Brain Secrets from Super 80-Year-Olds

And the use of lithium as a brain supplement.

Science usually studies what’s wrong, but this scientist studied what was right, with brains that is. God bless Emily Rogalski out of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She gives us hope!

Dr. Rogalski used imaging techniques to evaluate the part of the brain that indirectly tells us how healthy a brain is: the cortical thickness.

• The thicker the cortex, the more nerves live there.

• The more nerves we have, the better we can think, remember, and focus.

• The more nerves, the more agile and energetic our brains.

Looking inside the brains of 80-year-olds who, by testing, proved to have amazing memory and cognitive capabilities, Dr. Rogalski demonstrated that their cortical thicknesses were so robust that they were even thicker and “better” than many people 20 to 30 years younger.

Oldsters with better brains than youngsters! Imagine? NEVER assume all those with gray hair and wrinkles have less powerful brains than younger, prettier, shinier humans.

Up till now, many issues and ailments have been thought to be absolutely inevitable side effects of aging. Thinning of the gray matter and fewer nerve cells in the cortex have been thought to be plain unavoidable.

This has led to lots of aging bias!

If we are older, we must be dimmer and our brains more feeble. But this is not necessarily so, and, in fact, is not the case for some of us. The real question becomes, what can we do to maintain healthy thicker cortexes? What can we do to avoid brain drain and keep brains sane?

• Keep waistlines thinner. Thicker bellies have been linked to shrinking brain mass. Bigger Belly Fat, Smaller Brain Size & The Shocking Link of Mindfulness (15 Action Steps)

• Robust exercise that gets your heart rate up to the healthy limit for your age range and health status, even for 30-second bursts, regularly, every day.

• Add lithium nutraceutical to your daily anti-aging nutrient mix. The mineral lithium protects healthy brain thickness, and it has also been found to promote healthy bone density. Two, two, two thicker benefits in one. This is not the lithium carbonate meant to treat bipolar disease, this is nutraceutical low-dose lithium riding piggyback on either aspartate or orotate molecules.

  • Always work with a practitioner who knows how to direct you on the type of lithium and the best and safest dosage for you. Lithium has been shown, in imaging studies, to increase cortical thickness within only a matter of 4-5 weeks. These studies have been replicated, which is a hallmark of separating the gluten-free wheat from the gluten-full.

    Lithium orotate also has a calming effect, and lithium aspartate has a more energetic boosting effect, so these forms can be used accordingly. Dosages are usually 5 to 10 mg once or twice a day.

• Test and balance your hormones at any age, yes, even in your 90’s. But you must work with a doctor that has made hormones their major focus!

• Eat more healthy food, less junkie food.

• Eat diversely, not monotonously.

• Eat colorfully.

• Avoid processed and deep-fried foods most of the time if you are basically well and all of the time if seriously ill, it all depends on YOU and your life scenario.

• Good poops to get the bad stuff out of us. Make sure you have a “Pooptatuional” daily if not twice a day.

• Sleep deep, the old 8 hours a night is no longer ideal, rather 6 to 7, but again this varies per person. Since the ole 8 hours a night has now bitten the dust, how can you ever listen to what the “experts” say? You gotta learn to think agilely for yourself!

• Vitamin F = have FUN!

• Vitamin R = get your resilience on!

• Work out your traumas, don’t carry them around.

• Forgive your enemies and yourself.

• Read my stuff and share it if you so please. Keeping up with, hopefully, agile thinking.

Knowledge lived is for sure a better option for preserving brain power!

Dr. B.

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Reference:

Superior memory and higher cortical volumes in unusually successful cognitive aging. J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2012 Nov;18(6):1081-5.

Emily Rogalski, Ph.D. from the SuperAging research program at Northwestern University Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease that studies individuals 80+, who seem to resist age related changes in memory.