Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sa.
Foreign welcome to Vital Signs. I'm Jen Gode, your fearless host and today we're here to talk about your greatest asset, your health.
What if exercise wasn't just about weight loss or fitness?
What if it was one of the most powerful tools we have to protect the brain, sharpen cognition and slow neurological decline? For so long, movement has been treated like something we do for the body. But science is showing us something a little bit deeper. When we move, the brain changes too. Today we're going to dive deep into this topic. It's both revolutionary and surprisingly simple.
Not as a punishment, not for aesthetics, but as medicine for the brain. Joining me today is Dr. Brian Sandroff. He is the assistant director of the center for Neurophysiology and Neuroscience Research at Kessler Foundation. He's also the director of the Exercise Neurorehabilitation Research Laboratory. His research focuses on the intersection of exercise, cognition, mobility, brain structure, brain function and connectivity in people living with multiple sclerosis and other neurological disorders. He's authored over 200 peer reviewed publications and has received over 14 million in grant funding for this field. Dr. Sandroff, welcome to Vital Signs.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Thank you, Jen. It's an honor and pleasure to speak with you today.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: I'm really excited about this topic. I come from the sports medicine world and exercise has been my life. And the reality is most people think exercise changes just the body, physiologically speaking. But your research shows so much more. It actually changes the brain. Can you talk to me a little bit about what's happening neurologically when we move?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Absolutely.
This field is not brand new. Actually. It dates all the way back to ancient Greece where the ancient Greek philosophers had a saying of a healthy mind is vital for a healthy body.
So they were onto something way back when. And the field really started to take off in the 1970s with research in older adults such that sedentary older adults were much slower cognitively than active older adults were. In fact, active older adults in Some research back now, 50 years ago, showed that they were as fast cognitively as younger adults were.
So using the volumes of trials that have been done in the general population, I think now the most recent count is up to 2,700. Based on a paper that was published last year, we decided to see if that could really help improve the lives of people with Ms.
So our big hypothesis as to why exercise might improve brain health in people with Ms. Has to do with what's going on in the brain to support exercise. So when you're exercising, your brain has to really Account for a lot of different things.
So, for example, your brain has to take care of locomotor control, visuospatial processing, how your body moves in space, how your heart and lungs work, how your body temperature is maintained, how your mood is maintained, just to be able to keep up with the demands of exercising.
Well, all those different processes involve many different brain regions and networks that communicate together.
And the more you exercise and the more your brain adapts to the exercise itself, those brain areas become much more efficient at what they do.
And when you're talking about cognition or thinking performance, those processes rely upon a lot of the same brain areas and brain networks that are supported by just exercising over and over again. And in fact, we know that small changes in the brain occur with just one bout of exercise.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Wow, that's fascinating for everybody who's watching, can you really dive into what this means on a broader scale?
If just one bout of exercise impacts your cognition, what does that mean for us, for our memory, our focus, our processing speed, our mental clarity? Put it into really general terms for the people in the back of the room.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: In general, it's like kind of saving money. So every time you, what you exercise or be physically active even, it doesn't need to be super strenuous exercise, you put a dollar in the bank and you keep doing it over and over and over again. $1 becomes 2, becomes 4 becomes 8 becomes 16, and so on until you really have a nice sum of money in there. Exercise in the brain, in terms of brain health, we think it works the same way where each bout of exercise you do, you get just this small improvement that builds and accumulates over time into something meaningful. We think that this has even higher impact in those who start with cognitive issues, like people who have neurodegenerative disorders.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Does this mean it may or may not. But does this mean that exercise actually could become one of the frontline interventions for protecting long term brain health, or one of the frontline protections for therapies, if you will, for living with neurological disorders?
[00:06:10] Speaker B: So we certainly hope so. But at least in ms, which is really where my expertise and experience is, we're not quite there yet. We're a bit at the tip of the iceberg.
Just the other day I was doing a search on PubMed, which gives you access to all the different journal articles on exercise and cognition in general. And I was looking to see, is the literature in Ms. Really behind that from the general population, where we have thousands and thousands of trials in MS?
The field has been around for 22 years. And we have 55 studies in the general population. In the first 22 years, there were only 121 in the general population. We know that being physically active and leading a physically active life and being physically fit, it's associated with robust cognitive benefits. And it may even impart what's called cognitive reserve, which is essentially a buffer against age related cognitive decline and, or potentially Alzheimer's pathology.
So our hope is that this is also the case in ms, but the research isn't quite there yet. But I'm pretty excited over the next five to 10 years to see where it goes, because we have this wonderful example in the general population.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: And so you've kind of talked a little bit about the, the massive body of research that, that gives us all confidence that movement is a great brain health tool.
And you're, you're really excited about how that science is moving forward. But I'll, I'm gonna, I just want to back up about, well, maybe 25, 30 years ago, when people were diagnosed with MS, they were told to avoid exertion. They were told to take it easy because it was going to exacerbate the symptoms. So can you sort of enlighten me? What, what shifted or how has that science changed over time? Because, I mean, is this, is this a myth busting moment that we're at the cusp of?
[00:08:09] Speaker B: I think we're past that cusp now.
We are in the field of myth busting.
So as you alluded to, yeah, early on in Ms. Care, rest was prioritized. Don't overexert. If you exercise, you, you'll get hot, you'll have symptom exacerbation.
But in all of the different beneficial effects of exercise in ms, the most well established one is that exercise reliably reduces fatigue in people with multiple sclerosis, about a half a standard deviation, which is a pretty nice effect.
And considering that fatigue is the most common Ms. Symptom or one of the most common symptoms, it's pretty encouraging. But it's also the most commonly studied outcome, outcome in response to exercise in ms, and it has some of the largest benefits in Ms.
Well, let me
[00:09:02] Speaker A: ask you the next question, because I know people at home who are listening to this are wondering, well, exercise has these awesome side effects, if you will. For, for us, it helps us to have a better mood, it helps us to reduce stress, it helps us, it helps us to maintain our functional mobility. And for those of us who are grandparents, we can get off, down, up and down, off the ground with Our grandkids, we can keep up with them. Do those same sort of auxiliary benefits impact those with Ms. Or other.
Other neurological disease functions?
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Yeah, the benefits are there as well in the literature where exercise improves physical fitness, which, you know, we think of physical fitness as a characteristic of someone, you know, how much you can lift, how far you can push yourself, walking, running, cycling, something like that. But being physically fit in practical, everyday terms means that everything else you're doing in your life becomes easier. You don't have to expend as much energy to get up and down the stairs.
Lifting things doesn't really drain the battery so much relative to people who are very low physically fit. So it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody has to be a gym rat either. It just means that every little bit you can move over being sedentary is a very small benefit that adds up over time and contributes to improvements in quality of life.
Community participation reduces social isolation. In some studies, it can just really do a lot of great things. And I mean, I admit I'm totally biased because me too. I mean, my background is exercise psychology, kinesiology, and you know, it's part of my daily routine too. And if I don't exercise on a day, I feel like I really, really missed out. Even on some days I don't want to.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Oh, we are aligned in that. I'm a physical therapist by trade as well. So, you know, we do need to break shortly for, for commercial. But for everybody who's watching, basically, I want you to have this thought in your mind.
Even one bout of exercise gives us a brain boost and has a POS on us. So even if you feel like you're limited in mobility or you're discouraged, or you can't do a lot, every little bit helps. The starting point might be just movement snacks. We've talked about movement snacks in the past two to five minutes a couple times a day. Get up, stand up, and sit back down again a few times. You know, stretching, walking, these things all add up over time and the goal is actually consistency over intensity. Movement doesn't have to be extreme to matter. The brain responds to repeated signals and small movement patterns can become a powerful starting point.
We do have to take a brief break, but when we come back, we're going to dive into the future of neurorehabilitation. From precision exercise programs to how movement might help people maintain independence and quality of life longer than we ever thought possible. Stay tuned.
What if one of the most powerful anti aging tools isn't found in a supplement? Bottle. But in your daily movement habits, we're going to explore where neuroscience and rehab are headed and how exercise might just become one of the most important prescriptions of the future.
What if the future of brain health isn't about treating disease after it appears, but using movement earlier, more precisely and more intentionally to preserve that function? Clarity, independence. Welcome back to Vital Signs. We are here. If you're enjoying what you're watching, stay connected to our show and every other favorite live or on demand, anytime, anywhere. Download the free Now Media TV app Roku or iOS.
Prefer to catch the podcast Me too. You can catch that at www.nowmedia.tv. from business and news to lifestyle culture and more, Now Media is streaming around the clock. Ready when you are.
I'm here with Brian Sandroff. He is at Kessler Foundation. He has been diving into the fact before the break that even the smallest bouts of exercise can give us those little deposits into our brain function bank account that will give us sort of resilience and cushion as we age.
So I'm really excited, Dr. Sandroff, because you direct the Exercise Neuro Rehabilitation Research lab and I come from rehab.
I have a rehab background. This is like a very core belief structure that I have and it's aligned with you. But for everyone who's watching, what does that mean and how is that lab changing the future of care?
[00:14:19] Speaker B: That's funny, no one's ever asked me that before.
I tried to create the most complicated name for our lab possible.
Sorry, but really, our goal as a research group is to improve the lives of people with neurological disorders using physical activity exercise, either as a standalone approach or in combination with other intervention approaches that are a little less physical in nature and by definition that aligns with neurorehabilitation. So I thought that was a good word to use to really get at the essence of what it is that we do. So our lab has six major areas of research and I know that sounds like a lot, but they're pretty closely related.
So the first area of research is looking at short term exercise programs for improving cognition or thinking performance as a primary outcome in people with Ms. The second area is looking at long term exercise as an approach to improve brain health in people with ms, with the brain being the primary target, as opposed to clarity of thought or memory or some other cognitive process.
We also have an emerging line of research that looks into dissemination and implementation science to see if what we observe in the lab can occur in Ms. Clinical practice.
We also have a line of research, as I alluded to earlier about what happens with a single bout of exercise in people with Ms. Then the fifth area has to do with exercise, plus other rehabilitative treatments like cognitive training or virtual reality as another avenue to help boost brain health and cognitive function. And then the last area is expanding our research from Ms. Into people with traumatic brain injury, people who've had a stroke, Parkinson's disease, individuals on the autism spectrum, other different neurological disorders.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: That's a whole lot of areas to focus.
And thank you for the work that you're doing in all of these areas. It's so incredibly important.
And I want to ask, I just want to move into the next sort of thought process. And that's we're living in just an increasingly sedentary society. And not just that, it's an increasingly sedentary society that is bombarded by information. We're in complete information overload all the time. We're always plugged in. So as someone who's crossing these areas of research, what concerns you most about what this trend is doing to long term brain health?
[00:17:01] Speaker B: So they do say that sitting is the new smoking.
I saw that in a billboard in a subway once.
I thought it was great. But the, yeah, the increase in sedentary behavior, we're glued to our phones, we're glued to our screens.
Is probably not doing the very best that we can for our health, but it is stimulating our brain in other ways that could actually be beneficial potentially. But in terms of physical health and kind of leading to brain health, I mean, yeah, that is concerning that more and more people are becoming sedentary and not meeting the physical activity guidelines for Americans in the U.S.
i mean, even with my kids, they're watching iPad way too much. And my wife and I are trying to encourage them to watch stuff that they can jump around to. And that was a major mistake because our couch is destroyed now. But we got them moving, which is really good. We're always encouraging outdoor play. And even as adults, I mean, now it's springtime. Start to enjoy the weather a little bit like you mentioned earlier. I love it. Take exercise snacks. Just take breaks from being sedentary. Those little things add up and they matter.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: And so can we talk a little bit deeper on this? Because I know we sort of touched on it in the last segment, but I really want to drive this home. Why is movement not only a fitness issue, but really the sedentary lifestyle more of a public health issue?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: So there is a very large body of research that continues to grow that shows that being sedentary or physically inactive is associated with increased risks of morbidity or disease and mortality.
So on the other side of the coin, physical activity for decades now in these longitudinal huge data sets like nhanes for example, has shown that the more physical activity you do, the lower your risk is for cardiovascular disease, for diabetes. And it's associated with better quality of life as well as a little bit of a longer quantity of life as well.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, we've talked about that on the show a lot. We talk about the difference between lifespan and health span. Everybody thinks about living longer, but what is the purpose of living longer if we don't have quality of life along the way? So thank you for sharing that. I want to ask you now what is exciting you the most about where research is heading and where do you think we're going to be in five to 10 years?
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that's something that is on the forefront of my mind every day.
And what I'm personally most excited about is we are just starting to dive into research looking at the potential for exercise to potentially modify Ms. Disease progression or possibly even modify the disease process itself based on a bunch of different mechanistic outcomes. Where if people with Ms. Can engage in exercise for long periods of time, what does that do to the progression of the disease, whether or not they're on a disease modifying therapy?
It really is an important area of research that we haven't had the evidence to support until probably this year.
So we are diving in head first to see if long term exercise can really make a meaningful impact on those living with the disease.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: And I'm going to ask you a personal like this is of curiosity to me, how has wearable technology and that real time feedback capability changed the way you're able to conduct research and also the way people are able to get that real time data with regards to what efforts they're doing in regards to their rehabilitation.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: So since 2020 it's been everything.
Prior to 2020 we had people lining up to come into our lab three times a week for three months to work out at our facility. But then COVID 19 hit, the world changed. People figured out how to do things on their own. People figured out how to do things remotely. Like look at us, we're talking on on Zoom right now.
And wearable technology has really allowed us to pursue remotely delivered and supported exercise training to improve accessibility, to remove different barriers associated with travel and transportation for people with Ms. And also it helps to improve enjoyability as well as you can do things on your schedule, you're not at the mercy of, you know, our office hours or something like that. You can exercise whenever you want. You have access to those data too, where if your exercise prescription, let's say, is to walk a thousand steps in ten minutes, well, you have a Fitbit on your wrist or your waist. You can see that yourself. You don't need a specialized person to tell you that you did it.
And it's really shrunk the world a little bit, too, because it's allowed us also to expand and not just do research involving local people. We've been doing studies now nationwide.
We had people in California and Maine and Florida and Alaska, for example, you know, four corners of the continent. I guess Alaska is not in the continental U.S. but we've really had a positive experience with that revolution and we're really excited to see how that can increase the scale of our research too, so that it could be generalizable to more people living with Ms. And other neurological disorders.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: That's fantastic. I just think it's accessible and it improves compliance to protocols. And it's just really exciting, the direction that we've gone. So everybody who's watching exercise is not just about adding years to your life. It's about adding function, clarity, independence and vitality to the years you already have. Dr. Sandroff, for those who are watching and interested in learning more about you, your research, the work being done at Kessler foundation, can they reach out and connect?
[00:23:12] Speaker B: So one place we can I could direct people to is the Kessler foundation website. That's www.kesslerfoundation.org.
if you want to reach out to me directly, I'm really good by email.
My email is my first initial B, last name sandroff kessler foundation.org and then I'm also on LinkedIn and Instagram too, both under Brian Sandroff. So if you see my name on the screen, you can find me.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Folks, your body was built to move. Your brain depends on it. The future of health might not be more medicine, but smarter movement. Earlier intervention and understanding what we do every day shapes how we age. I want to thank you, Dr. Brian Sandroff, for joining us on Vital Signs and helping us understand exercise as medicine, neurorehabilitation, brain health, mobility, cognition, and the power of movement to protect function and quality of life. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Thank you, Jen. Keep spreading the good word.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: And to everyone watching, we invite you to start where you are. Move a little more, stand a little more, walk when you can. Challenge your balance, protect your Brain through the choices that you repeat each and every day.
This is Vital Signs, and this is how we protect our greatest asset, our health. See you same time, same station, next week.
Welcome back to Vital Signs. I'm Jen Gode and. And we're slightly shift topics.
What if your brain is not as fixed as you think? What if memory, focus, recovery, and cognitive performance are not just things we lose with age or injury, but abilities the brain can continue to shape, to strengthen and rebuild?
We're going to continue the conversation today about neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt, to build new pathways, and to respond to how we live, how we learn, move, sleep, and recover.
For anybody who's worried about memory, aging, brain injury, attention, cognitive decline, this conversation is for you. Because brain health is not only about preventing disease. It's about how the brain works, how it changes, and how we can support it every day. Joining me now is Dr. Nancy Ciaravellotti, whose work focuses on cognition, memory, neuropsychology, rehabilitation, and helping people better understand the brain's capability for recovery and adaptation. Dr. Chiruvalati, welcome to Vital Signs. Thank you.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: I'm really excited about this because neuroplasticity is something that gets bandied about. It's a word that's out there, but people really don't have a full understanding. So let's simplify it. What is neuroplasticity and why should everyone watching care about it?
[00:26:26] Speaker C: So neuroplasticity refers to a very simple concept. It's a big word, but a simple concept. And it refers to the brain's ability to adapt, adapt and change.
The reason people really need to know about neuroplasticity is because our brains have a lot of neuroplasticity. Throughout our lives, the brain can adapt and change.
And when someone has an injury, has an illness, they should be reassured that the brain can continue to adapt and change in the face of that illness.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: So tell me more. How does the brain create these new pathways after an injury or an aging or even after repeated learning? Let's dive just a little bit deeper there.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Sure. Well, let's start with someone who I work with rehabilitation populations. So let's start with someone who might have a brain injury. They have a brain injury. They go through acute care, which is your normal hospital setting that everyone thinks of when they think of the hospital following that, if the brain injury is significant enough, they will very often go to rehabilitation.
The goal of rehabilitation is to teach People to learn new things, to relearn things that they may have lost because of that injury.
They may spend six weeks in rehabilitation, and those six weeks are essentially spent learning.
Rehabilitation works. We know that from admission to discharge, people learn new information.
They may have lost the ability to walk, or they may be challenged with balance during that time period. Therapists work one on one with individuals to help them regain those skills. The brain has the neuroplasticity to be able to relearn that information, specifically to what I do. I do cognitive rehabilitation. So I focus on memory.
When someone has an injury, such as a traumatic brain injury, or when they have an illness such as multiple sclerosis or dementia, they are having difficulty learning new information.
And my research shows through behavioral data, so someone doing paper and pencil tests and through neuroimaging that the brain is able to acquire skills and learn how to learn.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: So let me ask you the next question.
Because we are rapidly evolving, technology is evolving. The ability to decipher what's happening in the research world is accelerating with technology. What's giving you the most hope about where we are today, how this is advancing, and, and how that relates to the brain's ability to adapt?
[00:29:10] Speaker C: So technology has been incredible in that we're now able to watch the brain as it works.
So many of my research studies use functional mri.
What that means is that we have someone in the scanner doing a task, such as a memory task, and we're able to watch them complete that task. So they do the task prior to cognitive rehabilitation, then they go through one of our treatments, and then they do it again.
And what we see is that the brain is actually learning new information and it's learning a new way to learn.
So the technology has given us a window into how the brain is working.
What's really exciting is that technology changes all the time.
It's constantly evolving. Every time we do a new study, we have more options in terms of other ways to look at this, to find a better answer and to generate a better solution.
Technology is really key to being able to understand more about the human brain and how it works.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Let me move into a question that we get from our viewers a lot, and that's can people actually strengthen their memory and their cognitive performance, or is decline as we age inevitable?
[00:30:28] Speaker C: Decline is not inevitable. We can strengthen our brain, and that's really important for people to understand.
Even when we do cognitive rehabilitation with healthy individuals, individuals that don't have memory problems, we see that after they complete our program.
They are performing at higher levels in terms of their memory abilities.
They're able to take what we are teaching them and apply them to learning situations that are unique to them.
A lot of what we do is memory strategy training.
What that means is we're teaching people new ways to learn information, better ways to learn information.
They're techniques that have gone through years and years of research and have hundreds and hundreds of articles supporting their efficacy. We're able to use those techniques in individuals that we see every day so they can actually improve their memory.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: That's fantastic and fascinating.
I'm now drawn to In a recent episode of Vital Signs, there was a distinction made and, you know, a lot of older adults think, oh, if I just work puzzles like Sudoku or other things, that's going to, you know, improve my cognition and my memory and it's going to sort of insulate me. But someone said that learning a completely new skill set matters more for long term brain health. Can you dive into that a little bit?
[00:32:00] Speaker C: Absolutely. I encourage people as they age to continue to challenge your brain.
Sure. Sudoku and many of these puzzles do challenge your brain. And I would never tell anyone not to do those things because they are challenging.
However, if you challenge your brain even more, such as learning a new language, learning to play a musical instrument, anything you're interested in, Take a course at a community college. We have online courses available at our fingertips. Take an online course.
Challenge your brain to learn a substantial amount of information in a new field. That's going to help a lot. That's what we need to do to keep our brains healthy.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: And so let me ask you another question, because this comes up quite frequently and if you could illuminate us, it would be excellent. How does sleep impact the way that our brain stores and organizes information? Because we hear a lot about how sleep is the foundation of health, how it's really important to get restorative sleep so so that the brain can be optimized. But how does that impact our memory or how we're able to learn?
[00:33:11] Speaker C: Sleep is essential.
There's no other way to look at it. We have to get solid sleep. The reason is memory has three main stages. The first stage is encoding. That's when we learn new information.
So in a situation where I'm learning someone's name, they say, hi, my name is Jen, for instance. That is learning in that moment.
The next stage is consolidation. Consolidation is when memories harden. So I equate it to learning, pouring concrete for the foundation of the house and consolidation. When you Walk away and you let that concrete harden.
Consolidation is when our memories are hardening.
That happens during sleep. Sleep is really, really important to consolidation.
So if you don't sleep, you're not solidifying the memories that you created during the day, and then they won't be available when you need them, which is that third stage retrieval. Retrieval is when I see you on a street and I say, oh, hey, Jen, that's when I remembered your name. So that's retrieval. But very often people don't get enough sleep, and that impacts consolidation.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: You know, and one of your colleagues was on earlier today, and we were talking about the impact of movement and physical activity on brain health overall. Does that also impact the encoding, the consolidation and the retrieval phases, or how does that, like, dive deeper for that? For me, sure.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: Movement or exercise impacts cognition. Overall, exercise is important for all aspects of cognition. Memory is only one piece of cognition. It's the one that we pay the most attention to because it's the most disruptive when we lose it. However, there are multiple different areas of cognition, and exercise impacts all of them.
So exercise provides the brain with more oxygen and facilitates better hippocampal functioning. The hippocampus is where those memories are initiated, encoded into the brain. So we really need to be moving for our brains to function optimally and be able to learn and remember new information.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Thank you for that. So for everybody who's listening, I'm going to just recap just a little bit of what we've talked about in this particular segment this week. Today, you can take an action to support your brain with just small but consistent habits. Learn something new. Dr. C was sharing how powerful learning a new skill set, taking an online course in a new field, is to actually improve our memory and cognition. So I would like to encourage everybody to pick something new to learn. Doesn't have to be elaborate, but pick one thing or practice one memory strategy. And then from a foundational level, we talked earlier about movement, but let's add sleep. Let's protect our sleep so that we can protect our brains. Because the brain is not static. It changes based off of how we live, how we think, how we move, and how we recover. And the habits we build today are shaping the brain we're going to have tomorrow. When we come back, we're going to talk about recovery after brain injury, cognitive resilience, and what it means to protect the brain in an era of AI, constant information, and nonstop distraction. Stay with us. More vital signs after the break.
Sam.
We are living in A world that is constantly competing for our attention. Phones, notifications, AI, endless content, constant information everywhere. But if the brain gets stronger through use, the question becomes, are we training our brains to think deeply or training them to outsource, to scroll and to react? Welcome back to Vital Signs. If you're loving what you're watching, stay connected to this show and all of your Now Media TV favorites. Anytime, anywhere you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock nonstop bilingual programming in English and Spanish. On the move. Prefer pods? Me too. Catch the podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv. from business and news to lifestyle culture and more, we are here streaming around the clock. Ready when you are.
I'm here with Dr. Chira Velloti, and we have been talking about neuroplasticity, brain health, and particularly memory and cognition.
And so I want to sort of look at the future of brain health from recovery after a traumatic brain injury to the daily habits that protect cognition in a world shaped by AI tech and constant stimulation.
Cognitive health, folks, is not something we should be thinking about after a diagnosis or injury. It's something we should be practicing every day. Dr. C, you have worked extensively with traumatic brain injury patients. What gives you the most hopeful when it comes to recovery?
[00:38:39] Speaker C: What gives me the most hope is the extent of neuroplasticity in the brain and the ability of the brain to change to recover. I have seen patients go from a coma to back to regular daily functioning where they're able to function in their home, sometimes at work, depending on the person.
So I seen people truly recover from injury to resume some sort of a daily life, daily life activities. And that gives me a lot of hope because the brain really is much stronger than we think it is in terms of its ability to bounce back.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: So can we dive into this a little? My background is sports medicine and rehabilitation. And so, you know, this is something that we've noticed a lot clinically, but often our family members don't really recognize that there may be something still happening on a recovery standpoint, even though physically we seem to have bounced back. Can you talk about what recovery looks like a lot of times in the ways that we can't necessarily see it? And I'll give you a couple of things to maybe chew on like confidence or some of the compensation strategies or some of the stressors that are happening internally that maybe our friends and family are not necessarily seeing because it requires more effort for us. Even though we seem to be walking, moving, doing our ADL's.
[00:40:09] Speaker C: Sure so physical recovery happens tends to happen sooner than emotional and cognitive recovery. Physical recovery, you do bounce back fairly quickly from. From a lot of injuries, and you start walking around and people think that, okay, they're back to normal, but there are hidden challenges that people are dealing with every day. Some of those are cognitive.
So they may have difficulty paying attention for long periods of time if they had a mild brain injury or a concussion when they had their injury, or they may have slowed processing speed. And what that means is as information is coming in, they're not processing that information as quickly as they used to. So they may have trouble following along in complicated conversations. Or they may be having difficulty with memory, and that could be due to poor attention and poor processing speed. Or it could be entirely separate issue where they're having memory challenges.
What very often happens is those challenges are subtle to, in terms of their degree, but they can be tremendous in terms of their impact on an individual's everyday functioning.
So take a college student who had an athletic injury, had a concussion, and is now trying to get back to a rigorous academic curriculum. That can be very, very frustrating for them. And that's something that they're dealing with the cognitive issue, but then they're also dealing with the frustration and they may be feeling. Very often people feel like others know that something's wrong. Others are watching them or think that they are not who they used to be, and they question that, they question themselves, and they tend to have less confidence because of that. And that's something that really changes over time. People need time to get back to normal and to function in their everyday life the way they used to.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: You know, let me ask you another question, because, I mean, I have had concussions myself. I was an athlete, and so I've experienced it, I've watched it. And one of the things that I've noticed is even when we believe as the patient that. That we're back, that we. We. We are functioning the way we were pre injury, pre concussion specifically. And concussion is a hot topic right now because we're in summer sports and all the things. So by the end of the week, it seems to have a cumulative impact whereby maybe Thursday we can't think as much, or our brain just like it feels like we are cognitively tired, if that makes sense. Is there a reasoning behind that? And can you explain what's going on?
[00:42:58] Speaker C: So that can be referred to as cognitive fatigue. What is happening is when the brain is taxed, and it's more taxed when it may not be fully recovered. It's struggling to do everything you're expecting it to do.
That takes additional resources and it simply fatigues the brain. And the brain is just running low on resources.
We are in a world where we are constantly stimulated.
Even when we are relaxing, we have our telephones in our hands and that phone may be beeping.
Even if it's not beeping, we are monitoring it subliminally. So if it does beep, if it does vibrate, we can react quickly. And those things have an impact. They have a very real impact because our brain is constantly on and that's making it more difficult for us to maintain high levels of functioning as often as we would like to.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: While we're on that topic, we're in the age of AI. You already addressed the constant stimulation, having the phone, the constant information, and really it's an acceleration of technology.
What concerns you most about the future of cognitive health in this rapidly evolving tech space where we are always on?
[00:44:19] Speaker C: So I really have two concerns about AI and I use AI all the time. AI is an extremely useful tool that I would never want to give up. But I do have two concerns. One is that due to AI, the world is going to expect more and more from us and we're going to have to be on processing more and more information more quickly. And that's going to have an impact on our brain because our brains are not necessarily designed to pay attention to a whole bunch of different things at the same time.
We can sequentially process information, but our brain is really meant more to focus and accomplish tasks.
So that's one concern. My other concern is that we as a society are going to rely too much on AI.
And when we do that, we will decrease the challenges that we present ourselves with cognitively and in turn hurt our cognition in the long run. So I think it's really important that when people use AI that they also think through everything they are doing with AI. Continue to edit, if it's a written document, continue to critique and continue to demand more of the technology and of themselves so that they are not limiting what they're doing cognitively.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Let me ask you this next follow up question. Because if we are having more demands placed on ourselves and multitasking, the fallacy of multitasking because of the way our brains are wired, do we need to increase our self care? Is there something we can do to future proof our brain? Is there a daily habit that can help us insulate against that, that particular challenge?
[00:46:10] Speaker C: So let me start by explaining. You just alluded to multitasking. Multitasking, I really want to comment on that because multitasking is looked upon as a positive, right? Because we're able to get multiple things done at one time. We feel like we're doing multiple things at one time. Our brain is not doing multiple things at one time. Our brain is rapidly task switching. So what's happening is our brain is paying attention to a task, turning off, redirecting, turning on to the next task. And then when you go back to that original task, it's turning off and then it's turning on to that first task again. So you're demanding a lot of your brain in terms of switching from one task to another, and that causes more cognitive fitness and it causes the brain to do things simply less efficiently. So when we multitask, that's not necessarily a good thing for our performance and for our brain.
What's important and what could really help is if you prioritize what you want to do, have a list of things to do, focus on one thing at a time, and go right through that list.
Many executives will turn off their email notifications and they check their email at a certain time so that emails are not constantly popping in and bothering them. They may turn off the notifications on the phone to try to focus in on one task at a time.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: Thank you for that.
In closing, the brain's not statics, folks. It changes based on how we live, how we think, how we move, how we recover.
And an easy action item is to turn your notifications off so you can focus to finish. Prioritize, focus to finish. Dr. Su, thank you for your expertise. If the audience would like to learn more about your important work, where can they reach out or following what, what you're doing?
[00:47:59] Speaker C: We have a website, KesslerFoundation.org I'd encourage people to jump on and check that out. We also are active on social media so they can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Insta, all the, all the social media, social media outlets. We have a lot of tremendous research going on across the foundation.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: Thank you so much for your time and helping us understand neuroplasticity, memory, cognition, cognitive resilience, and the daily choices that shape our brain health. To everyone watching, we invite you to protect your attention, challenge your brain, move your body, sleep deeply, and stay connected. Remember, your brain is always responding to how you live.
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, including this show. But the good news is we'll be here same time, same station next week. Until then, have an amazing day. This has been vital signs and this is how we protect our greatest asset, our health.
