.

What does this all mean?

In a nutshell…..

If we, that’s you and me, choose to overeat, to become obese or to smoke, the epigenomes on our genes will cause the genes for obesity to be strongly expressed and the genes for lifespan to be more weakly expressed and this can be passed on to our kids and grandkids making them at risk of disease and early death.

The potential for epigenetics and understanding how we can influence our DNA and our future health is only just beginning.

The good thing that is likely to emerge is that it may in the future be possible to manipulate epigenetic markers and develop drugs that will be used to treat certain illnesses by either turning down the expression of genes we don’t want expressed and enhancing expression of those we do.

The implication for treatments of disease such as certain cancers or Alzheimer’s gives great hope.

Here is the link to the article.

I’d love to get your feed back and comments.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html?artId=1951968?contType=article?chn=sciHealth

The statistics for the numbers of people expected to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s over the next 40 years are really quite frightening.

Starting with a 5 % risk at the age of 65, this then doubles every five years. By the time we reach 85, up to 50% of us are likely to have developed dementia.

I don’t know about you but I’m not very happy with that statistic!

And what will become of us who actually live even longer?

Over the next twenty years our lifespans are forecast to increase even further, what will the relative risks be then?

The good news is that neuroscience has now provided us with many new insights and information about how our mind works. This includes the fact that it is our choices of how we live our lives, our lifestyles that can make a fundamental difference to the outcome of our future brain health.

If you have a positive family history of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, this does elevate your risk for developing it yourself.

BUT and it’s a really big but, genetics only accounts for 20 to 30% of the factors contributing to determining our lifespan. It is our lifestyle choices and environment that determine the other 70 to 80%.

Guess what folks.

It’s up to us to decide what do we want for ourselves as we get older and to put in place the necessary choices to enable us to get what we want.

In my presentation, “All Your Marbles” I speak about the four key areas that are essential to include in any brain training program when looking to improve your mind in terms of memory, focus and attention.

To make it easy to remember all four areas, I came up with the acronym N.A.M.E .

N. stands for Nutrition.

A. stands for Attitude and Stress management.

M. stands for Mental Training.

E. stands for Exercise.

Each of these four areas is complimentary and synergistic with the others.

In order to build up your brain or cognitive reserve which will help protect us from cognitive decline, each requires the others to provide the full benefit.

It’s a multi-pronged approach.

There is heaps of information available to us that many of us know would make a difference to our overall health and well-being.

The question is “Why aren’t we doing the things we know are important?”

“What is it that keeps us deferring taking action?”

We have to look inside and be honest with ourselves.

Only you can answer what it is that might be stopping you from choosing those super brain foods and including them in your diet.

You may have been thinking about starting a new exercise plan but haven’t gotten round to it.

There could be a number of thing you have always wanted to do, such as learn to play the trumpet, do Italian cooking or visit long distance friends or family in other countries. What has stopped you from doing these?

And what about those things that wear you down, the worries and the stress you deal with. How are you managing those?

Remember, we all have the capacity to play a big role in determining our future brain health.

It is possible, through a combination of eating really healthily, exercising adequately, stimulating and stretching our mind and managing our stress that we can maintain our brain.

It’s all in the N.A.M.E.