A Positive Mind: Is Your Passport to Longevity

Whether you call it self-hypnosis or self-induced brain washing, the fact remains that the power of mind over body can prove to be a great tool to ensure a sounder health for yourself. Your body will do wonders if you can simply make yourself believe that it is relentlessly busy in keeping the diseases away.

Am I OK?

This is one question you probably ask your doctor every time you visit him. If your doctor is a reasonably good man he takes one look at you and pleasantly says, ‘yes’. You instantaneously feel great about it.

Another time, another doctor. After a series of tests and examinations, you pose the same question, with a hint of a smile on your face. This doctor takes a pause, becomes a little contemplative and then says, ‘yes’. Your smile fades. Even though you do not feel terribly demoralized, the earlier happiness you felt last time was now missing!

It is apparent that your mind reacted differently to the two separate situations and regulated your mood accordingly. Whether you believe it or not, your toned-down mood may quite adversely affect your well being, irrespective of what the doctor’s reports said. What this really implies is that if you can fine-tune your own mind a little positively, you will be a lot more happier and healthier.

Mind Vs Body

The power of mind over body has incontrovertibly been recognized since the olden days. Lately being termed as ‘auto-suggestion’, it implies that positive or negative symptoms in the body are greatly influenced by the thoughts and beliefs of a person.
It is, therefore, obvious that maneuvering your mind or willpower in a positive manner can make you your own doctor. As a matter of fact, the old adage‘ think healthy, be healthy’ can apply to you if you could power your mind adequately to ensure a sound physical and mental health for yourself.

While it is a well known fact that a balanced diet and habitual exercise are basic elements to keep one fit and healthy, personality traits also influence people’s physical health and their susceptibility to illness. The various mind-related factors that can effectively promote good health and general well being are:
• Positive Attitude to Life. A person who is mentally strong always tends to look at everything – including serious adversities – positively, at every stage of life. Such people love challenges and are totally committed to their profession, family and relationships.
The next aspect in our quest is challenging your mind, I’m going to talk about what’s going on in Japan regarding this. They are doing a ton of research and studies on aging, because Japan has the fastest growing group of centenarians in the world, in 2003 they had over 20,000 people over 100 years of age.

I’m going to mention a few people that had some comprehensive tests done, the first person is a gentlemen by the name of Saburo, this is a fascinating story let me lay the groundwork. He is 99 years old and owns a day care center to help mentally challenged children, which he opened when was 47 years old. Now he opened this school because he had 2 sons that were ill from a serious fever when they were quite young and they both suffered brain damage and became intellectually challenged. His family consisted of 2 sons, a daughter, and a wife, unfortunately over time they all passed away. Through the years he kept challenging himself by creating learning tools and games for the kids.

Then he challenged himself with languages he started learning Korean in his 60’s, and then started learning Chinese at age 95, as you can see he kept challenging his mind.

One of the universities in Japan asked if he would let them take a MRI of his brain to examine it and when they did they found his brain to be that of a 60 year old.

Generally you have shape changes in the brain and atrophy occurs, neurons die off at about 100,000 cells a day and we lose our ability to think and remember things. We have over 100 billion of these neuron cells to start and we have these fiber like extensions attached to them called axons. This allows electrical signals to travel thru the axons to other neurons. It kind of looks like a network of cables and this allows us to think and pass information to different parts of the brain. And the Good news is Neurons that die, through aging can actually be replaced with new neurons this is called neurogenesis. This is what happened to Saburo, because he constantly challenges his brain.

There are several parts of the brain that help us remember and store memories, but one of the most important is the portion called the Hippocampus which is the size of a little finger and kind of resembles the shape of a seahorse.

The Hippocampus, controls new memories and creates new neurons when stimulated by challenges and distributes what is important to different regions of the brain as memories. When they reviewed the MRI of Saburo they found that his Hippocampus did not atrophy at all, and was twice as large as a hippocampus from another person of his same age, who did not challenge their brain.

Functional MRI is used to measure and read what regions of the brain are working when challenged. Saburo was asked to memorize 60 photos in six second intervals. 20 minutes later he he is shown some more pictures if they are the same he raises his right hand if not he raises his left.

He got 42 out of 60 correct, which is the results of a 60 year old. Prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus are linked. Another thing many of us don’t realize that the Brain is a muscle and you need to use it, and it can be revitalized both by challenging it and by doing a simple exercise such as walking. Another great example from Japan is a gentlemen by the name of yo-hay who at 102 years of age completed a 5k race. He started running at age 70 and won many awards.

When he was 85 he suffered a cerebral infarction, which is essentially a brain clot to the brain he also lost his wife at the about the same time, he developed a mild case of dementia and was basically a vegetable sitting around the house. His son and daughter in law started to take him out for walks and eventually he started to run again at 99 years of age.

This is attributed to something called BDNF which stands for Brain Derived Neuro-trophic factor, which is a protein that acts on the neurons and enables them to increase or survive and exercise is a great contributor of its increase, and also intellectual stimulation also cranks up the production of BDNF.

Some scientists took a petri dish that had neurons in it and added some BDNF and all of a sudden the neurons increased as well as the axons and the fiber network. Now Jimmy you will like, this guess what decreases BDNF production? STRESS, Depression, Corticosterone which is a stress hormone this all leads to atrophy of the Hippocampus.

Brain Scan MRI

Then there is Gin San she is a 102 year old music teacher in japan who still challenges herself by playing a Japanese instrument called the Shamisen, which is a unique looking 3 string guitar. She also plays with other people as well as giving music lessons. Her MRI brain scan revealed a rather large right hemisphere probably from her constant plucking with the large plectrum.

Taki composed and wrote a book on poems when she was 102 years old.

It’s Never Too Late

A new study by a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center physician-scientist has an important message for the elderly: It’s not too late to improve your health through diet and exercise, even if you’ve had an unhealthy lifestyle in the past.

The report surveyed scientific literature and found that adults, 65 and older, can have significant health improvements with simple and realistic lifestyle changes. It found that risk can be reduced for many diseases—including obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.

“I think this is an extremely important and positive message,” says the paper’s lead symposium editor, Dr. Richard S. Rivlin, professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. “Many elderly people feel that it is too late for them to improve their health, but that is simply not true.”

So to recap:
What do all these people have in common?
Goals
Purpose
Positive attitude

Keep minds busy, challenge your brain slightly more than your normal activities.

Spirit/Faith

Visualization

Outside influences

Prefrontal cortex Maps 9 and 10 are extremely active when the brain is challenged and do not atrophy.

Brains Do Not Shrink Faster As Healthy People Get Older
ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 1998) — (Portland, OR) — Researchers at Oregon Health Sciences University are challenging the idea that getting older automatically leads to a rapidly shrinking brain. A study being published in the December issue of the Journal Neurology shows that healthy 85-year-olds lose brain tissue no faster than healthy 65-year-olds.

So getting older does not necessarily mean you will lose your memory as long as you keep healthy and keep your brain active.