Farther to Go!

Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

  • Home
  • About
    • Farther to Go!
    • Personal Operating Systems
    • Joycelyn Campbell
    • Testimonials
    • Reading List
  • Blog
  • On the Road
    • Lay of the Land
    • Introductory Workshops
    • Courses
  • Links
    • Member Links (Courses)
    • Member Links
    • Imaginarium
    • Newsletter
    • Transformation Toolbox
  • Certification Program
    • Wired that Way Certification
    • What Color Is Change? Certification
    • Art & Science of Transformational Change Certification
    • Certification Facilitation
    • SML Certification
  • Contact

Listen to the Music!

March 7, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Want to stay mentally sharp? There are all kinds of things you can do: listen to music, read a book, gaze at a building, help someone out, get involved in a hobby. These activities not only make you feel good, they also happen to be very good for your brain in a variety of different ways.

Listening to music, for example, lowers stress hormones and increases well-being and focus.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been so focused on increasing my level of physical activity over the past couple of months, but what I appreciate the most about music and the brain is the fact that music helps me exercise. I enjoy listening to upbeat music, of course, but the benefit extends way beyond the enjoyment.

Over 100 years ago, a researcher discovered that cyclists pedaled faster when they listened to music than they did in silence. Now I know it’s not my imagination that I get a better workout with music than I do without it. I also know why.

Normally, when the body is tired and wants to stop, it signals the brain for a break. Well, music can turn down the volume on the brain’s complaints about being tired. Music competes for the brain’s attention, so during low- or moderate-intensity exercise it helps us override our fatigue, which means we can exercise longer and harder.

Music also helps us use our body’s energy more efficiently and effectively. Cyclists in a 2012 study who listened to music used 7% less oxygen than their counterparts who didn’t listen to music.

Another study with cyclists showed that the tempo of the music can have a significant effect on athletic performance. After listening to some popular music while riding stationary bicycles, one group listened to the same music slowed down by 10% and another group listened to the same music sped up 10%. Here’s what happened:

When the tempo slowed, so did their pedaling and their entire affect. Their heart rates fell. Their mileage dropped. They reported that they didn’t like the music much. On the other hand, when the tempo of the songs was upped 10 percent, the men covered more miles in the same period of time, produced more power with each pedal stroke and increased their pedal cadences. Their heart rates rose. They reported enjoying the music – the same music – about 36 percent more than when it was slowed. But, paradoxically, they did not find the workout easier. Their sense of how hard they were working rose 2.4 percent. The up-tempo music didn’t mask the discomfort of the exercise. But it seemed to motivate them to push themselves. As the researchers wrote, when “the music was played faster, the participants chose to accept, and even prefer, a greater degree of effort.”

It’s pretty easy to create your own workout playlist, but experts recommend incorporating songs that have 120 to 140 beats per minute. There’s no benefit to increasing the bpm above 145. You can calculate the beats per minute of a song by counting or by using a site such as songbpm.

Here’s one of my favorite workout songs, clocking in at 124 bpm:

Exercise has plenty of positive effects on the brain, but if you’re like me, you also do it just because it feels good.

Here are some of the other things you can do that both you and your brain might enjoy. (Click on the links to read the full articles.)

  • Playing a musical instrument benefits your brain even more than listening to music by giving it an excellent “full-body” workout.
  • Looking at buildings designed for contemplation may produce the same benefits to your body and brain provided by meditation—and with less effort.
  • Dancing, getting some hobbies, and reading (among other things) all help to keep your brain young.
  • Speaking of reading, ditching the e-reader once in a while and reading an actual book can increase your comprehension, make you more empathetic, and even improve your sleep.
  • No matter how old you are, learning a new language improves gray matter density and white matter integrity.
  • Finally, giving really is better than receiving—for you and for your brain.

Be good to your brain and your brain will continue being good to you!

Note: A much-abbreviated version of this post was published on 12/4/14.

Filed Under: Brain, Living, Mind Tagged With: Brain, Exercise, Mind, Music

Five Ways to Improve Your Brain

October 23, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

healthy brain

You probably take steps to maintain your physical health, but you may not know that you can also take steps to improve your brain and maintain its health. Promising new research suggests that a number of things that are good for our overall physical health are especially important for the health of our brain. Based on these findings, five things you can do for your brain are:

1. Eat less meat.
2. Lift weights at least two times a week.
3. Include foods with probiotics in your diet.
4. Get regular aerobic exercise.
5. Don’t skimp on sleep.

Here are links to articles reporting the results of the studies. Click on the titles to read the full stories.

1. Could A Mediterranean Diet Keep Your Brain From Shrinking?

Previous research has connected a Mediterranean diet to a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative brain conditions. In a recent study, researchers focused on elderly people with normal cognitive function to see if the diet might also be tied to losing fewer brain cells due to aging.

“Among cognitively healthy older adults, we were able to detect an association between higher adherence to a Mediterranean type diet and better brain measures,” according to lead study author Yian Gu of Columbia University in New York.

Higher fish intake and lower meat consumption, one aspect of a Mediterranean diet, was tied to larger total gray matter volume on the brain scans.

Eating less meat was also independently associated with larger total brain volume.

Overall, the difference in brain volume between the people who followed a Mediterranean diet and those who didn’t was similar to the effect of five years of aging, the researchers conclude in the journal Neurology.

2. Lifting Weights, Twice a Week, May Aid the Brain

Most studies of exercise and brain health have focused on the effects of running, walking or other aerobic activities. A few encouraging past studies have suggested that regular, moderate aerobic exercise such as walking may slow the progression of white matter lesions in older people.

But Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a professor of physical therapy and director of the Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, wondered whether other types of exercise would likewise be beneficial for white matter. In particular, she was interested in weight training, because weight training strengthens and builds muscles.

After a year-long study, women aged 65-75 who had lifted weights twice per week displayed significantly less shrinkage and tattering of their white matter than the other women. Their lesions had grown and multiplied somewhat, but not nearly as much. They also walked more quickly and smoothly than the women in the other two groups.

Note that the result was only achieved in the group who lifted weights twice per week, not in a group who lifted only once a week.

3. Probiotics on the Brain

A growing number of scientists now believe that gut bacterial can influence mental health.

The idea that microbes in the body can affect the brain has gone in and out of fashion. In 1896, physicians writing in Scientific American concluded, in the language of the day, that “certain forms of insanity” could be caused by infectious agents “similar to typhoid, diphtheria and others.” But after Freudian psychoanalysis became popular in the first half of the 20th century, the microbial theory of mental illness was largely forgotten, and stayed that way for decades.

Today, however, scientists know that trillions of micro-organisms live in your digestive system, where they outnumber your human cells many times over and may make up as much as 3 percent of your body weight.  The evidence that these bacteria affect a dense network of neurons in your gut — often called the “second brain”— is vast and growing.

It’s unclear exactly how or which bacteria cause or cure which disorders and in what complex ways, Dr. James Greenblatt, a psychiatrist and the chief medical officer of Walden Behavioral Care, says, “but the research is quite clear that the GI tract affects brain health.” In this case, he says, “one plus one does equal two.”

4. Regular Exercise Changes the Brain to Improve Memory, Thinking Skills

In a study done at the University of British Columbia, researchers found that regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning. Resistance training, balance and muscle toning exercises did not have the same results.

Many studies have suggested that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory (the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex) have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t. “Even more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in the volume of selected brain regions,” says Dr. Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

How much exercise is required? The study participants walked briskly for one hour, twice a week. That’s 120 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week. Standard recommendations advise half an hour of moderate physical activity most days of the week, or 150 minutes a week. If that seems daunting, start with a few minutes a day, and increase the amount you exercise by five or 10 minutes every week until you reach your goal.

If you don’t want to walk, consider other moderate-intensity exercises, such as swimming, stair climbing, tennis, squash, or dancing. Don’t forget that household activities can count as well, such as intense floor mopping, raking leaves, or anything that gets your heart pumping so much that you break out in a light sweat.

5. Good Night. Sleep Clean.

Sleep, it turns out, may play a crucial role in our brain’s physiological maintenance. As your body sleeps, your brain is quite actively playing the part of mental janitor: It’s clearing out all of the junk that has accumulated as a result of your daily thinking.

Recall what happens to your body during exercise. You start off full of energy, but soon enough your breathing turns uneven, your muscles tire, and your stamina runs its course. What’s happening internally is that your body isn’t able to deliver oxygen quickly enough to each muscle that needs it and instead creates needed energy anaerobically. And while that process allows you to keep on going, aside effect is the accumulation of toxic byproducts in your muscle cells. Those byproducts are cleared out by the body’s lymphatic system, allowing you to resume normal function without any permanent damage.

The lymphatic system serves as the body’s custodian: Whenever waste is formed, it sweeps it clean. The brain, however, is outside its reach — despite the fact that your brain uses up about 20 percent of your body’s energy. How, then, does its waste — like beta-amyloid, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease — get cleared? What happens to all the wrappers and leftovers that litter the room after any mental workout?

“Think about a fish tank,” says Dr. Nedergaard. “If you have a tank and no filter, the fish will eventually die. So, how do the brain cells get rid of their waste? Where is their filter?”

Until a few years ago, the prevailing model was based on recycling: The brain got rid of its own waste, not only beta-amyloid but other metabolites, by breaking it down and recycling it at an individual cell level. When that process eventually failed, the buildup would result in age-related cognitive decline and diseases like Alzheimer’s. That “didn’t make sense” to Dr. Nedergaard, who says that “the brain is too busy to recycle” all of its energy. Instead, she proposed a brain equivalent of the lymphatic system, a network of channels that cleared out toxins with watery cerebrospinal fluid. She called it the glymphatic system, a nod to its dependence on glial cells (the supportive cells in the brain that work largely to maintain homeostasis and protect neurons) and its function as a sort of parallel lymphatic system.

So far the glymphatic system has been identified as the neural housekeeper in baboons, dogs and goats. “If anything,” Dr. Nedergaard says, “it’s more needed in a bigger brain.”

Improve Your Brain–or Lose It?

It’s good news for all of us that there are things we can do to have a positive effect on our brain, from increasing its size to improving cognitive processing to (you should excuse the expression) taking out the trash. Of course, the opposite is also true. Things that we do can have a negative effect on our brain, and that’s not good. But we can’t say we haven’t been warned.

Filed Under: Brain, Habit, Living, Memory Tagged With: Brain, Brain Health, Cognitive Abilities, Exercise, Memory, Sleep

Move It!

March 13, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

A public demonstration of aerobic exercises
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Take a hike. Climb some flights of stairs. Lace up your sneakers and head out for a walk, run, or bike ride. Learn how to dance. Pump some iron. Complete a circuit workout at the gym.

Everyone knows that physical exercise is good for the body, and now we know it’s just as good for the brain. A number of studies over the past 10 years have demonstrated how important exercise—especially the aerobic kind—is in regard to both cognitive function and memory.

Brain shrinkage, especially shrinkage of the hippocampus, is associated with memory loss, decreased cognitive functioning, Alzheimer Disease, and dementia. As one witty reporter on the subject said, “at least as it relates to the hippocampus, size does matter.”

But brain shrinkage is not an inevitable function of aging. Regular aerobic exercise has been shown to increase the size of the hippocampus by generating new nerve cells (a process called neurogenesis). The more exercise you engage in as a young or midlife adult, the less brain shrinkage you will have to make up for when you are older. But aerobic exercise can trigger neurogenesis at any age or stage of life.

Aerobic exercise gets your heart to pump more oxygen to your brain and initiates your body’s release of hormones that contribute to the growth of brain cells. Not only can you grow new brain cells as a result of exercise, you can also create new connections between them, thereby increasing your brain’s plasticity.

Working memory, planning and scheduling (managing time and attention), multitasking, switching focus, and dealing with ambiguity are some of the functions of an area of the brain known as the executive center. For many people, executive center functions are adversely affected with age. The great news is that these are the very functions that benefit most from regular physical exercise.

Exercise provides short-term benefits, too—as in right now. Twenty minutes of aerobic exercise can immediately improve your cognitive functioning. To enhance the effects, do something that also requires coordination or strategy, such as dancing, playing a game, or ice skating.

It isn’t only aerobic exercise that provides these cognitive benefits. A recent study indicates that yoga may be even better at sharpening the mind. The sample for this study was small, but the results are intriguing. If they can be replicated in other studies, this would be great news for people who can’t–or don’t want to–engage in vigorous physical exercise.

Recent research published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology shows how inactivity also alters the brain, but not in a good way. This is your brain. This is your brain on the couch.

Physical exercise is “neuroprotective” for your brain no matter how old you are–and maybe even no matter what kind of exercise you do. It’s never too late—or too soon—to move it for your brain’s sake.

Filed Under: Brain, Living, Memory, Mind Tagged With: Aerobic exercise, Alzheimer Disease, Brain, Brain Health, Cognition, Exercise, Neurogenesis

Reinvent the Wheel

March 3, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Personal Training Overlooking Melbourne Catego...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last spring when I was clearing stuff out of my apartment and garage, I noticed that none of my exercise equipment or paraphernalia ever made it into the recycle piles. I simply left it where it was without even considering letting go of it. I had to question the hands-off attitude since I hadn’t used any of that stuff in at least a couple of years. Then I realized that, of course, I intended to use some or all of it again…one of these days.

I had been thinking about getting back into strength training for several months. I already had a fold-up weight bench, two sets of dumbbells, and a program I had followed here in the privacy of my own home. So when I imagined doing strength training, I automatically thought of re-starting that program. That’s what I had done before. I knew how to do strength training.

The problem was I didn’t want to do that program; I didn’t want to do any program in the privacy of my home. I wanted to join a gym and work with a personal trainer. It took me a while to realize that the strength training program I had used in the past wasn’t right for me now. Holding onto the exercise equipment—and my belief that what I needed to do was what I had done before—was actually keeping me from doing what I wanted to do. In fact, it was keeping me from doing anything.

So I got rid of most of the exercise stuff, joined a gym, connected with a great personal trainer, and have been working out four times a week for the past four and a half months. I love it, and I feel great.

This wouldn’t be particularly interesting if were nothing more than a personal anecdote. But I’ve noticed I’m not the only one with this mindset. Two friends—one male and one female—both want to lose weight. Both successfully lost significant amounts of weight in the past. Both have grappled with the conviction that they know what they need to do, which is to replicate what they did in the past. And just like me and my desire to re-start a strength training program, that conviction has delayed their taking action.

Another friend wants to get a better handle on her day-to-day finances. She developed a system that she used in the past, and her first inclination was to go back to that system because it worked before. But she readily admitted that she didn’t really like it and didn’t particularly want to start using it again.

Whether it was exercising, losing weight, or keeping track of money, all of us got hung up on whatever we did that worked in the past and assumed that was the only way we could be successful in the present. Rather than using our past successes as motivation to figure out what would work now, we focused on the details of what we did before. We forgot that when we were successful the first time, we weren’t relying on past experience. We had to figure it out. (We also may have forgotten other failed attempts that preceded our successful ones.)

Our brains create the sense (illusion) of a continuous self. But our present self is not our past self, nor is it our future self. When we imagine that we “know how to do that” because it worked in the past, we forget we’re not that person anymore. Instead of trying to repeat what our past self did, we’re more likely to be successful if we start fresh—if we start by assuming we don’t know how to do that. Then we have an opportunity to find out what might work this time around.Enhanced by Zemanta

Filed Under: Beliefs, Brain, Choice, Habit Tagged With: beliefs, Brain, Exercise, Habit, Mind, Weight Loss

Subscribe to Farther to Go!

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new Farther to Go! posts by email.

Search Posts

Recent Posts

  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
  • Always Look on
    the Bright Side of Life
  • The Cosmic Gift & Misery
    Distribution System
  • Should You Practice Gratitude?
  • You Give Truth a Bad Name
  • What Are So-Called
    Secondary Emotions?

Explore

The Farther to Go! Manifesto

Contact Me

joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • On the Road
  • Links
  • Certification Program
  • Contact

Copyright © 2025 · Parallax Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in