Newness: The Stuff of Brain Growth

Newness: The Stuff of Brain Growth

Many of us are thinking of changes we want for the coming year. This is a beautiful opportunity to incorporate brain growth as part of a health-conscious lifestyle.

Newness is the key to triggering dendrite growth. The “growth end” of the brain neuron, the dendrite area, literally reaches as we open our minds to new understanding, new connections, new experiences and new skills. This reaching can be seen as a kind of a stretch. Put your arm out and reach toward a nearby window or door. Look at your hand and watch your fingers extending. That’s what your dendrites do when confronted with newness. In that process, supported by the basic nutritional elements of brain health, your dendrites grow in complexity and length. Age does not affect this ability to grow your brain power. Happy day!

Research has shown that in people whose brains have made extensive dendritic connections, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s never manifested even when the brain upon autopsy showed the changes of Alzheimer’s disease. This alone is powerful motivation to consider triggering dendrite growth.

How do we bring this element of newness into our lifestyles? Take a moment to review your normal day. We all have a number of routines, familiar and automatic. There’s a clue to look at in your routine. What are you doing automatically? Changing little things in those automatic actions will begin to trigger dendrite growth. Try switching hands when you brush your teeth, and you will get an idea what it feels like when your dendrites are reaching. It may be uncomfortable or annoying. Look at that experience of “uncomfortable,” and you can see what newness requires.

Now think about some areas of your life where you might really enjoy reaching beyond your comfort zone. What is intriguing, fascinating to you? What gives you a little stir in your heart or midsection? What moves you?

When I committed to doing fifty-five blogs in a row on brain health, I felt a sensation of excitement, mixed with an anxious whir. Also mixed in there was curiosity and anticipation. Nothing to do with comfort. All those different feelings add up to a worthy foray into newness, and here I am.

I invite you to journey through your day with an eye to the routine you have created. Do this with love, and see what unfolds.

Suzanna Stinnett

Alzheimer's Disease - Or is it Diabetes?

Alzheimer's Disease -- or is it diabetes?

Researchers at Northwestern University have published their findings regarding an important correlation between the brain’s use of insulin – and forms of resistance to insulin – and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Insulin is a hormone which the brain uses to anchor new memories. When certain toxic proteins (which are known to pile up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s) bind to the neurons at the synapse, they take up the “parking spaces” which the neurons are holding open for insulin. The insulin which should be entering those parking spaces, or receptors, can be thought of as the little wagon which brings in the memory. Insulin is thwarted where it is supposed to be doing its job. This is a form of insulin resistance. The correlation is so strong that the authors of this research are calling it “Type 3 diabetes.”

Professionals working with later stage Alzheimer’s patients have found that a big dose of sugar, while certainly not part of a recommended diet, can often give the patient a window of cognition. I wonder if that sugar dose is triggering the body to release more insulin. If so, could the brain is then use it to provide some synaptic snap?

The various researchers working to uncover more of the mysteries of diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease are not in agreement about how important a role is played by the production of insulin in the brain. However, the conversation is stimulating some very promising new areas of research.

You can read more about the recently published paper here, and more about the discovery that the brain produces insulin here.