Diet and Neuroplasticity

When people think about losing weight they automatically feel that diet and exercise are the keys to success. But if this were the case, wouldn't everybody have the body that they wanted? The truth is that the mantra "eat less, exercise more" simply doesn't work for most people. The reason behind this is that if you do not change your brain you will never achieve your weight loss goals. The process of changing your brain is called neuroplasticity.

The BrainChanging Diet is all about neuroplasticity. Neuroscientists will tell you that in your brain you have hard-wiring and soft-wiring. The hard-wiring in your brain ensures that structures are connected to one another. The soft-wiring refers to your brains ability to enact change determined by our experience in the world. Through neuroplasticity, our brain reorganizes and restructures itself in response to the demands that we place on it.

This capability is not very surprising. Without neuroplasticity we would not be able to learn anything. The area of your brain called the hippocampus has been dubbed the memory centre of your brain and neuroplasticity allows this area to reorganize itself by creating connections with other areas of your brain, and to restructure by growing more neurons (brain cells). It was only until scientists gave this process a name - neuroplasticity - that people began talk and think about it. Now it has become clear that in order to make any significant long term change in your life and your behavior, you must understand neuroplasticity and how to use it.

So how do we do this? After all until very recently we really didn't know the adult brain was even capable of real structural change. We used to think that learning was all about thinking and the "mental mind", when in reality our brains actually change physically as we live and learn. Simon LeVay summarized this brilliantly with the statement "the mind is just the brain doing it's job". With this new knowledge we can use strategies that can effect real changes in our minds and our behaviors instead of just subtle "tweeks" that typically take place on a day to day basis.

Most people consider learning to be the conscious acquisition of new knowledge or skills. For example studying math problems, balancing on a bike or mastering a piece of music. In reality the vast majority of learning takes place in our brain while we are unaware or even asleep. Our brain is always monitoring our experiences and emotions and making associations so we can make predictions and plans about the future. This is neuroplasticity. You can't turn it off, and you have limited awareness of it most of the time. But there have been many new and exciting studies that show us that we do have a lot of control over this neuroplastic process. This means that your brain can change for the good, but it can also change for the bad. Changing for good literally means both change in a positive direction AND change for a lifetime.

What does neuroplasticity or brainchanging have to do with eating? Eating is one our very first actions and it is repeated over and over again throughout our lifetime. So we make some very strong eating habits which translate to very strong brain associations. Habits are formed by repeating things over and over and they are reinforced by other experiences that support a particular behavior. We know that eating is a highly rewarding action - it needs to be because it is crucial to our survival. So we are always driven to seek food when we are hungry but our brain also rewards us whenever we eat. Well some of life's rewards are small and some are much much more. Of course usually our brain thinks more is better and much more of a good thing is better still. Who wouldn't rather be rewarded with dollar than a nickel? The same hold's true with eating rewards. The basic reward of eating is easily supplemented or amplified by other life experiences.

Lets take an example from your childhood. Excited, and raring to go you take your new bike out for a spin but during the adventure you fall off and hurt your knee. You feel the pain and start to cry. Your mother soothes you, brings you in and gives you an ice cream. All of a sudden you feel better and want to go out and play again. In your brain this translates to, "when I feel bad or something bad happens I can eat some ice-cream and I will feel better!". Now this one incident will not create an addiction. But every time you eat an ice-cream to feel better, that connection in your brain strengthens and makes it more and more likely that the next time you feel bad you AUTOMATICALLY think - "I want ice-cream!"

This process is called myelination or "Neurons that fire together wire together". Every time that you feel bad and use food to feel better you strengthen that connection in your brain. Your brain is all about efficiency. So every time you do something your brain tries to make it a little bit easier for you to do it the next time - you might know this as "Practice makes Perfect". Over time these connections become so habitual and unconscious that we are not even aware of them. This is the power of neuroplasticity. So it is probably more accurate to say "Practice makes Permanent."

There is a flip side. In an attempt to be efficient, strong associations can convert a tangled underbrush of connections into your brain into a well worn easy to follow path. This well worn path can get you "into a rut". Neuroplasticity is not only the process we use to learn by strengthening brain associations it is also the process we use to "unlearn" by weakening associations. Neuroplastic change will only happen if you weaken associations over time and at the same time replace old automatic behaviors with new and better habits. As far as your brain is concerned one of the governing principles is "use it or lose it". But because we are unaware of many of our habits we must make an effort to bring the behaviors we want to change to our conscious awareness. We must practice mindfulness when we want to make intentional neuroplastic changes. Just as "neurons that fire together wire together creating strong habits" the converse "neurons that fire apart wire apart" is an important rule of neuroplasticity. This is great news. If you have learned to love certain foods that you just can't stop eating, you can also unlearn them through the process of brainchanging.

Remember, simply telling yourself "I am not going to eat my favorite food" is not going to work because you are fighting a learned behavior. The neurobiological pathway is carved into the very structures of your brain tissue. Simply dieting and willpower alone will really have no chance of bringing about long term weight loss.

If you can identify these pathways in your brain which create the behaviors that hinder your weight loss goals you can alter them by restructuring your brain. You can put neuroplasticity to work for you, because remember, you are always BrainChanging.

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To Boost Memory and Brainpower, Ignore Brain Supplements And Harness Brain Plasticity The Right Way

Traditional scientific ideas cast the human brain as a fixed and essentially limited system that only degrades with age. By contrast, we have now come to appreciate that the human brain is actually a highly dynamic and constantly reorganizing system, capable of being shaped and reshaped across the entire lifespan. The central concept in this new approach is brain plasticity, the brain's lifelong capacity to change and rewire itself in response to the stimulation of learning and experience. This includes both the lifelong ability to create new neurons - neurogenesis - and to create new connections between neurons - synaptogenesis.

In a young brain, brain plasticity allows for fast learning, as well as for potentially faster repair. As we age, the rate of brain plasticity declines, but does not come to a halt.

Lifelong neuroplasticity has major consequences. It means that our lifestyles and actions play a meaningful role in how our brains physically change throughout life. More specifically, neuroplasticity gives us the power to resist the effects of decline or disease by supporting our ability to accumulate knowledge and experiences, i.e., to learn. Learning helps to increase the so-called brain reserve and strengthen the brain against age-related decline and potential dementia pathology by increasing the connections between neurons, increasing cellular metabolism, and increasing the production of nerve growth factor, a substance produced by the body to help maintain and repair neurons.

Furthermore, neuroplasticity not only enables us to prevent future cognitive decline but also provides a basis for a more optimistic outlook when it comes to our ability to address existing deficits, such as learning difficulties and recovery after traumatic brain injury or stroke. By practicing a skill, one can repeatedly stimulate the same area of the brain, which strengthens existing neural connections and creates new ones. Over time, the brain can become more efficient, requiring less effort to do the same job.

A key contributor to our growing understanding of large-scale neuroplasticity was the development of high-level brain imaging technologies. By allowing scientists to produce images of the brain that show its structure, as well as where activity spikes as it is engages in various cognitive activities, these neuroimaging methods have revolutionized neuroscience in the same way that the telescope revolutionized astronomy.

Evidence of brain plasticity gleaned from brain imaging has come mostly from the brains of individuals who became experts in a particular skill. Why? Because, as you might have guessed, changes associated with learning occur massively when we become expert in a specific function or domain.

For example, several fascinating studies shows that London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus than London bus drivers. This is explained by the fact that the hippocampus is important for forming and accessing complex memories, including the spatial memories necessary for efficient navigation. Taxi drivers have to navigate around London whereas bus drivers follow a limited set of routes. Thus, the hippocampus of a taxi driver is particularly stimulated and changes over time as a result.

Plasticity can also be observed in the brains of bilinguals. It looks like learning a second language is directly associated with structural changes in the brain: a region called the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in bilingual brains than in monolingual brains. Plastic changes have also been found to occur in musicians' brains (compared to non-musicians), with areas involved in playing music (motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas, and inferior temporal areas) showing increased volume.

These changes do not require a lifetime to occur; a few years or even months can be enough. For instance, researchers imaged the brains of German medical students three months before their medical exam, and again right after the exam, and then compared the brains of these students to the brains of students who were not studying for the exam at this time. The results: Medical students' brains showed changes in regions of the parietal cortex as well as in the posterior hippocampus. As you can probably guess, these regions are known to be involved in memory and learning.

The large-scale changes observed in these studies were the result of serious effort over time, be it learning the streets of London or studying for a medical exam. It would be nice, of course, if we could all just take a pill to quickly and painlessly increase brain fitness: to suddenly become more attentive, never forget a name, and perform all the mental math we want. However, despite large investments, evidence that "smart" drugs or brain supplements actually work is scarce at the present. The recent extensive NIH meta-analysis found no evidence that any of the medications tracked (namely statins, antihypertensive medications, cholinesterase inhibitors, or estrogen) were successful at improving or maintaining cognitive functioning over time. Some drugs have produced positive effects for people who have neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, or Attention Deficit Disorder - when patients take these drugs, their symptoms are usually lessened. However, no solid scientific evidence has shown so far that these drugs are reliably beneficial or safe for people with normal functioning. Even in the supposed scenario that a smart drug or supplement that can "double brainpower" with no side effects is discovered, it would be misguided to believe that the drug alone would be enough. If things worked that way, why do steroid-taking athletes still have to pay attention to their physical exercise regimens?

What is supported by ample evidence is the brain's capacity to be flexible and be molded through experience. The question then becomes: "What activities or behaviors can provide the right kind of experience to help boost memory and brainpower?"

Copyright (c) 2014 SharpBrains

This is an adapted excerpt from the new book "The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: How to Optimize Brain Health and Performance at Any Age." To learn more, and to enjoy free brain teasers for adults and teens to test and improve cognitive ability, visit http://sharpbrains.com/

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