We just received this quote of how a major health system is using our Brain Fitness Market Report:

“At Sutter Health Partners we recognize the importance of brain health and how much the health of the brain and the body are interdependent.  The market report helped us further target our coaching efforts to integrate brain fitness and upgrade our entire coaching platform.  It is easy to read and gives you the industry perspective in a thorough yet concise manner.  I highly recommend it!”

– Margaret Sabin, CEO of Sutter Health Partners and VP, New Product Development, at Sutter Health.

You may wonder, “what is the link between  wellness coaching and brain fitness”?

In practice, good health and wellness coaches provide excellent brain health advice, given that the areas they focus on (nutrition, physical exercise, stress management) do play an important role in maintaining our brains in top shape.

Additionally, pioneers  such as Sutter Health Partners are adding a Brain “lens” to their work. How?

First, by better understanding and explaining the brain benefits of what they already do, in order to provide additional motivation to stick with healthy behaviors. For example, most people will be able to recite multiple benefits of moderate cardiovascular exercise. But how many know  that it can also contribute to neurogenesis -the creation of new neurons – in adult brains?

Second, by starting to offer brain fitness guidelines to clients who want too go beyond crossword puzzles and sudoku.

I had a great training session with a number of Sutter Health coaches last week – let me summarize some of the main points we covered. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s editions of two excellent blog carnivals. Enjoy!

- Encephalon #45 – Life Is Good, Brains Are Better

- Grand Rounds 4:34 at the Health Business Blog

 

We have planned a number of fun posts, starting tomorrow, to celebrate Brain Awareness Week (March 10-16th). We hope you will enjoy them.

Let me share a taste of a few articles you will find here during the week:

- Dr. Adrian Preda, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at UC Irvine School of Medicine, will help us exercise our brains by challenging us to exercise more…our bodies.

- We will release our report The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008 on Tuesday March 11th, sharing its 10 Highlights. This is a project where we have spent many many energies over the last 9 months…so we are happy to finally be able to deliver it!

- An article by UCSF’s Gregory Kellet (who wrote this great article on why managing stress is important for our brains) helping us identify ways to precisely do that.

- An in-depth interview with Eric Jensen, brain-based education expert and author of this great recent article.

- Eduwonkette, a superb (and anonymous) education blogger, will expand the conversation by asking, “Do we, as a society, have a clear goal of what the K12 system is supposed to accomplish?”

- Dr. Larry McCleary, one of our esteemed contributors, will speak at the Aspen Center for Integral Health to present his latest book, and will blog about the event.

So, please bookmark our URL, or subscribe to our newsletter (above) or join our blog RSS feed.

And, of course, visit the Brain Awareness Week’s International Calendar of events to find if there are some stimulating events near you. If you live in Washington DC, take a look at the “Partners in Education” activities organized by the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

We are glad to welcome you to our blog carnival. After a short hiatus, Encephalon is back and gathering steam. We have prepared this “revival” edition just for you, so you can be well informed and impress us all during the upcoming Sciencedebate 2008.

Without further ado, let’s proceed to the questions posed by 24 bloggers on neuroscience and psychology issues. We hope they provide, at the very least, good mental stimulation for you and your advisors.

Big Questions

Do I deserve to vote even if I don’t have Free Will? (Marc at Neuroscientifically Challenged).

If culture sculpts our brains, what can our brains do to refine our culture first? (Stephanie at Brains On Purpose).

Is God more than a flying brain? (Jessica at bioephemera).

Is Your brain really reading This? (Pete at Brain Hammer).

A Few Intrusive Questions

Do you play any musical instrument? (Megan at SharpBrains).

Read the rest of this entry »

The New Yorker April 30th issue includes a superb article on The Way We Age Now: Can medicine serve an aging population?. Atul Gawande provides a great (and a bit depressing) survey on the geriatrics field: more and more need for practitioners, with less and less supply.

now, a couple of quotes and data points that are very relevant to our efforts around healthy brain aging.

• “for most of our hundred-thousand-year existence—all but the past couple of hundred years—the average life span of human beings has been thirty years or less. (Research suggests that subjects of the Roman Empire had an average life expectancy of twenty-eight years.)”
• “Inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity. James Vaupel, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, in Rostock, Germany, notes that only six per cent of how long you’ll live, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ longevity; by contrast, up to ninety per cent of how tall you are, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ height. Even genetically identical twins vary widely in life span: the typical gap is more than fifteen years.”

Fascinating. First, let’s appreciate our incredible life expectancy today; we are literally pushing the envelop of how to maintain healthy brains and bodies. By historical standards, many of us are living on “borrowed” time. Second, there you have some evidence for the importance of our experience and our lifestyle on how long we live. In terms of healthy aging, on average, nurture seems to be at least as important as nature, and the one more in our control to take action today.

You can learn more on the Successful Aging of the Healthy Brain: a beautiful essay by Marian Diamond on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit throughout our lives.

Related blog posts

• What does “normal aging” mean? Do we all age the same way?
• Easy Steps to Improve Your Brain Health Now
• Bill Clinton on health care and wellness
• The Upside of Aging-WSJ
• Baby Boomers, Healthy Aging and Job Performance