How To Fight Your Brain Drain
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Katherine Dedyna
Victoria Times Colonist; CanWest News Service
January 11, 2005
A few mind games that can help preserve memory as we age.
At 60, Nancy Huber found herself drawing a blank on the names of people she knew and feeling a bit concerned about dementia lurking around the corner.
“Why am I forgetting these things, it's not natural,” the former operations manager recalls. “Oh my God, is there something wrong with me?”
She opted to check out a Train Your Brain seminar sponsored by the University of Victoria Centre on Aging—with remarkable results.
The free two-hour public lecture prompted her to take a six-week workshop that turned out to be “the best thing I ever did for myself. Oh, there's absolutely no question.”
The retiree says she's happier, more decisive and no longer down on herself for slip-ups.
As for memory lapses: “They don't happen to me any more.”
She's tested her memory on a newcomer's club, proudly attaching names to faces.
Now she's consuming brain food such as fish oil, a notion she once dismissed as nonsense, tracing figure 8s in the air from her right to left to improve the workings of her left brain, and able to say up until 11 p.m. at full alert.
Much like fitness courses that strengthen the body, she's now a believer in mental fitness regimes.
But no one is a bigger believer than Guy Pilch, of Victoria, who describes himself as likely the only mental fitness consultant in Canada.
Pilch, who holds a master's degree in counselling psychology and previously worked in psycho-geriatrics and mental health, says some people are in danger of becoming “mental couch potatoes.”
While our brains crave novelty and stimulation, we often live by default, always doing the same things the same way.
To counteract that, it's crucial to keep brain cells connecting by doing things a different way.
“Take on new interests, an old hobby you may have neglected or drive a different route to work everyday. These are small things but they incrementally add up,” says the owner of Train the Brain Consulting.
“There's absolutely no question that you can improve your mental functioning with training,” adds psychologist David Hultsch, director of Victoria's Centre on Aging, noting he has not seen Pilch's seminars.
Research in the past decade has turned previous assumptions about memory loss upside down, says Pilch, 48, who was galvanized by glitches in his own memory.
“I was curious, how could I tune myself up?”
He read everything he could, and decided to offer ways to help others regain their sharpness, and along with it, confidence and improved well-being.
He wants to apply memory research to everyday life.
When brains get flabby, their owners become anxious and self doubting, and it narrows their world.
“They stick to the familiar, and that's the worst thing you can do. You've got to get out of that in a safe environment and be stimulated.”
While many people who signed up for his seminars on brain power were seniors, the exercises are not just for the older generation.
He has worked with people in their 40s who pulled up the drawbridge on their lives because of fear their colleagues were sharper than they were.
Pilch relies on his background as a motivator for behavioural change and a holistic approach that involves proper diet and sleep.
“I've had people who couldn't remember one phone number remember literally dozens because of the exercises and the holistic approach.”
Sometimes it will be easy, other times challenging.
“But we mix it up and make it fun.”
The loss of mental function is not inevitable with age, he says.
“Most people's healthy brain cells shrink, but don't die and in fact some new brain cells are created. The absolute key point is that it's not a quantity of brain cells issue; it's the number of connections between brain cells.
“And I help people increase the number of connections between their brain cells.”
Fish oil, he stresses, is good for the permeability of the membranes of the brain cells so that neurotransmitters can communicate information.
When people maximize both the organizational and creative sides of their brains, they accrue tremendous advantages in life.
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CREDIT: Darren Stone, Times Colonist |
“You'll be sharper and quicker; you'll be able to learn faster and remember more of what you learn; you'll be more creative and also more efficient at getting things done,” says Pilch.
Bill Spriggs, 74, now brushes his teeth with his left hand instead of his dominant right, and is memorizing the phone numbers of his friends as a mental exercise and time-saver.
“It's something you've got to be serious about,” he says.
“It takes effort and practice and a willingness to try new things. But he expects the Train The Brain benefits to last him for years to come.”