Confession #3

Before I became a mom I studied the brain. (This image is from one of the studies I did back then.) I love learning about the brain!

Confession #3. I’m a hypocrite. Well, that might not be exactly the right word, but I can’t think of a more appropriate one. Let me explain. I’m a neuroscientist. After I graduated I did a post-doctorate at The Center for Brain Health. When I interviewed there one of the lab techs told me about a book about the Nun Study. It’s about this study done on a bunch of nuns from one convent where they looked at different factors and how they correlated with dementia. I was fascinated so I read the book. It is “Aging With Grace” by David Snowdon and is one of my favorite books. He looked at several different factors such as education, socializing, exercise, diet, faith, linguistic ability, community, and attitude correlated both with symptoms of dementia and senile plaques (markers of dementia seen in the brain upon dissection). Now, we all know that a healthy diet and regular exercise are important for our hearts and bodies in general, but this study showed that these things are important for healthy cognitive functioning as they had a strong negative correlation with dementia (meaning the more they exercised and/or ate healthy the less likely someone was to have dementia). Also, one of the perks of working at The Center for Brain Health was that at least once a week we had lunch catered and got to hear people talk about their research findings. These were all talks about brain health, as you could guess. Well, a few of the talks showed correlations similar to what was found in the nun study, that exercise was correlated with better cognitive performance, as was healthy diet. These studies weren’t just with older adults like the nun study, many of these participants were young. I did my post-doc from 2008-2011, so it’s been a while since I learned these things. And since then I’ve taught them to other people. So the somewhat hypocritical aspect is that even though I know the importance of exercise and diet for both a healthy body and a healthy brain, I have never been consistent. Well, I’ve eaten healthy but not as healthy or balanced as I should. And I have never exercised consistently over more than a few months tops. But I’m determined to mend my ways and be living proof of this knowledge I have.  ‪#‎eatyourveggies‬ ‪#‎exercisematters‬ ‪#‎confessionsofabeachbodycoach‬‪#‎recoveringhypocrite‬