Playing brain games may help boost your brain-processing speed and memory.
If you want to double up your brainpower so you can memorize lines or just a shopping list, researchers at Johns Hopkins say dual learning is the key. Their recommendation: a program called “Dual N-Back” that strengthens your working memory by up to 30 percent.
Dr. Mike has long been a proponent of Double Decision, a brain game that improves brain-processing speed. (Research has shown that it can decrease dementia in 73- to 83-year-olds by over 33 percent when practiced for five weeks.) Dual N-Back is an excellent complement to that. It works on a similar principal of exercising your short-term memory and challenging your recall. As you progress through Dual N-Back, the levels become more and more difficult, just like Double Decision, and your brain becomes more and more used to flexing its muscles in your prefrontal cortex.
So, to improve your sharpness and upgrade your executive function (it manages learning and decision-making) check out these intriguing programs. The demos for both are free, but Double Decision has a small maintenance fee. You can explore it at brainhq. com. The Dual N-Back program carries no charge unless you want to contact the developers and customize your own scalable features into the program. Check it out at dualn-back.io.
Fighting teen obesity
What came first — the chicken or the egg? That’s been bugging folks for millennia. In fact, Aristotle, in the fourth century B.C., wrote, “There could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there would have been a first bird, which gave a beginning to eggs.” Only with evolution did we learn that the chicken came from some not-quite-a-chicken predecessor, all the way back to the first living cell.
Seems there’s a faulty appetite regulator in the brains of obese teens. The question is: Did the broken regulator cause the excess weight, or is it a result of it? As with the chicken and the egg, which came first? Well, we don’t know, but realizing there’s a broken food regulator provides a new understanding of the challenges obese teens face in achieving a healthy weight.
A study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America makes it clear that the 20.5 percent of 12- to 19-yearolds in the U.S. who are obese have measurable changes in the appetite-, impulse- and reward-regulating centers of their brain. (Obesity affects the brain’s amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, bilateral hypothalamus and more!) Helping teens attain a healthy weight means dealing with all of that.
How to do it: It takes a team to help them reset their brains: an exercise physiologist/ coach; a nutritionist; a yoga or meditation instructor, plus cognitive behavioral therapy. That can provide the tools needed to establish impulse control and help a teen recognize when enough food is enough.
Q: Why is it that when I’m outside with friends in the winter, it seems I always feel colder than everyone else, even when I am dressed just as warmly?
Carmela V., Syracuse, New York A: Different people’s bodies develop different cold
tolerances. Your chilliness boils down to how well your body produces and retains heat.
When you’re in the cold, the network of blood vessels close to your skin’s surface retreats inward so you don’t lose heat. But you end up with cold fingers and toes. Some folks’ blood vessels make a deeper retreat (that may be you).
The body does try to help out by making you shiver: When muscles contract and release, they create heat and (hopefully) warm you up. But how much heat you lose — and how warm you stay — depends on lots of factors: Body fat: The more fat right under the skin, the more insulated your body is and the less heat you give off. Height: Generally speaking, the taller you are, the more skin area your body has. That means more opportunity for heat to escape. Age: Older bodies are less able to regulate temperature and are more cold-sensitive. Sex: Vasoconstriction, that retreat of the blood vessels and resulting cold fingers and toes, happens more to women. Fluctuations in menstrual hormones also can make women more sensitive to cold at certain times of the month. Underlying conditions:
It’s possible that hypercoldness may indicate an undiagnosed disorder such as Raynaud’s phenomenon or an autoimmune condition such as Sjogren’s or Hashimoto’s (low thyroid).
So what can you do? If you’re concerned, talk to your doctor. Try building up your tolerance. There’s evidence that exposing yourself to the cold for 20 minutes a day and avoiding prolonged stays in warm rooms is effective.
Other research shows that exercising regularly boosts your resting metabolic rate, so your body produces more heat. First step: getting 10,000 steps daily, and having two to three weekly sessions of strength building (more muscles, more warmth). Still chilly while outside? Run in place, or do 20 jumps.