Category: Brain Health

  • Healthy Brain For Healthy Hearing

    A Healthy Brain for Healthy Hearing

    When most think of brain health, they do it in terms of retaining memories as they age. But your brain affects many processes throughout your body – not just whether or not you can recall things.

    When you think of aging and the symptoms that go along with it, you might associate it with joint pain, hair loss, becoming hard of hearing and more. Most people mistakenly believe that there’s not much they can do about hearing loss.

    Hearing is an important part of maintaining independence and youth – being able to communicate with those around you. Your ears aren’t the only part of your body that helps you be able to hear.

    Your brain also has a part to play. When it’s not healthy, this can affect your ability to hear. Luckily, there are some specific things you can do to sharpen your brain activity in an effort to boost and retain your hearing.

     

    What Role Does the Brain Play in Hearing?

    Without a healthy brain, your ability to hear will be altered. When you hear a noise, that sound first enters the outside area of your ear. From there, your eardrums are the next step.

    This is followed by a vibration, then the cells act as translators. They make the vibration signals that the nerves can grasp. These signals are then moved to the brain. The brain takes these vibrations and sorts them into sounds.

    It can do this because of the ability the brain has with auditory impulse. All of this is a multi-step process, but the brain is able to translate what your ear picks up into sounds in the blink of an eye.

    At the same time that the brain is helping these vibrations change into the sounds that you can understand, it’s also acting as a sorting machine. The brain doesn’t just allow all the sounds to hit without putting them into certain categories.

    These categories are what you want to hear versus what you want to tune out. Though you might have heard jokes about “selective hearing,” it’s true that your brain can choose what you don’t want to pay attention to.

    For example, when you’re having a conversation with someone in a crowded coffee shop or restaurant, there will be a lot of noise. There will be the clatter of dishes. Coffee machines or other machines will make noise, too.

    There can also be the buzz of nearby conversation. Maybe there’s even loud traffic on the road outside the place of business. In order to pay attention to the conversation you’re engaging in, your brain will exclude the noise you don’t want to be at the front and center of your mind.

    It puts these sounds on the back burner. You might be aware that these background sounds are going on, but your brain doesn’t focus on them, so while you hear them, you don’t listen.

    Your brain also knows how to change the sound level. It can act as both a receiver and an amplifier to project the sound level of what needs to be heard, versus what doesn’t.

    Your ear works in conjunction with the brain to make sure all the sounds you hear get processed.

    That’s why, when one or the other is out of whack, it can affect your hearing. It’s also why you need to make sure that you keep your brain’s auditory cells in good working order.

    Keep in mind that if the cells in your ears are damaged, your brain can’t compensate for this damage. It will adjust, but it can’t rebuild what’s been lost. That’s because the vibration in the ear will be altered when there’s damage.

    You might hear different levels or struggle to hear at all. This is why, when people get older, they can become hard of hearing. It’s the ear cell damage or changes that the brain can’t restore causing the issue.

     

    Signs That You’re Suffering from Brain Fatigue

    Your brain does a lot of work. Just like any other part of your body can, it can also experience fatigue. One of the most common symptoms of brain fatigue is a surge in irritability.

    You’ll find that things get under your skin when they normally wouldn’t even bother you. But there are also other symptoms associated with brain fatigue. One of these is struggling to concentrate.

    When the brain reaches the point where you feel like you just can’t handle one more thing, you’ll discover that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t keep your mind on whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish or to think about.

    You might also experience trouble recalling things. This trouble with the memory stems from the fact that your brain is overtired and the synapses are having problems passing messages.

    When brain fatigue is present, you’ll find that you don’t care about what it is that you’re doing. If this is a task, you just want to get it done without caring about the final results.  You may not be interested in doing things that you’ve always been excited to do in the past.

    When brain fatigue is present, you can lose interest in food or you might find that you’re eating more than normal. This is done subconsciously in an attempt to replenish the energy your brain doesn’t have at the moment.

    You may also find that you’re having problems falling asleep or that you can’t stay asleep once you do drift off. All of these are signs that your brain has reached the point of exhaustion.

    You may feel like you’re moving in slow motion. Everything you try to think about seems caught in a haze. The things you used to be able to perform quickly, you’re having trouble figuring out how to do.

    You might find that you can’t grasp concepts even on a child-like level. You might wonder what brain fatigue has to do with your hearing. When your brain is fatigued, it affects your hearing because you can’t concentrate.

    You’ll hear things, but you won’t really absorb them. If someone were to ask you what you just listened to, you may not be able to recall. The brain fatigue you’re experiencing will make it difficult for your brain to be able to understand the hearing vibrations.

    This may cause it to disregard sound, regardless of whether it’s important or not – such as the sound of a siren or the honk of a horn. Everything will slow down because you may feel like you’re hearing sounds, but your brain is just not able to process or comprehend the noise.

    As this happens, you can end up struggling with memory recall of what was said to you and even what you spoke about. This may be seen as memory loss, when the reality is, it was a hearing issue.

    Improving Focus and Memory Can Improve Your Hearing

    In order for your hearing to be what it needs to be, your brain has to be healthy. If you’ve experienced brain fatigue, you need to deal with that. Once you treat the symptoms, you’ll be able to restore the correct ability to hear and process information.

    The good news is that your brain is an organ that does have the ability to heal from fatigue. It also has the ability to once again retain information that was lost. It can also learn how to focus again when there’s been a struggle.

    This helps your overall hearing. If you’re wondering what the link is, it’s found in the synapses. These are the points where neurons can connect in order to be able to communicate.

    Without healthy synapses, you’ll have trouble with your hearing. You may also experience other problems communicating or in your body’s muscles when the synapses don’t work correctly.

    When your synapses are weakened, your brain is unable to hold onto memories and will struggle to form new ones. These synapses rely on signals and they travel from cell to cell.

    With your hearing, your brain processes sound using the auditory part of the brain. The brain functions here using synapses as well. If your auditory synapses aren’t healthy, your hearing ability won’t be where it needs to be.

    In order to improve your hearing, you need to work on improving focus and memory and that task isn’t as difficult as you might think. You need to make sure that you don’t overtax your brain so that it gets fatigued.

    If you have stress in your life, you need to find a way to relieve it. That might mean taking some time off if you have a tendency to overwork. If you’re busy, you have to practice shutting down throughout the day to give your brain a rest.

    Make sure that you don’t try to do more than your brain can handle. Don’t let your brain fall into a rut of doing the same thing. Like muscles in your body, your brain needs to be stimulated in order to remain healthy.

    Make sure that you exercise. This is one way to improve your focus as well as your memory function. Eat healthy meals. Your brain needs the vitamins and minerals in these foods.

    Cut out habits that negatively affect the brain, such as consuming too much alcohol or smoking. Make sure that you get the sleep that you need. When you sleep, the pathways in your brain are supported and it helps your synapses with communication.

    Look for brain supplements that can boost function. You’ll see these listed as nootropics. These supplements can promote cognitive function as well as help your focus and memory.

    The Debilitating Effects of Tinnitus

    Tinnitus is what happens when you experience ringing in your ears. You can have periods of tinnitus that are mild and more of an annoyance than anything else. But many people experience a nonstop ringing that’s not related to an external sound.

    Many people who struggle with the condition find that it can cause anxiety as well as depression when it’s chronic. Tinnitus is a condition that can interfere with your ability to live a normal life.

    You may find it’s too difficult to focus on doing something because your mind is focused on the ringing. Some people experience social withdrawal because they can’t handle trying to listen or communicate with the ringing in their ears going on simultaneously.

    This condition can cause some people to end up being unable to focus at their job and they end up having to change careers or stop working altogether. You can develop tinnitus as part of the aging process.

    As you get older and your hearing declines, you may notice that the hearing loss has resulted in this condition. Tinnitus isn’t just something that’s more common as you age. Hearing loss related to getting older isn’t the sole cause of tinnitus.

    You can develop the condition at any point in your life. Even teenagers can get the condition due to what causes it. Repeated exposure to noise that’s louder than it should be is something that can lead to tinnitus.

    An example of this is listening to loud music. If you listen to music, you’ll want to use over the ear headphones rather than in the ear ones because the in-ear ones are more likely to cause tinnitus due to the proximity and noise level of the music.

    Any time you’re exposed to loud sounds for a long period of time, you should protect your ears from hearing loss by wearing ear plugs. Some medications can lead to tinnitus and so can some diseases.

    Regardless of the reason you get it, there are certain vitamins and supplements you can take that can help deal with the stress and effects of living with tinnitus. While these supplements may not cure your tinnitus, they can help improve your daily life.

    Many of these supplements contain ingredients that can help boost the health of your ear’s inner hair. These are the inner hair cells that help with good hearing. By taking the right kind of supplement, you can protect or restore these cells.

    You might think because of this, that tinnitus is only an ear condition and isn’t linked to anything else. It’s actually caused by a problem that occurs in the brain’s processing of what happens in the ear.

    The Synapse Supplement That Could Provide Help for Your Hearing

    Because the brain is the powerful component that affects your hearing, it’s important that you make sure it’s healthy. The best way to do this is by taking the kind of supplement used by the brain to boost hearing and restore issues.

    One supplement you can take is called Synapse XT. When you have hearing problems, you can take these capsules to help improve your hearing as well as help alleviate symptoms of tinnitus.

    The supplement can also help restore cognitive issues that impact hearing. For example, when you take the supplement, it works to help improve your memory function by helping boost synapses performance.

    In addition to helping improve the memory, the supplement also works to help concentration, which allows you to be able to focus once again. Your brain works in conjunction with the ears by way of communication.

    If something gets in the way of this, it affects how and what you hear. The Synapse XT supplement works to improve the brain’s ability to have healthier hearing because it can help alleviate the fatigue your brain may experience.

    One thing your brain does when it comes to hearing is it sorts the sounds that the ears hear, such as dividing the sounds into what you actually hear versus what you filter out.

    This supplement helps the brain process auditory impulses and comprehend or interpret sound.

    By taking the supplement, you’ll be able to help your brain and in turn improve hearing.

    The ingredients in Synapse XT are all good for the brain. The product lists a variety of vitamins in the B family as well as natural ingredients like herbs.

    For example, one of the ingredients in the product is Vitamin C, which is imperative to the overall health of the brain. It also contains hibiscus extract. This herb is known for its antioxidant properties as well as its ability to boost memory function.

    Hibiscus has long been suggested in studies as a way to help relieve symptoms for those suffering from tinnitus. Synapse XT is a supplement that’s known as a nootropic. Not only does it help alleviate the symptoms of tinnitus, but it can also boost cognitive function and slow age related changes in cognitive function and hearing loss.

    There are many things you’ll want to do to improve your body as you age. Some will be cosmetic. Others for mobility or memory retention. This is just one aspect of an important anti-aging strategy you can implement into your life to secure a more youthful, more fulfilling way of life.

    Regardless of what issues you’re now facing, or how severe they are when it comes to brain health and hearing, you’ll want to be proactive when it comes to reversing symptoms you have the power to control and preventing things from worsening whenever possible.

    It’s never too late to take charge of your future and protect your health and hearing so that you can live life to its fullest and enjoy your years ahead being social and participating in conversations with others.

  • Why is Sleep So Important For Your Health

    Why is Sleep So Important For Your Health

    You already know that sleep is important. Without adequate amounts, you feel sleepy. You may also experience other obvious signs and symptoms such as crankiness, headaches, and/or trouble concentrating. However, there are even more serious consequences of not getting enough shut-eye.

    These are explained in what follows:

    Your Physical Health –

    1. Increased Risk of Obesity due to the following factors –

    a.) No energy – If you do not get adequate sleep at night, you may delay getting out of bed in the morning, because you are too sleepy. As a result, now you do not have enough time to make a healthy breakfast and pack a healthy lunch. You rush out of the house, and you pick up a coffee and donut on the way to work. If you packed a lunch, you eat whatever you threw together at the last minute in the morning, or you buy whatever is on the menu at the cafeteria that day. On your way home, you are tired and you do not feel like spending an hour in the kitchen preparing something, so you decide to get take-out pizza. You decide to skip the gym that night, because you are just too tired.
    You can see how this becomes a vicious cycle and can result in weight gain.

    b.) Your body’s use of glucose is impaired – Normally, when you eat, your body’s cells are supposed to use the energy (glucose). However, when you are sleep deprived, your body is not as efficient at doing this. This makes you feel more tired, hungrier so you eat more, and it also increases your chance of diabetes.

    c.) Your hormones are thrown out-of-whack – A hormone called, cortisol, is produced by your adrenal glands. It is commonly referred to as one of the “stress hormones.” Cortisol increases with lack of sleep, and it also makes it harder to sleep. Normally, your cortisol levels should be highest in the morning so that it is easy to wake up, and lowest in the evenings when your body prepares for sleep and as it sleeps. High levels of cortisol, when it should be low in your body, is linked to weight gain, obesity, and diabetes.

    A couple other important hormones that are affected by lack of sleep include grehlin and leptin.

    Grehlin is the hormone that tells you when you are hungry, and that it is time to eat. In contrast, leptin is a hormone that tells you when you are full, and that it is time to stop eating. Unfortunately, when you don’t get enough sleep, grehlin increases and leptin decreases, putting you at risk of weight gain.

    2. Increased Risk of Diseases – As already mentioned above, lack of sleep increases potential for weight gain and unstable blood sugars, which then increases your risk of diabetes.

    Heart disease is also higher if you are chronically sleep deprived. According to the National Sleep Foundation, despite exercise, age, weight, and smoking habits, your risk of heart disease goes up if you do not get enough sleep.

    Although the exact causes are not known, lack of sleep is linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and increased inflammation in the body. All sleep-deprived individuals are at risk of this, but people with sleep apnea tend to have even higher rates of heart disease than those without the medical problem.

    3. Lowered Immune System Functioning – Your immune system is what protects your body from germs. When your body encounters germs, your body goes to work to fight off the invaders. However, when you don’t get enough sleep, your immune system does not function as well, increasing your susceptibility to colds, flu, and other ailments.

    The simple explanation is that your immune system cannot produce the germ-fighting cells that it needs when you aren’t getting enough sleep. Your body is effective at restoring these fighter cells when you sleep.

    4. Your Sex Life Suffers – This actually could have been included in the topic of hormone disruption above. This is because the sex hormone, testosterone, is reduced in men and women who are leading sleep-deprived lives.

    This, in turn, results in a decreased interest in sex for both genders, erectile dysfunction in males, and reduced vaginal lubrication in females.

    5. Increased Risk of Injuries and Accidents – When you are tired, your concentration and focus is poor. Therefore, this puts you at increased risk of workplace injuries and car accidents.

    Your Cognitive, Mental, & Emotional Health –

    Pulling all-nighters is not only a bad idea for your physical health, it also negatively impacts your mental, cognitive, and emotional health. More people are recognizing that the days of bragging about being able to function with only a few hours of sleep, is really a health hazard and not something with which to mess around.

    Here are 7 ways that sleep deprivation affects these areas of your health:

    1. Altered Mood – You already know that you feel irritable and short-tempered when you don’t get enough sleep. Chronic lack of sleep, however, also increases your chances of depression and anxiety.

    2. Decreased Ability to Handle Stress – Stressful situations are difficult enough to handle when you have gotten a good sleep. When you get less than ideal amounts of sleep, and you are dealing with stress, your ability to do this well, deteriorates significantly. You may get angry, yell, cry, or do things that you normally wouldn’t do if you had gotten a good night of sleep.

    3. Decreased Ability to Think & Learn – Your ability to concentrate and focus on tasks, make decisions, and carry through with them, is hampered a great deal with lack of sleep.

    In addition, your ability to learn new things is also reduced.

    Sleep is known to help with new learning, and it is probably the reason why babies and young children sleep so much as they are constantly learning and adapting to their environments. New learning does not end with childhood, so adequate sleep continues to play an important role in adults. In addition, your brain assimilates information as you sleep, helping you to retain information.

    4. Reduced Judgment Skills – Although this also falls under the inability to think, it deserves its own bullet point. If your judgment and insight is lacking due to poor sleep, your decision-making skills will be affected. You may make more impulsive decisions, or do things that are potentially unsafe while driving, for example. Your ability to assess situations accurately decreases.

    5. Negatively Impacts Relationships – Because of your reduced ability to handle stress and your increased irritability, it makes sense that your personal and work relationships will suffer. This may also take a toll on your self-esteem as friendships and relationships are ruined, and you find that you have no one with which to talk.

    6. Poor Memory – Again, this goes back to the inability to concentrate and focus on what is happening around you. If you do not register things in your short-term memory, it is impossible for the brain to convert memories to long term ones.

    7. Slowed Reaction Time – Sleepiness when driving, has been described as being as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol. If you mix lack of sleep and alcohol, it makes you even more dangerous behind the wheel.

    Not only is driving dangerous when you lack sleep, working in certain industries or professions, when sleep-deprived, can be extremely dangerous. For example, construction workers and police officers are two of many professions that require alertness and the ability to react quickly.

  • 8 Ways To Prevent Mental Decline In Your Older Years

    8 Ways To Prevent Mental Decline In Your Older Years

    There has been a lot of research over the years about the best way to keep a healthy brain as we advance in years. There has been a lot of focus on the health and lifestyle decisions we make that could prevent mental decline and even dementia.

    There are plenty of steps you can take to maintain your cognitive function and beat the mental decline.healthiermind

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    1. Get Organized

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    Living an organized life will make it easier to remember where things are- everything should have it’s place. So, when you arrive home from a long day put your keys in the same place, keep your handbag or wallet in the same spot, and the same goes for the everyday items you use. It’s easy to remember where things are when you always keep them in the same place.

     

     

     

    2. Concentration
    The ability to concentrate declines as we age. It is important to decrease or eliminate distractions to improve your ability to concentrate on the task before you. Seniors need to work harder to shut out distractions. Such as when you open the refrigerator door and you have completely forgotten why you are in there or walking through the grocery store and cannot remember what you came to get. This occurs because something else popped into your brain just as you reached for the handle. Be sure to take a list when going to the grocery store. Too many choices can create distraction and cause you to forget what you came for or make it home with items you really did not need.

    Short term memories are particularly susceptible to slipping away due to distraction. So, start making an effort to focus and concentrate now.

    Studies have shown attention training can alter brain activity, so the aging population can learn to block out distractions in order to improve concentration. There are a growing number of activities, from crossword puzzles to Sudoku, promoted as ways to keep our minds young, Attention training is indeed a way to reduce older adults susceptibility to distracting stimuli and improve concentration.

     

    3. Challenge Yourself
    Find new ways to challenge your mind. That means playing word games, challenging a loved one to a game of chess, leading an active social life, and learning a new skill such as a language, cooking or playing an instrument.

    Not only will you feel better about yourself, but your brain will get an excellent workout. The social aspect of this is also important, so try to get a lot of your game challenges in person or use a game that has a chat function that allows you to communicate with the person you’re playing against.

    According to Alzheimers.net, one of the most effective ways to prevent dementia is by learning a new language.

     

    4. Manage Stress
    Short term stress may leave you more focused, sharper, and able to pay more attention. However, chronic stress has the opposite effect and it can interrupt your ability to form memories and recall information.

    Healthy stress management is imperative.

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    5. Eating Habits
    Your diet is vital, which means getting plenty of vitamins and minerals. Ensure you’re loading up on antioxidants and brain foods like folic acid and omega-3 fatty acids. Your diet can improve your brain health.

     

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    6. Exercise
    Getting exercise provides your circulation with a healthy boost and even improves your cholesterol levels, both of which can benefit your cognitive abilities and circulation.

    It isn’t just your body that needs exercise – so does your memory. You can do that by playing memorization games (you’ll find there’s an app or two for that). A great place to start is by finding a good brain training app that you can use daily – from there you can invest in other apps that offer word games (even Scrabble is a great choice) and number puzzles.exerciseforthebrain

    Change it up every once in a while, so you don’t get used to the same tasks.

    Your brain needs variety.

     

     

     

     

    7. Sleep
    Your brain processes your day while you sleep, it’s when it consolidates memories and reboots. So, you can do your cognitive function a major favor by getting plenty of sleep each night.

    Create healthy routines around bedtime to prepare your body to catch seven hours.

     

    8. Weight
    Maintaining a healthy weight is important, additional weight puts pressure on your heart, contributes to hardened arteries, which just makes it harder for your heart to function properly.

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    Learning good habits to prevent weight gain

    Obesity often leads to diabetes, which has its own role in your heart health and the health of your nerve cells. So, it makes sense then that people carrying more weight experience steeper mental decline.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Time points to a study from Northwestern University, the study looks at almost 9,000 women, aged 65 to 79, and found that with every increase in BMI there was a decrease in memory (http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2003862,00.html).

    This may be due to a lack of blood flow in smaller vessels creating essentially, mini-strokes that go completely undetected. The damage is cumulative, thus affecting our capabilities progressively.

Copyright @ 2017 DrCurtisMcElroy