What Exactly Do You Mean by Brain Fitness? - Dr Jenny Brockis

This is the question I frequently get asked. Being brain fit simply means having the ability to use our brain to the best of its ability every single day. The best analogy is to physical fitness. Having a body does not imply we are automatically physically fit. We can however choose to improve our physical fitness with exercise and following a program. It’s just the same for our brains and choosing to become brain fit. It’s a choice available to all of us.

The choice to become brain fit essentially revolves around our lifestyles. We know that our longevity and wellbeing is determined by a complex interplay of our genetic inheritance and our environment.

Over the last 100 years we have seen an increase in our expected lifespan. At the beginning of the 20th century the average life expectancy was in our fifties. Today, the average life expectancy is now 84 years for women and 79 years for men.

This increase has been attributed to a number of factors including the improvement in our general health and living conditions. We have witnessed the advent of better nutrition, the introduction of vaccines and antibiotics, and seen reduced mortality from childbirth and other diseases. We are all living longer.

The expectation has been that our increased longevity will be accompanied by ongoing physical and mental wellbeing. Unfortunately our risk of Alzheimer’s disease increases with age, so the vision of ageing gracefully with all our faculties intact is in fact flawed.

The risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease starts to increase exponentially from a 10% risk in our sixties to 45% risk by our mid eighties.

The reality is we are all at high risk of either developing a dementia such as Alzheimer’s ourselves, or ending up as the carer for someone we love with the disease.

However, it is our environment that makes the biggest impact on our health and wellbeing and the good news is that we have a great deal of control over this.

It has been estimated that over half the cases of Alzheimer’s disease are probably preventable because they are associated with modifiable risk factors.

These risk factors include obesity, diabetes, depression, stress, hypertension and smoking. Other factors include the level of educational achieved over a lifetime, how much exercise we do and what foods we eat.

The best time to be maintaining our brain fitness is across the lifespan. Our children will benefit from improved learning and memory skills. We will benefit in the workplace with better attention, improved recall and effective strategies to maintain clear thinking even when we are under pressure. Having a greater awareness of how our brain works, assists us with understanding how we make decisions, plan our tasks and communicate more effectively.

As we age, brain fitness helps us to build what is termed cognitive reserve, which protects our brains and allows us to maintain our cognition, and to effectively delay or defer the clinical onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

To date we have no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, no effective treatment and our scientists are still seeking reliable early diagnostic tools. Studies indicate that we start to show signs of cognitive decline even from our 40’s.

In the same way physical fitness has become accepted and promoted as an essential way of keeping physically healthy over the last 40 years, it is now being realised that we need to incorporate brain fitness into our culture and way of life as well.

The good news is that becoming brain fit is easy. It requires a decision to commit to the process and then simply starting on a program to embed brain healthy habits and lifestyle choices.

The key to becoming brain fit lies with just four elements that are found in the anagram N.A.M.E ®

N stands for nutrition

A is for attitude and Stress Management

M is for mental challenge and

E is for exercise.

We currently have over 260,000 Australians living with dementia. This is expected to more than triple in the next forty years.

If we all followed N.A.M.E lifestyle principles it has been estimated that we can reduce the projected incidence of dementia expected in 2050 by 50%.

In “Brain Fit! How smarter thinking can save your brain” the science and facts about these four lifestyle choices is explained in this clear and very readable guide.

It’s never too late to start and make a difference. Now is the time to make every day a N.A.M.E day, to become more brain fit and enjoy the benefits of optimising your own brain health.