Understand Your Brain
Proactive Ageing was established to give the public as much information about how to keep their brain healthy as they have for physical fitness and maintaining a healthy heart. In particular, to increase community awareness of the scientific weight of evidence for risk reduction and proactive health strategies. Our goal is help you understand the biology and show you where to go to for legitimate information. From there you will be able to navigate the waves of media announcements and critique the parameters of scientific studies. We want you to be comfortable in making your own educated personal choices about your long term health.
Proactive Ageing will provide you with an overview on how the brain works. Educate you about how enormously adaptable (plastic) our brains are and the benefits that can bring to everyday life. In particular, we can describe how what you do affects your brain plasticity (both positively and negatively), how your cardiovascular and nervous system interact with your brain. In fact, all of the factors in your control that effect your brain health. This will give you a better understanding of what you can do to keep your brain healthy.
In the past decade neuroscientists have discovered a number of important things about the brain:
1. Adult brains continue to adapt and develop new connections (neuroplasticity) and by being mentally active the brain develops additional capacity (cognitive reserve) that helps protect it from deterioration and illnesses.
2. Our Brains are not monolithic – the brain has many different cognitive domains each helping to perform a different mental function. Like our body the brain is a system of systems that mutually reinforce each other. The skills and deficits that individuals have vary considerably, as does the rate of learning and age related decline.
3. Performance in each of these cognitive domains is highly adaptable if correctly trained as a specific skill. Neuroscientists have found ways to exercise specific mental skills effectively (with tangible results) and efficiently (over a reasonably short time) and have found that with the right training, the benefits last a relatively long time as compared with physical exercise and muscle development.
Proven “Use It or Lose It” Strategies
The phrase “use it or lose it” is validated by the weight of scientific evidence emerging in the field of neuroscience which advocates that by continually challenging our brains with novel activities and learning new skills we can establish mental reserves. This helps to keep our brains more immediately sharp and may reduce our risk of dementia symptoms later in life. Proactive Ageing will help you understand what “it” really is, how much of “it” you really need to do, and why doing crosswords and sudoku are not enough.
What is “It”
The brain, like the body is a complex system of systems and requires many different training exercises to keep it healthy. So just like our body no one single training exercise will strengthen our entire brain. In addition, the skills and deficits that individuals have as they age vary. Just like the body where everyone’s capability and performance varies by body function, the same is true of our brains. There are many domains for both thinking and body operation that need to be individually assessed for performance and appropriately targeted for training. We need to individually and specifically exercise lots of different parts of our brain to keep it in peak performance. And just like our body we also need to ensure we eat the correct foods and get the right amount of rest.
Proactive Ageing will help you better understand how the brain functions and what is really required to keep it healthy, both in terms of improving mental sharpness today and for long term preventative health.
Why do “It”
Just as the sedentary lifestyle of most modern people does not provide sufficient physical exercise, it also does not provide sufficient mental exercise with similar long term health risks. If we don’t mentally workout to maintain good brain health then our risk of dementia increases. Alzheimer’s Australia reports that “Dementia is not a normal part of ageing” and “research shows that taking part in mentally challenging activities is linked with a lower risk of developing dementia”. They also report that “whatever your age, you can do a lot to keep your brain active and help reduce your risk of developing dementia”. Refer www.mindyourmind.org.au Program. We know that mental exercise builds cognitive reserves, which lowers our risk of developing dementia.
Neuroscience has proven that is possible to actively engage the brain's natural learning abilities to improve our mind’s health. By staying fit and actively engaging our brains throughout our lives not only can we sharpen our mental abilities for improved day-to-day interactions but the emerging scientific evidence also suggests that a preventative cognitive reserve develops as well. Proactive Ageing provides a brain fitness service that sharpens your mental abilities and raises cognitive performance in specifically targeted domains with tangible results and personally measurable outcomes.
How to do “It”
Proactive Ageing’s brain training courses provide an innovative educational program for people to develop their mental skills. Introductory classes combine presentations on how our brains work with an initial assessment and a broad offering of basic skill building exercises to help get you started. After a few months practitioners can then start to more precisely tailor their training to support their long term goals.
Proactive Ageing delivers brain fitness services using the same performance model as the physical fitness industry, which has proven to be effective over time. In this respect we help you to:
1. Identify your long term personal goals and lifestyle choices
2. Review all the parameters of brain health and make lifestyle adjustments to reduce your risk of illness
3. Start an effective and more integrated fitness program by providing options to pursue your interests in physical health, mental fitness, emotional regulation, nutrition and/or social engagement
4. Continue with regular health assessments and the cycle of physical and mental fitness training
Protect Your Mental Capital
We often think of our youth as a time of intense learning and our old age as a time of mental decline when we start being more forgetful. But this is not how the brain works, the brain is capable of continuously learning and adapting throughout life. Indeed as we age, brain exercise becomes more important because it is needed to maintain the mental facilities we are used to. We should all be continuously augmenting our accumulated mental capital because not only does it give us more choices in life but it is healthy for our brains to do so.
Proactive Ageing offers wellness education specifically focused on our needs for the second half of life. Offering preventative health education targeted at slowing the physical and mental decline that begins at around 30 years of age. We hope to broaden the community’s perceived view of their own health. We can provide you with a better appreciation of what is possible, why it is important and how it can best be achieved.