Old Brains in New Places

Is moving beneficial for people our age? Applying the principles of new brain science seems to suggest that it can certainly help us stay young and sharp.

Moving, especially to a different part of the country, forces us to change some of our habits. Old people are “set in their ways”, a quality that psychologist Ellen J. Langer calls “mindlessness”. It's not just a feature of age; most people, she says, live their lives mindlessly, on automatic pilot; but those who choose to become “mindful” stay youthful longer.

A woman in my women's group who just moved here from Tucson asked, "Isn't it too late to get established in a new place?" Not at all! Brain research in the last twenty years has shown that the brain’s ability to change, called “neuroplasticity”, persists as long as we live. It’s never too late to change!

The brain creates neuronal connections that are reinforced by habit, like those well-worn pathways in the carpet created by repeated trips back and forth to the kitchen or bath; these connections are reinforced by habit. But we can change the imprints if we choose.

It’s a case of use-it-or-lose-it. Just as muscle tone rapidly deteriorates when we don’t exercise, a brain that relies on ingrained or “mindless” behavior is an under-utilized organ, and little by little it stops producing new neuronal tracks. People who sit home in front of the television, endlessly repeating old behaviors, are letting a good brain to go to waste.

This is why we are advised to learn something new every day, like a new language, or how to play a musical instrument. Neuroscience has shown that stimulating mental activities with lots of repetition are just what we need to keep our brains healthy. Now that we are living longer, pushing back the 70 forms of dementia that confine more and more elders to nursing homes is a primary goal for most of us.

Age provides limitless opportunities for new kinds of activities, ones without the stress associated with jobs and child-rearing. The trick is to choose a challenging activity, the more difficult the better. Diane Ackerman writes in her book, A Hundred Names for Love, which is about her husband’s aphasia (brain damage resulting from a massive stroke): 

“A colossal number of brain cells (hundreds to thousands) are born each day but most die within weeks unless the brain is forced to learn something new. Then more neurons revive and sprout connections to their brethren. The harder the task, the more survivors.” 

Ackerman's husband, Paul West, an accomplished writer, lost the ability to communicate; but with constant daily effort to write and to speak, and his wife's constant support, he regained many of his verbal skills. In the five years after the stroke, he actually published three books and dozens of articles! 

You have to try. Moving to a new place challenges us to adopt new habits, but without application and repetition, we’ll simply transport the old ways to the new location.

We have to think to change the pathway, and that’s the whole idea. The more attentive we become to what we are doing, the more the brain benefits from the effort.

Yesterday in an aquatic yoga class that I enjoy, one woman alluded to her “challenged directionality.” It’s like a kind of dyslexia, she said. She can’t follow directions that rely on left and right because her brain can’t figure them out.

I don’t have that problem exactly, but I definitely have a poor sense of direction; and if I come to a dead end and have to turn around, I sometimes can’t figure out how to get back where I was going.

Living in a new town, driving into new areas to shop or attend an event, requires a fair amount of effort on my part. I have to look up the directions, study the map, print out the steps I’ll need to take; I have to allow enough time so that I don’t get into a panic; and then I really have to pay attention to where I’m going.

When I go back a week later, I have to review all these pointers, and pay careful attention to landmarks along the way. When I recognize that I am going the right way, I'm proud of my success. 

I did live in this region before, so it’s not completely overwhelming, but one place I now visit frequently, Santa Rosa, I now approach from the opposite direction. Instead of coming from the west, I now arrive from the southeast. At first I was totally confused. 

I could not figure out how to get to one congested, busy street, Santa Rosa Avenue. I had to get on the freeway! But last week, when I visited the Peace and Justice Center on Sebastopol Road, I saw where Santa Rosa Avenue begins. Suddenly the pieces fell into place. Of course! This is the way we used to go to Toys R Us! Now I know how to get to all the Big Box stores that we don’t have in Sonoma.

As I tromp into the kitchen to get a glass of water and reach – again! -- for the wrong cupboard, I notice that if I pause to remember where the glasses are, I can feel my mind come into focus, with improved results. Like an absent-minded professor, I’m always thinking about something else. I have to pay attention to what the body is doing, to remember where the glasses are now. 

Like absent minded professors, many older adults are not necessarily senile; they are just focusing on what they are doing. Langer’s research has shown that even very old people can behave more youthfully if they practice paying attention in this way.

Moving to a new place is more disorienting at our age; but it can have this unexpected benefit. It forces us to be more mindful of what we’re doing, carving new pathways into old brains grown lazy from habit. We can do the same thing without relocating, just by taking a new route to the library, or even rearranging the furniture.

Either way, we have to be willing to try.

[NOTE: This blog is the second in a series about my recent move from Santa Fe to Sonoma. To read them in order, start here]

When It's Sooo Hard to CHANGE!

Ken Rutgers (not his real name) lifted his shirt over his floppy paunch and stuck a needle into his tummy. He let the shirt slide halfway back into place and then wheeled himself closer to the table, where he proceeded to dive into a Macdonald’s hamburger and a streudal.

“Diabetes is such a drag,” he said to no one in particular. Receiving a sympathetic nod from me, he went on to say that he now has to test himself four times a day and give himself insulin every time he eats.

A few of us had remained in a workshop room at the American Lung Center during a lunch break from a training in Stanford’s Chronic Disease Management Program, which has just been updated. This excellent program is offered all over the country, as well as internationally, and it's free. It can also be taken online.

Ken is a Master Trainer. He is also a Vet, from the Vietnam War I would guess, and he works mostly with other vets through the VA.

Later on, after I led a discussion about what stops us from keeping up our exercise program, Ken offered that he just can’t get himself to exercise.

“I never have liked exercise,” he said. “I’d rather watch a movie.”

“But doesn’t it make you feel better?” I asked.

He shook his head. He has tried it. He’s gone to the pool, and after an hour of pool walking he comes home feeling worse. As for chair exercises, they do nothing for him.

I wondered why he had brought this up, unless it were in hopes of getting some help with this problem, since everyone knows exercise is good for you, especially if you’re dealing with a difficult chronic illness like diabetes. It’s one of the most important things you can do to have a better quality of life with a chronic illness.

The other healthy practices include mindfulness, a good diet, medication and a good relationship with your physician, healthy social interactions, and spending time in nature, fresh air being a great remedy in itself.

Ken knows all this – he teaches it to the Vets in his workshops! But clearly he is unable to do it himself. That might be a good thing, in a way – he certainly can’t look down on the people in his groups who simply can’t get themselves to do things they know are good for them. But it’s not good for Ken!

Exercise is so important for a person with chronic illness. For those of you who are diabetic, you’ll find lots of tips at the Diabetes Self-Management Web site. There’s an excellent book you can order from the site, and it’s only $6. For people in wheelchairs like Ken, there’s specific advice here 

I liked Ken, and I drove home from the workshop thinking about motivation and how it works. I have trouble exercising, but I do it. If I don’t, my back starts to hurt and my gait becomes uneven. When I do my exercises at home or at the gym, I feel much better. My relationship with my physical therapist, and hours of PT sessions over the past three years, have finally convinced me that exercise is probably one of the most important things I can do for myself; and even then, I have trouble working it into my routine! 

My problem has been that morning is the best time for my writing, and typically that is also when I try to exercise. A recent article in the New York Times clued me that afternoon may actually be a better time. The jocks at the health club I go to seem to think it is; that seems to be the busiest time for muscle building! Afternoon exercise is working better with the flow of my day.

Change isn’t easy and requires a lot of motivation or will power. My motivation is a negative and internal one – to avoid back pain. (According to Jim Taylor in his blog “The Power of Prime,” at Psychology Today, there are four types of motivators, positive and negative internal, and positive and negative external.) Taylor is a PhD specializing in the psychology of business.  He says the first step is to make the decision to change.

My guess is that Ken hasn’t made that decision; he is more interested in getting sympathy for his problem. But from his tone it was also clear that he’s uncomfortable with this situation. While not exactly committed to making change, he’d like change to happen.

Discomfort can be one of the primary internal motivators for making change, but clearly, it’s not sufficient in Ken’s case; something else is blocking his willingness to do the work of changing, which Taylor calls “the Grind”; success comes from willingness to do things you don’t particularly want to do, and persisting even when the results are not visible. Here’s where the effort comes in. To triumph, you must be completely dedicated, says Taylor, referring to the third “D” in his Three D’s for change.

Taylor’s scheme is based on will power, and judging from his career, I'm sure his is strong and active. To change a bad habit, say successful people, you summon your will power. Alas, some people are unable to do that. Is that because they are lazy or weak? That is what we tend to think, for it is what our system of Western ethics has taught us to believe, that we have free will and if we don’t use it, “there’s no one to blame but ourselves.”

But Ken does not appear to be lazy. A man in a wheelchair, he manages to get himself to the Vets’ hospital to give these workshops on managing one’s chronic illness on a regular basis; in fact, he has given more of them than anyone else in the program, even when there’s no money to pay his stipend! Like most of us, he’s motivated about some things, but not others.

Here’s where it gets complicated.

Dr. Gabor Mate is a Canadian psychiatrist who works with people addicted to heavy drugs. In an interview on Toronto television, interviewer Steve Pakin asked Mate about the role of will power in overcoming addictions. He said,

“Will power is a complex matter,” said Mate, because “the circuits in the brain centers which make conscious decisions are very weak, and they are much dominated by our impulses, which come from deeper centers in the brain, and the gap between an impulse and a decision is only a split second.”

No wonder it's so hard to change our habits! 

This gap between impulse and decision-making is true not only of addicts, but for all of us. It means that if you think about going to the gym when you'd really like to lie down, the chances are that you will lie down first and then think about going to the gym “later.” No wonder it's so hard to change our habits!

We’ll look at motivational blocks in our next post.