Scientists studying the human brain over the past few years have discovered a number of unexpected aspects that determine the influence of the brain on the overall health of our bodies. However, some aspects of our behavior also affect our brain. In addition, according to the modern point of view, which was formed relatively recently, the human brain does not stop forming by adolescence.
It was previously thought that the brain, from a fairly early age (adolescence), undergoes an unrelenting aging process, which reaches its peak in old age. However, it is now known that the human brain has the ability to change, recover and even heal, and this ability is truly limitless! It turns out that not so much age affects our brain, but how we use the brain throughout life.
Indeed, a certain activity requiring increased work of the brain is able to reboot the so-called basal nucleus (a complex of subcortical neurons of the white matter), which, in turn, triggers the so-called mechanism of brain neuroplasticity. In other words, neuroplasticity is the ability to control the state of the brain, maintaining its performance.
While the functionality of the brain naturally deteriorates somewhat as the body ages (but not as critical as it was previously thought), certain strategic approaches and techniques allow the creation of new neural pathways and even improve the work of old pathways, moreover, throughout a person's life … What's even more surprising is that such efforts to "reboot" the brain have long-term positive effects on overall health. How does this happen? Our thoughts can influence our genes!
We tend to think that our so-called genetic heritage, that is, a kind of genetic baggage of our body, is immutable matter. In our opinion, our parents passed on to us all the genetic material that they themselves once inherited - genes for baldness, height, weight, diseases, and so on - and now we get by with what we got. But in fact, our genes are open to influence throughout our life, and they are influenced not only by our actions, but also by our thoughts, feelings, faith.
You must have heard that genetic material can be influenced through changes in diet, lifestyle, physical activity, and so on. So now the possibility of the same epigenetic effect caused by thoughts, feelings, faith is being seriously studied.
Numerous studies have already shown that the chemicals that are affected by our mental activity can interact with our genetic material, causing powerful effects. Many processes in our body can be influenced in the same way as when changing the diet, lifestyle, habitat. Our thoughts can literally turn off and on the activity of certain genes.
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What does the research say?
Dawson Church, PhD and researcher, spoke about the interactions that a patient's thoughts and beliefs have on expressing disease and healing genes.
“Our body reads in our brain,” Church says. - Science has established that we can only have a certain fixed set of genes in our chromosomes. However, which of these genes affect our subjective perception and the course of various processes is of great importance."
One study from Ohio University clearly demonstrated the effect of mental stress on the healing process. Scientists conducted it among married couples: each participant in the experiment left a small injury on the skin, leading to the appearance of a small blister. Then different couples were asked for half an hour either to talk on a neutral topic, or to argue on some specific topic.
Then, over several weeks, scientists measured the level of three specific proteins in the body that affect the speed of wound healing. It turned out that those disputants who used the most caustic and harsh remarks in their arguments, and the level of these proteins and the speed of healing were 40 percent lower than those who spoke on a neutral topic.
Church explains it this way: our body sends a signal in the form of a protein that activates certain genes associated with wound healing. Proteins activate genes that use stem cells to create new skin cells to heal wounds.
However, when the body's energy is depleted by what is expended on the production of stressful substances such as cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine, the signal that goes to your wound-healing genes is significantly weakened. The recovery process takes much longer. At the same time, if the human body is not attuned to the fight against some external threat, its energy resources remain intact and ready to carry out healing missions.
Why is this very important to us?
There is no doubt that almost everyone's body is equipped from birth with the genetic material necessary for optimal functioning under conditions of daily physical activity. However, our ability to maintain so-called mental balance has a huge impact on our body's ability to use its resources. And even if you are full of aggressive thoughts, certain activities (such as meditation) help tune your neural pathways to support less reactive actions.
Chronic stress can prematurely age our brains
“We are constantly under stress in our environment,” says Howard Fillit, Ph. D., professor of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and head of a foundation dedicated to finding new drugs for Alzheimer's. "However, the greatest harm comes from the mental stress that we feel inside ourselves in response to external stress."
This differentiation of stresses indicates the presence of a constant response of the whole organism in response to constant external stress. This response affects our brains, leading to impaired memory and other aspects of mental performance. Thus, stress is a risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease and also accelerates memory impairment as a person ages. In doing so, you may even begin to feel much older, as they say, mentally, than you really are.
Research from the University of California at San Francisco has shown that the body's constant stress response (and constant surges in cortisol) can shrink the hippocampus, an essential part of the brain's limbic system, which is responsible for both regulating the effects of stress and and for long-term memory. This is also one of the manifestations of neuroplasticity - but already negative.
Like other forms of relaxation, meditation and total renunciation of all thoughts can not only quickly put thoughts in order (and, accordingly, the biochemical level of stress along with gene expression), but even change the structure of the brain itself!
“Stimulating the areas of the brain that drive positive emotions can strengthen neural connections in the same way that exercise strengthens muscles,” says Hanson, one of the main principles of neuroplasticity. However, the opposite is also true: "If you regularly think about those things that torment you and drive you crazy, you increase the sensitivity of the amygdala, which is primarily responsible for negative experiences."
Hanson explained that in this way we make our brains more receptive, which leads to the fact that we are easily upset about trifles in the future.
At the same time, meditation practices stimulate the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain, that is, the layer farthest from the center of the brain that is responsible for attention (this is how meditation improves mindfulness). Similarly, meditation affects the so-called islet - the central part of the brain responsible for interoreception (the process of perception by the central nervous system of excitations in the internal organs).
“Working the brain in tune with the body through interoception protects our body from damage during exercise,” says Hanson. "It also helps you to feel the pleasant and simple feeling that everything is in order in your body." Another plus of a healthy "island" is that in this way you improve your instincts, intuition and empathy - the ability to empathize."
Each year of our life in old age can add to our mind
For a long time it was believed that closer to middle age, the human brain, once young and flexible, begins to gradually lose ground. However, recent studies have shown that in middle age, the brain can begin to show its peak activity. Studies show that even despite bad habits, these years are the most favorable for the most active brain work. It is then that we make the most informed decisions, looking back at the accumulated experience.
Scientists who have studied the human brain have always convinced us that the main cause of brain aging is the loss of neurons - the death of brain cells. However, brain scans using new technologies have shown that most of the brain maintains the same number of active neurons throughout life. And even if some aspects of aging really lead to a deterioration in memory, reaction and so on, there is a constant replenishment of the "reserves" of neurons. But by what means?
Scientists have called this process "brain bilateralization," which involves the simultaneous use of both the right and left hemispheres of the brain. In the 1990s in Canada, at the University of Toronto, thanks to the development of brain scanning technology, it was possible to visualize and compare how the brains of young and middle-aged people work when solving the following task for attention and memory:
- it was necessary to quickly memorize the names of people in various photographs, and then try to remember who was named.
Scientists expected middle-aged study participants to perform worse on the task at hand, but the results were the same for both age groups. But something else turned out to be surprising: positron emission tomography showed that neural connections in young people were activated in a certain part of the brain, and in older people, in addition to activity in the same zone, a part of the prefrontal cortex also manifested itself.
Canadian scientists, based on the results of this and many other experiments, came to the following conclusion: the biological neural network of the brain of middle-aged people could give weakness in a certain area, but another part of the brain was immediately connected, compensating for the "shortage". Thus, the aging process leads to the fact that people in middle age and older use their brains literally more. In addition, there is an increase in the biological neural network in other areas of the brain.
Our brain is designed in such a way that it knows how to cope with circumstances (counteract them), showing flexibility. And the better to monitor his health, the better he copes.
Researchers offer a range of activities to keep your brain healthy for as long as possible:
- healthy food, - physical activity, - relaxation, - solving complex problems, - constant study of something, and so on.
Moreover, it works at any age.
