This below is a video of a talk about brain longevity given by Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa at the Chautauqua Institution on August 2007. He is the author of the book Brain Longevity. He had served nearly 15 years as President and Medical Director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Foundation and had testified before Congress about life-style influences on Alzheimer's Disease.
Dr. Khalsa started the presentation with an audience participation in a brain boosting exercise. Then he talked about his background and career history and how he met a yogi and took up yoga, meditation, and mind-body exercises as stress reducers.
In the course of reviewing medical literature, he discovered something very important. He says the following in his talk ...
"Stress -- what I called chronic unbalanced stress was very detrimental to the memory. It killed brain cells by the millions. And this is because there is a chemical released in the body ... it's called cortisol." [around 8:30 of the video]
There are over 5 million people have Alzheimer's. And 2 million people right now with undiagnosed Alzheimer's. There are half a million people under the age of 40 with Alzheimer. So the disease is cropping up even in younger generations. If we can delay the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years, we can cut the incident in half. And if we can delay it 10 years (which Dr. Khalsa believes is possible), people might not have to suffer from the disease.
Although one of the risk factor of Alzheimer is age, it is not the greatest risk factor. Genetics and family history is very important, but also is not the greatest risk factor. Dr. Khalsa says that the main risk factor is in the lifestyle. How you live your life today will determine the state of your memory tomorrow. At any stage that you are in, you can create a better brain starting right now. This is because the brain can grow new brain cells all the way up to the time of death.
The first law of brain longevity is that the brain is flesh and blood just like your body.
The second law is "what works for the heart, works for the head".
The third law is building cognitive reserve. That is why some people can have the Alzheimer pathology of plaques and tangle without displaying symptoms. There are two factors to building cognitive reserve. One is neurogenesis -- the growth of new brain cells. And the other is neuro-plasticity where you can mold your brain. So you can increase the number of brain cells and you can increase the number of connections between them.
Next, Dr. Khalsa goes to talk about the importance of nutrition. The countries with the highest intake of bad fat and calories also have the highest incidence of Alzheimer's. He recommends moving towards a plant-based diet. You don't have to necessarily become a vegetarian. But try to make your plants have a rainbow of colors of food. Leave the red meats, sweets, and big portions out.
He also believes supplements -- in particular anti-oxidants and B vitamins.
On the topic of neurogenesis, creating an enriched environment is key. The mice in the enriched environments have better memory and younger brains. Each spring canaries learns new songs. When they learn these songs, they grow new brain cells. Even sick cancer patient are able to grow new brain cells in their memory center.
Dr. Khalsa emphasized the importance of physical exercise. Exercising seniors were able to pop out brain stem cells that migrate to the memory center of the brain. Then you have to add mental exercise to take care of these cells and help them grow. One way is to add mindful awareness of the environment. And he gave a good example of how he does this. Nothing wrong with crosswords and sudoku and computer games. But it is not necessary. You can learn new language, keeping it active and simulated, etc.
The next topic is stress reduction. He talks about the use of meditation to reduce stress and cortisol.
Near the end of the talk he does another audience participation of a mind-body exercise involving the sounds of Sa, Ta, Na, and Ma.
After the talk, he answered some questions in a Q and A session.
