Sandra Bond Chapman (00:00):

To keep an agile adaptive brain, which is what really what, you know, 55, 70, 80 year olds can get better and better at this agile possibility Thinking mind is facing a problem with sort of excitement about how many solutions can I come up and what can I try? So those are the type of strategies that we give individuals.

Introduction (00:24):

Welcome to Brainstorm by UsAgainstAlzheimer's, a patient-centered nonprofit organization. Your host, Meryl Comer, is a co-founder, 24-year caregiver, an Emmy award-winning journalist, and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Slow Dancing With a Stranger.

Meryl Comer (00:43):

This is BrainStorm and I, Meryl Comer. Joining us is Dr. Sandra Chapman, founder and chief director of the Center for Brain Health at UT Dallas, who recently updated us on the ongoing brain health project designed to boost neuroplasticity and rewire our brains after 55. Today we look at how you can strengthen your brain so those stressors don't take you down. Welcome Sandy. Thanks so much for joining us.

Sandra Bond Chapman (01:17):

You bet. It's always great, Meryl, to be with you.

Meryl Comer (01:21):

Sandy, you've described the stressors in our lives combining to create what you call a perfect storm for our brain health. What does that mean?

Sandra Bond Chapman (01:30):

We are living in a world where all of us are feeling so stressed and I what I tell people and we try to instruct them, stress in and of itself is not bad. And I would talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of stress. You know, let, let me just say to start off, it's good because when you are under stress, if it's just acute, like perhaps you don't make me nervous, but if I were nervous, you know, if I didn't know you, it would elevate me, it would make me more motivated. It would kind of trigger my brain to be more excited about what I was doing and I would be ready for any action. So that's what stress can be. Really one of these big energizers, if you think about what is bad about stress is chronic stress.

Sandra Bond Chapman (02:24):

And when we're under chronic stress where we, we never get a reprieve from it. If I were just constantly thinking, oh my, I can't make it, then we see, I mean, really significant brain losses over and over again. We see dendritic spines reduce, we see reduction in the hippocampus and we see significant memory loss, brain fog, loss of sleep, all of the things that make our brain not healthy. The longer those last, those stressors, then you really are looking at some of the toxic buildups that we talk about in Alzheimer's disease. You know, it's really the whole imbalance of your neuro pharmacy or the neurochemicals that we see that, that are in your brain. Dopamine, norepinephrine. And what I tell people, a little bit of norepinephrine and dopamine are good, like a little bit of rain shower, how your flowers bloom. But then if you have a flood, your flowers die. So, you know, it's really like that when we get too much norepinephrine and dopamine.

Meryl Comer (03:33):

So Sandy, when you're living in a prolonged state of stress, are you really aware of it because it's been prolonged?

Sandra Bond Chapman (03:44):

I think most people know when they're under stress, and it's something that we look at in the Brain Health Project, is what is the level of stress And people, whether they're at all ages, all decades, this isn't something that gets worse and worse. It actually something that's pervasive across the entire lifespan.

Meryl Comer (04:02):

The first of the baby boom generation turns 80 this year. So how should someone interpret familiar signals like forgetting something, losing their train of thought, why did I walk back up the stairs or feeling mentally foggy? Is that what the aging brain inevitably looks like or has to look like?

Sandra Bond Chapman (04:25):

We now know pretty clearly that cognitive decline in terms of some areas like speed of processing, how quick you drop on things, working memory is something that we lose, but your ability to reason come up with the name later is something that should not get worse. It's just that we have bought into this idea that, well, I'm 70, I'm 80, I'm 90, of course I'm not going to be as sharp. Physically, we've changed our mindset. We really haven't bought into brain resilience like we have physical resilience. So no, this, this idea of accepting cognitive decline is really, to me, one of the most unfortunate things that we've bought into that science is clearly not saying now. It's not that we're going to be able to learn as fast as we could remember as much as we could, but there's things that the aging brain is actually better at, at doing, and that's synthesizing problem solving, possibility thinking, seeing things from a broader perspective. That is what makes your brain healthy and helps you to thrive.

Meryl Comer (05:42):

You know, I did a little checking and I found that brain games, the downloads are now in the hundreds of millions. So they're driving our need to manage our anxiety to ward off dementia, right? Are they reliable prevention strategy? And if not, what, if anything, do they contribute to our brain health?

Sandra Bond Chapman (06:04):

You know, brain games can be good. There's strategy games, you know, that make you learn certain strategies. There's also some social games that have you come together and and do things with people or you have competition. Sometimes people do wordle and compete with different members of the family.

Meryl Comer (06:22):

Raise my hand on that one <laugh>.

Sandra Bond Chapman (06:25):

But I would say for the most part, they make you better at playing the game. They don't make you better at the things that I say problem solving, solving the complexity of how do you deal with stress, connecting warmly with people that you disagree with, the things that keep your brain moving forward in a very major way. I I I would typically tell someone, especially when I'm walking on a plane and I see people playing games, I want to tap them on the shoulder and say, you know, if you let your brain rest, it would do better than if you play the word game.

Meryl Comer (07:01):

People think of brain health now in terms of puzzles or the games and you're really advocating that people adopt brain healthy strategies and daily practices instead, right?

Sandra Bond Chapman (07:15):

That that's really what, how you use your brain to think versus just keep it busy all the time is really not the way to keep it stronger. We teach people, for example, all the, all the people that are listening today to this podcast. What I would recommend is one of the strategies that we teach people is what are you, what are two takeaways that you're going to take from this 30 minute podcast? Not what is everything that we've said and you're just enjoying certain things that you're hearing, but what are two things that are resonating with you? And then how are you going to zoom out and think about how can I apply that in my life? And then how can you share it with different people? It's taking information at a deeper level, the constant information that you're taking. So taking less in and going deeper as you think about it.

Sandra Bond Chapman (08:08):

So that's what the strategies really teach us to do. One of the other strategies that we teach is what we call possibility thinking. So to keep an agile adaptive brain, which is really what, you know, 55, 70, 80 year olds can get better and better at this agile possibility thinking mind is facing a problem with sort of excitement about how many solutions can I come up and what can I try? So those are the type of strategies that we give individuals at, at all walks of life. And we see very significant changes in the, really the parts of the brain, the frontal executive network, which is sort of your one that can see changes happening, but also stability to stay on task. People have regained as much as two decades back of neural health when they use the strategies.

Meryl Comer (09:02):

So if I hear you correctly, the, there's a fundamental difference between just staying busy mentally, which would be brain games perhaps, and intentionally training the brain for resilience and performance.

Sandra Bond Chapman (09:17):

Exactly. So keeping your brain busy. One of the things that we as a society haven't really bought into is the importance of sleep and periods of rest throughout the day. So one of our other strategies that we teach people is to take five minute breaks, five times a day throughout the day so that you can constantly reset it to stop this cycle of push, push, push more, more, more. But you have stopping points to clear out the toxins from stress. All the cortisol that builds up, that destroys the hippocampus that we were talking about. It's rest and prioritizing sleep. We now know that sleep is not something that's just, that it's a good thing to have. It's a must have it. If you want to clean out beta amyloid and towel, the best way to do that is through a good night's rest and starting much earlier than after the disease has already started.

Meryl Comer (10:18):

You know, most of us live with constant distractions. So why does our current lifestyle so often work against how our brain was really designed to function?

Sandra Bond Chapman (10:31):

Yeah, I mean, this world where speed, instant responses, changing distractions, we are building an A DHD brain. You know, people often ask me, so it's our technology, and I say, is it our technology? Yes. I say, yes it is, but it's also you, you do have control over how much you use your technology and how much you use distractions. So it's, it requires this intentionality. People now are probably interrupted at least every three minutes. It takes 30 minutes, which I'm glad your podcast is 30 minutes for people to get into something. One of the things that we're trying to do with the Brain Health Project is measure in real time the, the mental cost of doing that. And that's really, I, when people can see that it's costing them of doing that, then I think that they will at least do it less. At least do it less. But you know, you're right. We, that's our world and we have to live in this world. So what do we do? How much control can you put over how much distractions you're ready to allow?

Meryl Comer (11:50):

So is it really possible to, to measure brain health beyond diagnosing a problem?

Sandra Bond Chapman (11:56):

Brain health is, are you able, just think of where you are now, it's being able to maintain where you are now or improve it. That to me is brain health. Brain decline is when you start to lose those capacities. So we really haven't had any measures until the Brain health index that could measure the upward growth in the human brain from this multidimensional aspect. You can maybe me measure that your memory's getting better, your speed of processing is getting better, but we don't know how that relates to real life function. The Brain Health Index measures your brain being maintained both in your terms of your social connectedness and purpose, your emotional balance and your ability to be a possibility thinker and to see how far you can strengthen it.

Meryl Comer (12:50):

Some of our audience may not be aware that your early work was really around the military.

Sandra Bond Chapman (12:56):

You know, actually Meryl, we're still doing that. We have a optimal brain health for war fighters. We're actually trying to become a program of record where from the very beginning military, when they join, they get a brain health index and they get the training. Right now we've trained almost 750 and they say, no one's really trained us how to do the neck up checkup, how to keep it strong like this. You know, it's all about the body and physical, but right now war is really more about how you think, what you do, how you solve problems, how you relate to your tribe as well as the enemy, what to do. So they said this is the first time we've gotten that. So it's actually grown even more significant. Many of the people, as you were alluding to, had significant brain injuries, repeated concussions, you know, as much as 50 to 70 concussions, PTSD.

Sandra Bond Chapman (13:52):

With the training and the index, they realized that they could repair their brain, whether it was one year, five years, or 20 years after sustaining that we were able to show significant brain gains even after experiencing some of the most horrific events. But it also decreased depression by as much as 60% and stress by 40%. And many of them were able to come off of the massive medications that were they were on. So getting the idea that peak performance, you know, for physical performance, what is your peak performance? It never stops for your brain. It's even higher. And what's exciting for us is the military are not afraid of their brain. They don't have the same stigma. They're ready to go for it, you know, so they, they actually motivate us is why wouldn't the general population want to do everything they could to keep their brain stronger, more resilient?

Meryl Comer (14:50):

Let's look at one of the biggest life transitions as we age. And that I would look at is as retirement. So what happens to the brain when you move from a very highly structured, purpose driven routine into something that, what do I do today, right?

Sandra Bond Chapman (15:10):

Retirement is the period where we see the greatest drop in cognitive decline. And you know, when I say brain health is cognitive, it's connectedness and its ability to have emotional balance. All three of those to decline very markedly. So is it because your brain changed or is it because what you do? I think it's the best example of how you use your brain is what keeps it strong or makes it decline. It makes it decline in a very significant way. We have so many participants that during this period, and they're surprised when they retire to see this drop off and they're like, oh, you know, I thought now I could, you know, kind of relax. And we're like, yes, you can relax, take it. But you still need to keep your brain in this challenge period because to keep it strong, you can't have lower level of cognitive demands. Again, brain health is not just about cognition and memory. It's so much more. It's your ability to relate to difficult people, your ability to have a purpose and find that. And retirement can be the perfect time to find purpose and to do it with all gus mental gusto as possible.

Meryl Comer (16:29):

For someone listening right now and paying attention <laugh> and feeling overwhelmed, give us one practical brain healthy strategy that they can implement in the next 10 minutes to start shifting out of that state.

Sandra Bond Chapman (16:45):

If you're feeling stressed, what I would say is identify it. Zoom in to the stress and say, what are you feeling stressed about? And then zoom out, what, what is meaningful about that stress? Why are you doing it? You know, is it something that you want to solve? Are there, is there a way that you could kick into possibility gear, thinking of how to get excited about it? What I say is switch your stress, your distress to you what was called ress, which is a positive side 'cause it's really how you frame it. And then put it in a timeframe that you're willing to give it 30 minutes to work on right after this to get excited about your stress and then rest. So take your stress, think about what is meaningful, why are you stressing about it? Because if your stress is probably something that means something to you and you, you want to tackle it, carve out just a small amount of time that you're willing to give it and then give it. Try to tackle it when you leave here. And then when you're done, we want you to embrace what's possible from that. So take distress and make it you stress reframing it changes the brain very dramatically.

Meryl Comer (18:10):

Sandy, that that's great advice. But when I was listening to you, I was also thinking, what would you tell procrastinators?

Sandra Bond Chapman (18:18):

All of us are procrastinators a little bit on cer certain things. It's usually something we dread. And I typically say whatever it is you're procrastinating on, break it down into one small chunk, two small chunks. Do two things toward that task. That's only going to take 30 minutes and then celebrate when you finish that and have a brain rest. Go outside and get awe. But we procrastinate because we make tasks bigger than they are. If you will just break it down, do one small, two small steps toward it. You will see, oh, that wasn't so bad, you'll celebrate. 'cause You'll get a dopamine ping in your brain will go, that was good and you'll be glad that you made progress on it.

Meryl Comer (19:05):

All right, I can't resist. What about multitaskers women pride themselves on being multitaskers

Sandra Bond Chapman (19:12):

<Laugh> In the society where we pride ourselves in doing two things, our brain isn't wired to do two things. We're literally putting on the accelerating the break back and forth like this and frame our connections. Very really toxically. We're pouring cortisol on the hippocampus. People that are chronic multitaskers look just like someone with early stage Alzheimer's disease with the amount of atrophy. So singletasking is one of the greatest gifts you can do for your brain. And I say if we would just realize that multitasking is to the brain as cigarette smoking is to the lungs, if you're going to multitask, you might as well just pull your cigarette out. Just give it up.

Meryl Comer (19:58):

So as we think about the future of aging, tell us what it would look like to live in a society that prioritizes brain optimization. The way we prioritize physical fitness.

Sandra Bond Chapman (20:13):

Can you imagine if we were living these robust lives and we had our mental capacity, that instead of right now, most people in their eighties are exceptions when they still have their complete mental robustness. But it doesn't have to be like that. One of the most exciting findings that we really hadn't anticipated is that in our study, as we track people over three, three years, so not just six months, which was what the first study, but three years, we see 75 to 80% of the people show significant gains from the time they started from their baseline to three years later. And this is where we saw 20 year olds, 40 year olds, 70 year olds improving significantly. And even people that were in the category that we would say, oh, I might be a little worried, I've got mild cognitive impairment. They didn't show the same level of gain immediately, but they showed a delayed gain. But even they began to show a gain after continuous using their brain in these strategic ways. So for me, that people can continuously improve their brain over three years, I think 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, to close the gap from, remember, our lifespan is 80 and our peak brain years is 30. We're going to close that gap to 50 years if people work on it.

Meryl Comer (21:42):

Well, I know you're leading the way. So <laugh>,

Sandra Bond Chapman (21:45):

Let's go.

Meryl Comer (21:46):

Our guest has been Dr. Sandy Von Chapman, Felger and Chief Director of the Center for Brain Health at UT Dallas. And she's given us great news. Our brains are dynamic, trainable across the lifespan and that it's never too late to start. So we're going to start now. You can join the Brain Health Project at Center for Brain health.org. Test your BHI, which is your Brain Health Index. It's free. And that's it for this edition. I'm Meryl Comer. Thank you for brainstorming with us.

Closing(22:23):

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