What builds resilience and how can we age-proof our bodies and brains?

Let me tell you a couple of short stories before I delve into the answer.

Madame Jeanne Calment died at 122. Her secret for longevity was complex, but included a kilo of chocolate a week, and never wearing mascara, as she laughed till she cried each day of her life. When she was 90, a lawyer, himself only 47, offered her F2500 a month for her apartment, payable until she died, at which point he would possess the property. He never did, and his widow carried on paying for decades until Madame Calment died.

The Okinawan Japanese have more elders over the age of 100 than other group, yet their first-degree relatives in Brazil live on average 17 years less. School Sister Nuns of Notre Dame show cognitive changes early on in their writings, yet many live on to ripe old ages, only to be found to have Alzheimer’s changes in their brains, without ever showing this in their lives. 25% of people who show no clinical signs of Alzheimer’s turn out to have the changes in their brains that should have shown up during their lives.

This all leads us to my original question, what builds resilience and how can we age-proof our bodies and brains? One answer, from Snowdon’s studies of the Sisters of Notre Dame, is that we need to start building resistance early on in life, not later. People with good brains in early life, who get university degrees, lead busy and challenging lives, eat well, exercise and sleep well, and most importantly according to Louis Cozolino, have wide and warm social networks, tend to have resilient brains that work well until death at a ripe old age even though on autopsy things don’t look good at all. Most of us after 60 have nasty little holes appearing in our brains, but only relatively few of us decline because of them. Even with widespread brain changes, some people are able to behave normally until they pass on, even way past the age when dementia is more likely than not.

John Ratey, a professor of psychiatry, writes that when it comes to the brain, there is no substitute for strenuous exercise, and Louis Cozolino writes that there is no substitute for relatedness. Both are of course right. We evolved in a world where people surrounded us, it was essential for survival, and where we never sat down until it was time to die. Our genome evolved moving and being close to others, but it also evolved eating natural foods, and sleeping during the dark hours. Modern medicine, which most of us thought contributed massively to longevity, should not get that credit according to most medical sociologists, the longevity we now have in Western societies has more to be grateful to modern sewage and hygiene, than to medications. Mark Twain had some good ideas, that I can paraphrase here: “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint”. He meant that not all we read is good information. “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not” by which he meant we have to avoid over indulgence in treat foods, and sacrifice some of our modern habits. “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain” by which he meant, as we show in the BodyBrain Overhaul, that you have to build resilience to stress by taking on scary challenges, “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry” by which he shows us that a positive mindset is vital, as the research shows, “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up” where he shows us that we need to do things that are big in the scheme of the world, and cooperate with others, as Louis Cozolino assert, and “Don't let schooling interfere with your education: Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned” which means we have to stimulate our brains with new and increasingly complex information every day.

All the experts in different fields are coming together to show us the way to age proof our bodies and brains:

1. Start young, and keep going, and if you start old, exercise and learning then is more
important than it was earlier in many ways, no matter how fit you were as a youth

2. Eat non-processed foods, fresh as you can, with lots of Omega-3 to balance the Omega 6 and keep body-brain inflammation under control

3. Walk at least 11 000 steps a day, buy a cheap pedometer, it’s a great investment

4. Stand up and drink lots of water, eat some nuts or berries, and stretch and walk around every 90minutes of your waking life

5. Do 30 mins of strenuous exercise every day, till you pant, or sweat: do it in bursts of activity with lots of rest periods, life is a series of sprints.

6. Especially if you are old, do resistance training with the heaviest weight you can safely use, and do the exercises by moving, standing, not sitting.

7. Sitting for long periods tells your brain and body it is time to die: Don’t do it, save yourself! Keep moving, the more complex and challenging, the better.

8. Study and learn new things, more complex things, every single day of your life, games are not enough, and TV sucks, unless its education in the extreme (Like ours!).

9. Breath slowly for 20minutes a day, learn diaphragm or yoga breathing to bring your heart rate variability to its maximum and save your life.

10. Make sure you are with other people as much as possible, in meaningful interactions important to you and them as far as possible, hang out with young people too.

And most importantly, if you wake up in the morning, get moving. We all need something valid to do with our lives and a sense of purpose. If you make up list of negatives in your life, and then when finished, try make up a list of the positive things to be grateful for: you will find it impossible to finish the positive list, it’s amazing how we can keep on filling those in! People who actively work towards taking a positive outlook on life not only live longer, but enjoy it better.

Be vital!

Roy Sugarman PhD