The secrets of staying young—Part III
by Mira and Charles on August 10th, 2010Your brain can stay young forever, oh yeah
Ok, we’ve talked about keeping your body young as you age in our series on preventing premature aging that started here. Next up: your brain. And here’s where seeming miracles can and do happen all the time. Although bodies do age in spite of our best efforts, the brain really can stay young forever. There are 90-year-olds who look and function physically like people in their fit 60s. But those same 90-year-olds can have brains as youthful as someone in their 30s or 40s. But how do you accomplish this seeming miracle?
It just takes a little work, a certain kind of work.
You see, here’s the problem we face if we want to stay mentally young. The truth is that we let our brains get flabby. We don’t exercise them. We don’t challenge them. And so they atrophy.
But how can this be? you say. I’m still working. I do crossword puzzles. I read the Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times!
Honey child, you are fooling yourself. Here’s what really goes on with most of us. No matter how challenging your job—even if you’re a physician or a judge—as time goes by we get better and better at doing more and more with less and less. We learn how to be smarter and more efficient at doing our demanding jobs by actually using less of our brains. We simplify and find shortcuts and brilliant rules of thumb.
The result, surprisingly, is that the better we get at what we do the dumber we get. The more efficiently we use our brains, the less we use of our brains. And so even if we’re at the top of our profession, our brains are still getting weaker.
This is a dangerous situation. So let’s stop deluding ourselves. If we want to stay brain-young as long as we live, we have to challenge our brains. And that means we have to put our brains to work doing something hard and unfamiliar.
That’s the key. Only if something is both hard and unfamiliar will it push your brain to stay young.
Here are some examples off the top of my head:
If you’ve been working with words all your life, decide that now, finally, you’re going to study math, calculus even, or physics.
If you’ve been working with people all your life, learn how to deal with things, like flying a plane or repairing motors or building furniture.
If you’ve been working with numbers all your life, learn a foreign language or write a novel.
You get the point. Don’t just go out of your comfort zone. Go WAY OUT of your comfort zone.
I did this. A few years ago I decided I was going to learn Latin. I’d studied it in high school, but I was a lazy and untalented language student back then. I’m probably still untalented now. But I worked at it again, starting when I was about 50. I even got to the point where I took an advanced course in
What a difference this made. My memory, which I’d always thought was weak, became much better. My ability to organize my thoughts got way better. Thanks to that I can honestly say that I am smarter than I’ve ever been.
Then a year ago I read an entire textbook on plant physiology. Listen: biology is really hard for me. I had to concentrate. I had to read the chapter on photosynthesis three times. But again: I get even smarter.
The Latin and the plant physiology were real stretches. Not easy. Not fun. (Although in a way they were a lot of fun.) But I’d moved out of my lazy, self-congratulatory comfort zone. And it made me smarter.
This is just what we do when we want to whip our bodies into shape. We really challenge them with the unfamiliar. And it works just as well, if not better, with our minds.
You see, you’ve got one great thing on your side. Neuro-plasticity. The brain is even more like a muscle than a muscle is. Muscles just get bigger, faster, and more able to work hard. Brains can do all this but can also get better at what they do, more capable, more complex.
Think of the brain as a smart muscle which can get even smarter.
The next blog will be the last in this series on how to avoid unnecessary aging. What we’ll look at is emotions and how we can stay emotionally fit for as long as we live: happy, creative, hopeful, calm. You can do it, and I’ll show you how.
And please do check out The Emotional Energy Factor. There is enough stuff in there to keep you feeling young for a long time.
