Use It or Lose It - Could the solution to cognitive decline be this easy?

In this podcast, Dr. Rodney and Karen talk about the value of daily motion in the lifelong pursuit of staying sharp into your 90's and beyond. You will be pleased when you discover the habits you can adopt to begin to reap the benefits of daily activity - no matter how small.

Here are the takeaways from this lively conversation:

1. Add strength training to your workout by simply using light weights or resistance bands.
2. Be consistent in order to reap these cognitive benefits. Let your regular routine be a part of your life and enjoy the time that you are active.
3. Put a priority on walking or other moderate forms of exercise. It is not necessary to be an overachiever. Moderate walking, swimming, dancing or cycling are all beneficial.
4. Engage your mind as well as your muscles. This is what we teach you at Stance Chiropractic in the neuro-rehabilitation sessions. You will learn eye exercises along with the movement to improve your posture.
5. Balance is extremely important as well as flexibility. When you are working on your balance as you stretch you are supporting neural connectivity and neuroplasticity.

Dr. Rodney is now a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner who would love to help you cognitive decline. We also have access to low light level laser that has been shown to prevent dementia.

Call 972-802-8812 to set up an introductory call to Root Cause Solutions at Stance for Health.

Functional Medicine works in every system to get you to your healthiest and to boost your longevity.

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Transcript

[00:51] Hi, and welcome to Stance for Health podcast. I'm Dr. Rodney, seated next to the Karen Sebastian - Hope Lady - Wirth.

[00:57] Karen: Well, thank you. I'm so excited about our topic today because it's one that we are passionate about.

[01:04] Dr. Rodney: We are passionate about it. It's because it has to do with your brain health. And ultimately, what we do with movement is what helps keep our brain cells connected and alive and nourished.

[01:17] Karen: So what we're going to. We're calling this is use it.

[01:20] Dr. Rodney: Or lose it  - exercise and cognitive decline.

[01:24] Karen: Yes. And here's the statistics that you are going to need to sit down for these. 

[01:32] It's affecting Alzheimer's. A severe form of cognitive decline is affecting around 47 million people globally. But here's this part where you need to sit down. They're projecting that by the year 2050, there will be 131 million people affected. Now, I would call that an epidemic.

[01:53] Dr. Rodney: Yeah,  worldwide. And just think about the number of people that you have to hire to take care of those people.

[02:03] Karen: Oh. And it's full care. Because by the time that severe form of cognitive decline sets in, they cannot care for themselves any longer. Do you know someone who is going through this?

[02:15] Dr. Rodney: It's probably on your radar right now. And you probably already know somebody who's been affected by this.

[02:23] Karen: My mom was, and it was heartbreaking. And so what we want to talk about today is there's an antidote for this.

[02:32] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. And you think. You don't think about it as being something for brain health because it's a body thing that you're doing. It's exercise. It's for your body only. Right.

[02:42] Karen: Okay, so stop right there. Exercise.

[02:45] Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

[02:46] Karen: It's the same as diet.

[02:48] Dr. Rodney: Let's just call it movement instead.

[02:50] Karen: I like that because when I think about exercise, I think about that I've got to go out and run a mile or I've got to lift 100 pounds or I've got to just devote myself to some.

[03:05] Like you used to do with cycling. You know, you used to, but you did a hundred miles in 100 degree weather. That's what I think of when I think of exercise.

[03:14] Dr. Rodney: Yeah, well, that's extreme and it's also foolish. We're not talking about that. We're talking about something that's sensible that you can do daily. In fact, that. That's getting ahead of ourselves a little bit.

[03:25] But it's recommended that you do it at least six days a week.

[03:28] Karen: Exactly. Because a Penn State College of Medicine did a study and it showed that daily physical activity, daily, regardless of intensity, that's the part I like the best.

[03:43] Dr. Rodney: I think if we're talking about exercise and movement in general, that's the encouraging part right there.

[03:49] Karen: Daily physical movements, as we're going to call it, movement, improved cognitive processing speed by approximately 60 milliseconds. Now that doesn't sound like much, but played out, if you kept that up, it would increase your cognitive function for four years.

[04:07] It would stave off the decline.

[04:09] Dr. Rodney: Huh. All right, so. So we're not talking about producing soreness and pain.

[04:18] Karen: No, we're talking about movement. The, the thing that you need to do. Walk more quickly a park a block away from your appointment instead of caring.

[04:30] Dr. Rodney: Where if you get the. The parking spot and praying about it.

[04:34] Karen: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, now you're talking. Oh, this is getting a little personal.

[04:40] Dr. Rodney: Oh, no, I didn't mean to get personal. I thought this was personal to start with.

[04:45] Karen: Yes, it is.

[04:46] Dr. Rodney: Aside from movement, next level, from simply moving daily to getting even more benefit out of your. Out of your movement is aerobic exercise.

[04:57] Karen: Okay, tell me more about that.

[04:59] Dr. Rodney: Now aerobic exercise is anything that you do that increases your heart rate in a 60, let's say 60, to maybe an a little bit of wiggle room, up to 80% of your total heart rate or max heart rate.

[05:12] And there's charts that you can Google for that super easy.

[05:16] Karen: So the way we do that was, is with high intensity interval training. We'll talk more about that at another time. But we're not talking about someone that is so exhausted at the end of it that they fall down and sweat is pouring off of them.

[05:29] No.

[05:30] Dr. Rodney: And the hit that we do is you're actually exercising for a total of 12 minutes, but you're getting a minute and a half rest in between sets. A total of three sets.

[05:40] Some would argue that you got to go up to nine sets to get the kind of benefit that this article is talking about. And it's not. We're talking about front level, introductory level exercise, aerobic that's next level terms of benefit for cognitive, preventing cognitive decline.

[05:59] Karen: So aerobic exercise gets your heart beat up. That's what we're talking about. Right.

[06:03] And the good thing about aerobics is that it boosts your brain health because it enhances spread spatial learning. Now I love that word spatial because that's where you, your awareness of your surroundings, your mechanical nerves, proprioception.

[06:23] Your proprioception are working. And that's also going to prevent you from falling.

[06:28] Dr. Rodney: Yes. So if you're talking about balance, that's the thing that we're actually getting at too. So it is. Spatial intelligence is through the body's map of, of where it is. In terms of.

[06:40] There's a fancy word called, you know, sensory homunculus and motor homunculus, but that's not. We don't have to go into all that detail. We're just talking about that it exercises the connection to where your body is.

[06:53] And we can go into more detail about how that fits with chiropractic too.

[06:56] Karen: Explain this part in this article.

[06:58] Dr. Rodney: I'll do the best I can.

[07:00] Karen: How does aerobic exercise stimulate the neurogenesis in the hippocampus?

[07:07] Dr. Rodney: There are chemicals in your body, myokines, that, the hormones that, that actually help stabilize blood sugar also stimulate the growth of the connection of the dendrites or the business end of the other neurons in your brain.

[07:23] Because we are talking, we're talking about a cell and we're talking about a cell that needs fuel. We're talking about a cell that needs connection and, and stimulation.

[07:32] Karen: So, if we're talking about someone who is having this awareness that they have cognitive decline and they begin to move and do these different types of exercises, it'll actually improve their synoptic, the connection of the dendrites, plasticity can regain them.

[07:53] And I think that this is the main message that I want this to be, that if you feel like you've lost it, it can be restored.

[08:02] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. Because neuroplasticity speaks to that. Even if you kept this identical amount of neurons at your whole life, even if you did that, you could still lose connections.

[08:13] Karen: I love that.

[08:14] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. However, neuroplasticity also says that if you've lost some, you can take the ones that you have. And in a three dimensional model, holographic, even you can, can build with, with these, these basically the bits of information, you can regrow information to that bit from another cell through, through a connection.

[08:38] Karen: So that's kind of complicated. But what we're talking about is that if you can do that, you can Begin to see changes, you can begin to see improvement.

[08:49] Dr. Rodney: Absolutely. And so one of the other preventions for this isn't just exercise, but how are you fueling it? Both the air and the food that you eat and the water that you drink are also very important in helping to reduce the toxic load that harms the connections to your neurons and in some cases kills them off.

[09:10] Karen: Yes. And so that is why we're saying that the good news is that you can make those changes and the bad news is you need to make those changes. And for some people that becomes overwhelming.

[09:25] So that's what we do with stands for Health. We want to come alongside you and with Rejuvenation Lifestyle, we want to begin to show you what are some simple things that you can do right now that's going to help you to stop losing it.

[09:40] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. And so we're basically saying it's preventable and it's not. And it's achievable and restorative. It's do it. It's doable. Yes.

[09:50] Karen: So we recently had have a new health partner whose daughter is bringing her and she has the beginnings of mild cognitive decline.

[10:02] And it was interesting because the daughter was in on a vacation trip and the sister brought. The older sister brought her younger sister.

[10:16] And the attitude was what struck me that that's what I said. The bad news is you get to make some changes because what was your impression of the older sister's approach towards her younger sister?

[10:30] Dr. Rodney: Dismissive and negative.

[10:32] Karen: Yes. And there's nothing we can do. Kind of like throw your hands up. That's just the way it is. Because I'm doing pretty good for. And then fill in the age.

[10:42] Dr. Rodney: Well, and we've talked about this before, but I want to allude to a previous podcast. If you'll look at gratefulness and if you're grateful, what it actually does is it helps you bring some of these.

[10:56] Basically this pictorial visual of the, you know, kind of almost like an eternal visual perspective. It brings. It brings heaven to earth, so to speak. It makes that more accessible too.

[11:10] Karen: Yes.

[11:10] Dr. Rodney: And it makes. Gives you. Gives you hope.

[11:12] Karen: It renews in you that sense of this is not over. In fact, there's what I can do. I can engage in this. I want you to share with us what a chiropractic adjustment does.

[11:27] Dr. Rodney: I'm glad you asked because you mentioned spatial intelligence before.

[11:31] And that's good. That is all well and good, but if the spatial intelligence has inhibition in processing, which is where it takes place, that takes place in the spine. So when the Spine isn't moving at 100%.

[11:48] You're actually losing the 90% of the method with which your brain uses to derive energy and stimulation.

[11:55] And so therefore how healthy your brain is and the stimulation that it gets depends in great measure by the amount of movement that you have in your spine.

[12:08] Karen: Wow, that's fascinating.

[12:09] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. So you've got these mechanoreceptors that are happening outside the spindle cells that are measuring the tension on the muscle and the tension on the tendon, the go to tendon organs that's giving you input to the spine or to your spinal cord.

[12:23] And the spinal cord processes with the brain to higher brain centers. But if it's, if it's not moving well in the spine, I'm saying it's not game over, it's restorable.

[12:34] It's potential that you're losing.

[12:37] Karen: And so many people come to see us and see you as a chiropractor only when they're in pain. But there is a benefit to their cognition, to their staving off this decline.

[12:51] Dr. Rodney: You can't tell that 90%. You're at less than 90%.

[12:54] Karen: No, you don't feel any pain. Pain, you just don't notice it. It's so gradual.

[12:58] Dr. Rodney: And so if, since we're talking about that, the very same things that inhibit you from being able to get more out of your exercise because of your spine and because of not doing it also, I would say that in large part, if you've got flexion dominance and forward posture, that you're not, you're not functioning at 100% that way either because you're not getting the full amount of oxygen that you could because your cardiovascular system, respiratory pulmonary system is, is, is inhibited or, or restricted by your, your lack of original design posture.

[13:37] Karen: One of the fascinating things that I get to do here at Stan's Chiropractic is neurorehab. And in that we do those posture exercises and we do eye exercises because those cranial nerves are feeding that information to the neurons.

[13:56] Why is that so significant in what we do?

[13:59] Dr. Rodney: So what I hear when you ask that is all the different things that play a role in the connections, and most of it has to do with our five senses, some of which are in your cranial nerves, cranial nerves 3, 4 and 6, the eye movement, the movement of your inner ear ossicles, or the fluid in your ears, the semicircular canals and cranial nerve 8.

[14:21] And not to mention the fact that the vagus nerve is one of the biggest in Terms of all the parasympathetic, pathetic stimulus to help you combat the fight or flight mechanism and all of.

[14:33] Karen: That stress and the things that that can do to our brain.

[14:37] Dr. Rodney: So it's a simple action step, right?

[14:39] Karen: Yes. This is something that you want to incorporate into your life and create some new habits.

[14:45] So let's start with one of the first ones. Add some strength training to your workouts. So now we're not talking about I have to lift 100 pounds.

[14:54] Dr. Rodney: No. And we're not contradicting ourselves either, by the way, because we're not talking about something that will make you sore, like every time you do it. And if you do it right, you may not even be sore the first time you do it.

[15:06] It's just resistance bands.

[15:08] Karen: I love that. So the resistance bands could be enough because basically they're gonna support your body and your brain and you need strong muscles too. Okay, second one. Be consistent.

[15:22] Dr. Rodney: Yeah, we've talked about that. Because a lot of times you'll have soreness in places you're not expecting to have soreness, and you'll think that something's amiss. You'll think something's not right in your body.

[15:32] We just had discussion just a few minutes ago with one of the health partners about that.

[15:37] She's really good at swimming, but she wants to be consistent.

[15:41] Karen: And the thing about the regular workout schedule, fit it into your lifestyle. Do things that are fun. We look at the blue zones, they are definitely enjoying. Like the people in the Sardinia.

[15:55] They're walking to church every morning. Well, that's just almost straight uphill. So they're walking 10 minutes, but they're getting a workout. They're doing it consistently. Or if you're going to go for hikes every weekend, just keep it up, doing it.

[16:09] And that's going to help you with that cognitive decline. Okay, here's another one.

[16:16] Walk.

[16:17] Walk more.

[16:19] Dr. Rodney: Yeah, and that's really. When you look at the brain and the way the nervous system is set up, it's set up for movement.

[16:26] Karen: And you can add some other things in there too. If you like to swim like you were mentioning, or cycling or dancing at a moderate pace, things that are fun, do it, prioritize it and move forward.

[16:42] Now here's another one. Combine physical activity with mental engagement.

[16:49] So that could be like a team sport, right?

[16:51] Dr. Rodney: Oh, absolutely. And that does make the spatial intelligence more just. It amplifies that well. Yeah, like pickleball, pickleball, volleyball. Those are just two that we, we know that we see on a consistent basis.

[17:06] Karen: Yes, at our at our health club, at our senior citizens gym that we've talked about a little bit. But basically they're going to stimulate your body and your brain and then incorporate balance and flexibility exercises.

[17:20] So that's very important.

[17:23] Dr. Rodney: Absolutely. So again, if we're just going to rehash the things, it's something as simple as movement without aerobic activity. You got the aerobic activity and then you got resistance training, which is interesting because those are the more or less the three levels of rehab that we talk about in the office.

[17:42] Karen: Rehab, neural rehab, get outdoors because the sunlight is going to help you and you're going to be able to enjoy the fresh air. You're going to be in a better mood, it's going to reduce stress, and it's going to give you mental clarity.

[17:58] We are excited to have been able to share this with you today, and we want to continue to help you.

[18:04] Dr. Rodney: Take your stance for health.

[18:11] Thank you for joining us at Stands for Health podcast, where getting healthy and staying that way are not as complicated as you might think.

[18:19] Subscribe now and discover steps and small changes that can increase your energy and open the door to vibrant health and longevity. If this podcast has been helpful, please write a review.

[18:33] We'll see you next time.