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Redefining Dementia
resources and helpful life experiences, the podcast will look to connect with the audience to provide helpful and meaningful takeaways.
Redefining Dementia
Dr. Mike Studer: The Brain That Chooses Itself
Join us for an enlightening episode with Dr. Mike Studer, a renowned physical therapist and pioneer in neurologic and geriatric rehabilitation. Drawing on decades of expertise, Dr. Studer shares cutting-edge strategies for fostering cognitive resilience, enhancing brain health, and maintaining mobility.
We explore insights from his book, The Brain That Chooses Itself, delving into the profound impact of intentional activity on both mental and physical well-being. Whether you're navigating neurological conditions like dementia and Parkinson's or simply seeking to optimize your brain health, Dr. Studer offers actionable advice tailored for everyone.
Discover how to integrate exercise into your daily life with methods like habit stacking, while understanding the critical role of physical and mental stimulation in preventing cognitive decline. Dr. Studer also sheds light on how outdated care practices and inactivity can hinder progress, encouraging us to rethink how we engage with our bodies and minds.
Learn about the importance of a balanced lifestyle—one that includes diverse activities, such as boxing or community gardening, alongside adequate rest. Dr. Studer explains the synergy of proper sleep, nutrition, and exercise, including the remarkable benefits of high-intensity interval training, in maintaining brain health and vitality.
Tune in to gain practical tools and inspiration to create a fulfilling, vibrant life at any stage—because a resilient mind starts with the power of choice.
Dr. Mike's LinkedIn
Dr. Mike's Instagram Profile
Dr. Mike's TED Talk
Dr. Mike's latest publication: The Brain That Chooses Itself
About our Hosts:
https://www.personcentreduniverse.com/about/
Welcome to Season 2 of Redefining Dementia. I'm Jana Jones and I am thrilled to be joined by my co-hosts, daphne Noonan and Ashley King for another season of fresh conversations, new insights and valuable tips on navigating dementia care.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Daphne. This season, we're diving even deeper into topics that matter, from caregiver resilience to meaningful engagement. Plus, we'll have a fantastic lineup of experts to share their wisdom.
Speaker 3:And I'm Ashley At Person Centred Universe. We help you provide person-centered dementia care at home, work or in your community. Through this podcast, our goal is really to strive toward a better world for those affected by dementia by sharing resources and insights from experts around the world.
Speaker 1:We are also introducing a new format this season with rotating co-hosts. You'll hear from each of us as we take turns leading discussions with incredible guests, some familiar faces and some exciting new voices.
Speaker 2:So, before we begin, just a special note the information that we share in this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms of dementia, we'd encourage you to seek medical advice from a qualified healthcare professional.
Speaker 3:So don't forget to hit that subscribe button and join us every other Thursday as we explore the many dimensions of dementia care. One conversation at a time.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Redefining Dementia. Today, we're thrilled to introduce you to someone who brings incredible energy, passion and insight to the world of brain health Dr Mike Studer. Dr Mike is a trailblazer in physical therapy, neuroplasticity and cognitive resilience. His enthusiasm for helping others unlock their potential is palpable and his ability to make complex concepts both relatable and actionable is very inspiring. During our conversation, dr Mike shares practical tips and strategies drawn from decades of hands-on experience and from his groundbreaking new book titled the Brain that Chooses Itself that chooses itself. In this episode, we'll delve into the principles of brain health, explore the power of autonomy and discuss how purposeful movement and engagement can transform lives. Dr Mike's passion is contagious and I know you'll leave this episode feeling energized and equipped to make meaningful steps towards better cognitive health and physical well-being. Enjoy this episode with our new friend, dr Mike Studer. Well hello, dr Mike Studer. Thank you so much for joining us today, and where are you currently in the world as we speak this morning?
Speaker 4:So I just flew to Las Vegas last night. We're at our home in Las Vegas. Had flown from Oregon.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I know that you travel back and forth a lot, so we appreciate you taking the time to join us on our podcast today, and I know that you will have so many words of wisdom for our listeners.
Speaker 4:I'm happy to be here and I'm hoping to exceed your expectations.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know you will Already have.
Speaker 2:Welcome.
Speaker 1:So we'll just jump into our first question here. I know we're in for a rich discussion with you, daphne, and I, of course, have read some of your work, specifically your work entitled the Brain Chooses Itself, which is just packed with incredibly valuable information, not only for people who may be living with conditions such as dementia, parkinson's, recovering from a stroke, for instance, but even for the general population as a whole, no matter one's age or health status. Can you help our listeners understand what the story is behind this title and what the story is behind this title? Is there something different when we choose something versus when it is prescribed for us or assigned?
Speaker 4:to us? Yes, and that is an excellent place to start. So when we choose to eat something, exert ourselves, subject ourselves to a challenge ourselves, subject ourselves to a challenge, a thrill, something that's a little bit nuanced or difficult for us, you can imagine right there. It's totally different than having something slid in front of us that we must eat, being drug along to an adventure that we don't want to do, to be subjected to fears or even thrill-seeking adventures that we don't prefer. So the brain is going to take those opportunities entirely different. Autonomy I chose to do this versus being subjected to is an entirely different from a psychological perspective.
Speaker 1:But all the way through the neuro, hormonal, chemical responses from choice and compulsion, so interesting and I've heard you talk on different podcasts about I'm going a little bit off script already here with you, but about incorporating exercise into things that we already enjoy doing. So is that along the lines of what you're talking about?
Speaker 4:Yeah, as a matter of fact, if we just look at so, we've got five different, let's say, principles or sectors of this concept. The brain chooses itself. But you're exactly right to, you know, jump into exercise first. And I love how you frame that, where we talk about doing something that may seem like exercise and putting it into the context of something we already enjoy doing, and that's where we kind of reframe the term exercise and turn it into physical activity and we say this is like habit stacking, and so this is a situation where, you know, I like to go out for a jog and I like to or maybe I should go out for a jog, but I like to walk my dog and I get both done at the same time. I get exercise plus time with my dog. That's one easy way of taking a look at it then too.
Speaker 2:Great. So, yeah, so, just building from that, I know you've done so much work with different areas of you know conditions or things that happened to impact the brain not so varying kinds of dementia and Parkinson's, and you know MCI, those kinds of things and so I guess, broadly speaking or specifically, whichever, whichever comes to your mind, what are some things that a person could choose to do in the way of movement or you know activity that could prevent or slow the impact of varying types of dementia, for example, or improve the loss of cognitive function?
Speaker 4:So there's a lot of really good things that we look at there in terms of our total brain health when we are in the perspective of cognition. Okay, so when we think about cognition and keeping ourselves healthy for the longevity of our lives, we need to think about diversity. So if I were to always do the same cognitive stimulation crossword puzzle and it was the same crossword puzzle with the same solutions every day you can imagine how it might have started off to be stimulating, but now we don't have a stimulus, right? So let's say, I'm an expert in Rubik's Cube and that dates myself a little bit, but solving the Rubik's Cube over and over again doesn't provide a stimulus. Expert in math tables, but that's all I'm doing.
Speaker 4:So when we have diversity, that's step number one we want to have diversity in cognitive challenges because, just like with the body that can atrophy, the brain that hasn't worked on a cognitive faculty has a use it or lose it phenomenon. So step number one is diversity. Step number two for cognitive health is actually using exercise, using the body to actually literally feed the brain. We can go into that a little bit more. And then step number three looks at improving your cognition and keeping it healthy by keeping your psyche or your psychological health elevated. Because you can imagine the individual who is a retired university professor, astrophysicist, but is depressed and also inactive, is going to quickly lose many of their faculties, not stay sharp from a reaction speed and not stay sharp from really an enriched outlook. So they'll have a more, a greater tendency toward pessimism, depression, apathy, difficulty with initiation, initiation which none of which will be cognitively healthy.
Speaker 4:So cognitive stimulus, exercise, stimulus, psychological health not to mention sleep and nutrition, which we'll get into later, but those are the.
Speaker 2:That rounds out the other five yeah, and if I can, um, I was really fascinated um, I'm gonna sneak in like a part B to that question and because I think it would be really valuable for our listeners, I was really struck when I was listening to one of your I think it was your TED talk when you were talking about and I'm not going to say the term because I don't want to get it wrong, but the idea of like like a learned incompetence or learned of like like a learned incompetence, or learned yeah, so you have learned.
Speaker 4:Non-use is one thing. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I want you to continue with your question. So learned non-use just simply means that when I haven't practiced something recently, my ability to reach and grab it in a moment's notice can be lost. But continue on.
Speaker 2:And so I guess that what really struck me when I was watching that piece was just the idea that you spoke to specifically many examples, but one was someone who had Parkinson's. And you think about what we do sort of in the typical kind of care trajectory or care settings, it being that it's the productive bubble or the you know we, we think you know we, we don't want someone to fall and we don't want someone to um, so we kind of start to limit, I guess in a way like is it you know what I don't know if that's the right word, but assisted devices, or you know things, and and I just thought it was really neat that with that concept that you shared, um, it was really successful and that you were kind of turning that on its head right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, as a matter of fact, that happens when we have a known condition stroke, dementia, parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis. I could go off concussion. I could go off on each one of those five, but I could actually just answer the question with regard to aging. Think about this. All right, we've got a 75 year old female who's aging well. Her children and grandchildren are proud of her because she's sharp and she's physically capable, etc.
Speaker 4:Her husband dies and she stops driving. She doesn't have as many places to go, she doesn't have as many social activities because he's passed then as well and they used to do a lot of things together. She decides to go ahead and change residences and move into a different facility assisted living, etc. All right, nothing wrong with assisted livings. They have their place. But now we think about this.
Speaker 4:So, rather than her thinking about what to prepare for dinner, people prepare it for her. Rather than thinking about her financial management and checkbook balancing, people are managing her finances finances for, rather than thinking about what she does and doesn't have in the refrigerator, that she has to remember to go out and shop she doesn't shop. Rather than driving, she has things brought to her. And rather than going out and tending to her garden. She doesn't have one anymore. Look at all the learn, non-use and all the things that this one 75-year-old who could do, this full circuit of volunteering and providing help for her grandchildren et cetera she's no longer doing those. As a function of losing those stimuli, she loses those faculties very shortly. It is the direct analogy to I moved to a single level home. I no longer take the stairs, I have an elevated chair, I no longer stand from low surfaces and I no longer garden, so I don't practice getting up from the floor. Whatever we don't use, we lose, and that comes in physical and that comes in cognitive.
Speaker 2:That's really powerful and it's, yeah, that old adage of use it or lose it, right and it's. You know it sounds cliche but really that's kind of a very practical and very thorough explanation of what the meaning is behind that and I think it could be powerful just for people who are walking a journey with dementia or their loved ones caring or assist in care. That it's, even though it may be hard. I guess my takeaway from that, and practical for our audience, is it may be hard, but leaning into things and finding, even if you're having to adapt or as opposed to shying away from doing those things as they get harder, yeah, it's kind of a take away and see, there you got it.
Speaker 4:Daphne, there you have it perfectly. Because when we have the opportunity, even if we move to a different residence, that's providing assistance. What we've still got to do is find purpose, find mental stimulation, find physical stimulation. That involves endurance and strength and power and diverse thinking, where I have to actually generate ideas for inductive reasoning, deductive reason, problem solving. Just because you've moved doesn't mean you have to lose all of those challenges, but commonly when we do, we end up again as you might have heard in the TED Talk again when we have not spoken in a foreign language recently. We lose our foundation and our familiarity with those words. And that happens with all physical and all cognitive faculties bar none.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for that, and I've been thinking on this topic a lot myself just from a personal perspective, due to my grandparents recently going into a nursing home, and Daphne and I both come from a recreation background and both have worked at activity coordinators in nursing homes, and I really think that this is a very important thing for professionals in the aging care sector to think about as well, because having my grandparents enter a nursing home has made me think very differently about meaningful engagement and what that means, even coming from someone who thought they knew quite a bit about meaningful engagement, right, and I see my grandmother losing things faculty, such as even being able to go and make herself a cup of coffee, for instance because that section of the nursing home is not available to her to physically access. I know that's a very small example of what you're talking about, but oh my goodness you've got it right, though.
Speaker 4:And see what I love about what you've said there is, you know, we come from the recreational, the active aging, the activity programming and all that. And here's what's so great, because we're at really a tipping point and we're at an opportunity point, because you are actually recognizing that it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to have all this learned on use. We can actually pull it into the nursing home, the assisted living, the independent living, can still have these social communities that are enriching in conversation, in activity, etc. And what did you just say?
Speaker 4:You know about your own grandmother. You know that ability to make the coffee. You think, well, you know, is it really challenging her cognitive faculties? Well, there's one small spit on that. Even if it doesn't provide a dosage to challenge and sustain her cognitive faculties, just making the coffee for someone else provides her psychological purpose. And let me tell you, even the most severely impaired person with Alzheimer's disease, if they perceive that they are being purposeful, it elevates them, it brings them to their highest potential, and cognitive and psychological at the same time. And if their purposeful activity happens to be physically engaging, it's a win times three.
Speaker 1:I love that. Thank you so much for being so articulate in your explanation of that, and I know that we've taken you off script from what we started talking about. But I'll kind of bring us back around here and jump into our next question, which is for either preventing or slowing the effects of dementia or improving our cognitive function.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So again, if we think about our environment, we want to think about being surrounded by people of diverse opinions, diverse backgrounds, by people of diverse opinions, diverse backgrounds. And also our environment needs to provide us with some stimuli that causes us to occasionally problem solve, generate new ideas. Not that one needs to go around and be like Inspector Clouseau and sneak up on somebody else and say, surprise, deal with this attack. Or lock themselves out of their own home and time themselves to figure out how they get back in, but we need to think about an environment where we have to interact. We don't want to be a passive recipient of the world. We want to have to interact. So getting out and walking in a pedestrian crowds, finding a new route. So there's another thing that's a stimuli that gets us bi-directionally Go vacation someplace you've never been. Be a little bit active with that. Learn how to get back to your hotel.
Speaker 4:Okay, so we've looked at environment that is challenging, is varied from social. Also, it needs to be giving us a variety of physical too, like I mentioned earlier. Has stairs or something that causes us to elevate our body, has groundwork, garden, etc. Or we give ourselves something purposeful to pick a small dog up from the floor. So we want an environment that actually regularly gives us the opportunity to have no learned non-use.
Speaker 4:I'm doing my crossword puzzle, I'm doing my Sudoku, that's fine, but I'm also getting out and doing my boxing class or my spinning class, but I'm also participating in a community garden, purposeful engaging, et cetera. So we want diversity in every different direction. And then the one last thing that I'll state to this is that within our environment we want to also have opportunities toward restoration, even though everything I'm saying is be active, go do problem solve, challenge. When we take that too far and we don't give ourselves the healthy sleep hygiene opportunities, then these things become really eroding rather than accumulating for our betterment. So there's some great science to sleep medicine on that, and as long as we balance our restoration with our activation, it's a win.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I think it's so important to highlight that you're saying although we might think we are very active and we're doing our crossword puzzles in Sudoku and we're going on our usual walks, we need to be incorporating more than just the usual. We need to be doing new things and new stimulus all the time. No matter how healthy we think we are right now, we need to keep striving to be better and doing new things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, you've got it exactly right there. And you know, janet, if you took your grandmother and said, twice a month we need you to watch your great grand dog, that's a stimulating one hour or two hours twice a month. You keep an amazing amount of cognitive and psychological and potentially physical attributes elevated just from that experience. So it's varieties walk somebody else's dog, walk down a different pathway, rent a car just learning how to drive a different car, I mean, just think about the possibilities, try something new to eat, all those different opportunities. It's variety and balanced with the restoration restoration.
Speaker 2:There could be lots of fun. Um ways to spin that too. Like you could do a challenge. Like you know, try something new every day, or you know one thing a week, or yeah, that's neat, yeah and remember behind that theme of all of this, it's even better if the individual's choosing it rather than grandma.
Speaker 4:You need to do this because it's for your health, for your brain. If it can be done in a purposeful fashion or something that pulls in their previous skill set, can you teach us how to make this? Uh, you know, pull together all the ingredients. We're all coming over to your house and they have to go out shopping. They know the ingredients. They have to think about how many, what's the portions, etc. That's what you want. Is you want them to be active and purposeful in whatever they're doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really so interesting and you've touched on it a little bit there a moment ago, but I think it would probably be remiss if we didn't ask you the question, because you have shared so much about this in your work. So talk to us a little bit about different things we can do to adopt, you know, more healthy behaviors around nutrition and sleep. That, I think, really rounds out this, this, all of the concepts you've talked about, really.
Speaker 4:Yeah, If we take nutrition first, let's understand that there is no one perfect diet for anyone. That needs to be debunked. There are many different things and I don't want to go too deep into the medical terms, but there's enough differences in our DNA that what is healthy for one person is not necessarily healthy for another. The only things that we do know Daphne is that an inflammatory diet would be one with refined sugars, highly processed foods, artificial flavorings and colorings. So there's the only thing that we can say for sure, because people are absolute experts, have gone through medical school and beyond and done fellowships and can staunchly argue for a paleo diet, for a keto diet, for red meats or maybe it's got to be omnivore. So all we can really say is the anti-inflammatory diet is what not to eat, and beyond that, it's too simplistic to say calories in versus calories out will cause weight loss, and we do know that in all the hype that we had about time-restricted feeding and all the other terms that go along with that, it really came down to the scientific winner was just managing the amount of calories total. So the only thing time-restricted feeding did.
Speaker 4:If I didn't eat for 16 hours, I'm proud of myself and I jumped on that bandwagon also is with the total volume that we ate, and it actually doesn't really help us that much from a blood sugar standpoint, et cetera, to have gone hours and hours and hours. There's benefits from variety, intermittently fasting, but doing that on a regular basis. The body figures it out and says oh, that's your deal, I'm just going to change my metabolism, no problem. So that's what we can say about nutrition. If you'd like a follow-up question, that's fine. If you want me to go on to sleep, I can.
Speaker 2:No, I think I have. Yeah, all of that is that's the takeaway. I think the main takeaway that I would take from that is just again, we're all different and there is no one way, but it's you know. We know that the things that you mentioned are I'm going to say the term, I don't love to label it like junk food or what like those are pretty universally accepted as not great for us. But yeah, in terms of just making healthier choices, I think is the way. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we could go on about the you know nearly universal benefits of a high fiber diet for our gut microbiome. Our gut microbiome produces the serotonin, 90% of the serotonin that comes into our system, which keeps us feeling full, keeps us feeling healthy, keeps our attitudes very positive. It's an antidepressant. We talk about SSRIs and medications that are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Well, you can produce your own serotonin if you're having a high fiber diet. So we do know that that part does resonate. Beyond that, what is a good fat anymore? Is any alcohol? Uh, you know, healthy at all? Um, wait, that's grains. But that's too much carbohydrate. I mean, there's just way too much. Never eat your bananas. First thing in the morning must be protein first. If you want to say something that's absolutely uh, all the way to way to one side or the other, polarizing, you can find somebody that'll say it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting, but it goes back to you know what you know, the overall theme of, like, you know, choosing yourself, right. So it's, you know, if you're yeah, you, if you choose something that maybe is, you know, full of refined carbohydrates or you're going to feel very differently, you know in the long run, um, that you're regularly choosing yourself.
Speaker 4:Yes, that's.
Speaker 4:right, that's right, yeah, I can see how that and there's the thing you know when we we know that when we have autonomy, we are listening to psychologically, what we prefer. Here's the interesting caveat that hasn't been fully developed yet, but what I'm hearing and listening to is this us what it's hungry for and what it needs. And there are more microbiota in your gut than you have cells in your body. Now, that blew me away, All right. So feeding them to be healthy means actually no alcohol and but potentially fermented foods though, which can be have some, you know, alcohol basis to them and no refined sugars. So, even though we're going to let you choose for yourself, please do keep in mind the refined sugars in the alcohol. You may want to choose them and go after them, but that may not be the healthiest for your gut. Microbiome, yeah.
Speaker 4:But, we can go on to sleep, if you're ready?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. I'd love to hear your thoughts All right Now.
Speaker 4:Here's the big twist. Remember, in physical exercise we said variety. I need endurance, I need strength and I need power. And if I need to define the difference between strength and power later, please hold me accountable, I will All right.
Speaker 4:We said in cognition we need variety, we need the ability to think about and generate as many different answers. I want to play categories. How many different superheroes start with S? So we have inductive and we have deductive reasoning. How many different ways can I get back into my house? I've locked myself out. Can I get back into my house? I've locked myself out.
Speaker 4:Okay, we also have really process and that would be, you know, let's call it mathematics or problem solving. Do I have enough gas to make it there? I get this many miles per gallon, it's as far away, et cetera. And then we have hold and recall short-term memory. When you pull up to the drive-in window, I want you to order this for me and then recall is the name of all the people that I went to high school with, all right.
Speaker 4:So we said variety physical. We said variety cognitive. We said variety by foods. Guess what we're at? Sleep Rules change no variety, interesting no variety. What we want is, we want to cue our team. We want quality, quantity, regularity and time. So that means the most unhealthy thing you can do is work night shift and then be off for the weekend. And work night shift and be off for the weekend because you're flipping your circadian rhythm and it doesn't matter if you're talking about cancer, metabolic disease or other. There is a function that can be expressed in the literature I can't quote it to you that having irregularity in sleep equates to smoking this many packs of cigarettes per day. I don't know exactly what the total is, but let's say it's. You know, three packs of cigarettes per day is equivalent to working. You know night shifts on and off, so sleep is the exception to the variety.
Speaker 2:Very interesting and we'll make sure that we so. Can you take that again? It was quality and quantity.
Speaker 4:Uh-huh, regularity and time. Yeah, so the time that I go to sleep, the time that I wake up, the surroundings of my bedroom we all know about. You know approximately 68 degrees, full blackout screens, comfortable position and bed and covers, etc. What I've eaten beforehand, what I've exposed myself to lights and stressors beforehand or exertion, so each one of those has its own separate window, not 90 minutes before, not two hours before, etc. We don't need to go into all the details, but all that comes into the QQRT.
Speaker 2:Really interesting, and so I guess from that, I guess it could be, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong but as long as that those four things are present, it would also could be very individualized per person, right? So some people might exercise at night or some people get up first thing in the morning, type thing.
Speaker 4:But as long as it's the consistency is present 100% right, Daphne, and I'm glad that you bring us to this. The current science is all going to be something around seven to eight hours of sleep. There's exceptions to that. There's gene mutations. So there's people that get away with four and a eight hours of sleep. There's exceptions to that. There's gene mutations and there's people that get away with four and a half hours of sleep, and we do know that that's the case and there's evidence for this. However, generally, seven to eight hours of sleep where you put that the only thing that's important is where you put it needs to relatively stay there, because your spikes in cortisol are going to come up about the same time every day and start to increase your body temperature and wake you up. Your first cycle into REM sleep is going to come about the same time, you know, about 90 minutes or so after you've gotten into sleep. So you want to have that regularity. Wherever you place that seven or eight hours, you want to have it as consistently placed as possible. Now there's one thing that I want to make certain that we cover, because Jana asked a great question about preventing dementia and keeping cognitive health and I said we get to the sleep functions. Let's make sure we do one thing on this in sleep. Number one let's be clear that your sleep cycles give you the same type of cycles this is oversimplified as your dishwasher. You have a rinse cycle in sleep that washes out the beta amyloid buildup bad, that can cause you to have more, let's just say, cognitive impairment, to keep it simple. It literally takes your cerebrospinal fluid and washes the brain clean, like those dishes that need to be scrubbed that you should have put into the dishwasher after doing some sink work. Your cerebrospinal fluid does that for you at night. All right, that's number one for cognition. Number two when do we actually imprint things into our brain that we learned or experienced today? We put those in in sleep that night. Consolidation, All right. So that's number two. We consolidate novel information, novel experiences and all types of learning, even motor learning, at night.
Speaker 4:I just practiced drills on my hitting, my tennis, serve my pickleball, smash my free throws. Get a good night's sleep that night. Now I'm going to trifecta that once before. I stop that night after you learned your poem or your golf swing that one's important, Okay, that night. However, getting good sleep the night before you're going to be exposed to that information Wow, that was important too, because if you go into a learning experience unrested, not good, Now guess what. So here we have Saturday's my golf lesson. I need Friday night sleep. I need Saturday night sleep to consolidate it, and guess what sleep. I need Saturday night sleep to consolidate it. And guess what? If I get Sunday night sleep and I go back out on the driving range Monday and I pull some of that information back, I'm actually pulling it out of memory and then replaying it, reformulating it and putting it back into memory. If you can get those three nights sleep, you're Tiger Woods fascinating.
Speaker 1:Well, we have some sleep hygiene things to work on, maybe.
Speaker 2:I love that analogy, though, and yeah, it strikes me just, uh, just a comment, and I think, jana, you're probably bursting to ask a couple of one last one or two last questions, um, but I guess what I, what I strikes me when you're talking is, um, we often hear the term self-care, but it's very hard for most people to kind of tangibly figure out what that is practically right and all the things that you are talking. You know, self-care routines.
Speaker 4:Mm, hmm, mm, hmm. That's exercise, choosing your cognitive stimulation, choosing your sleep hygiene, nighttime routine, choosing what you want to have to eat and choosing your environment, as well as those that are in your inner circle who you regularly interact with. There is your self-care. That's the brain choosing itself, when I know that I have some control over those different health aspects of my life, guess what? Blue zone? Yeah, you know, we've all heard about the blue zones and what we have come to understand I don't want to pretend to be an expert on this is that a lot of the blue zone myth has been debunked. Oh, it's all about what they eat.
Speaker 4:No, this is an active culture. No, these people don't consume a lot of alcohol. This is the commonality. No, it's the thermal, it's the temperature that they're exposed to. No, it's the social. They're purposeful, they're still in a relationship and a responsibility within a family network. It's all those things. It's all those things and what's most important is that we're not actually forcing you into any of it. You feel most enriched by choosing your role, choosing your attributes, choosing your activities. It's a very privileged and I tell you, not everyone in this world gets the opportunity to choose all those different attributes, but we want to pull as many different levers as we possibly can so that we can live to a point where we get more of those freedoms as well. We still have some inequities to take care of in those regards, though.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you so much for describing that and I want to be very conscious of your time, but I do have a question that I had personally based on listening to you on some other podcasts. So feel free to do as concise of an answer as you wish, but it may be a roundabout way for us to go back to strength and power. I'm curious to know is high intensity interval training, hit or steady state cardio, better for brain health, or is there a difference?
Speaker 4:Yes, there's a very large difference. And yes, you're right, many times HIIT will involve power not always, but many times it will, because power is an expression of moving against a resistance. When there is a time constraint, moving a resistance maybe just my body weight quickly is something that requires power and can be done very simply in terms of three slow sit to stands, two fast sit to stands, three slow sit to stands, two fast sit to stands. Now let's answer your question. All right, is HIIT better than steady state cardio? All right, depends first on your goal and I'm not going to leave it as it depends. However, if I were to look at all cause mortality and your goal is just health span or lifespan, you can nearly equate the two of those. But remember health spans's the longest ability to be able to still function. Lifespan is I'm still alive, but everybody's doing everything for me, all right. So if your simple goal is healthspan, then we have to know that, according to all-cause mortality and the majority of the studies we have now, hit wins. Why? Because it expresses all of the different fiber types. When I'm doing HIT, I'm actually doing some very low exertion in the off cycles and I'm doing very high exertion, near maximum in the on cycles. So I'm recruiting type one fibers and both types of the type two fibers type two A and type two X in human beings All right. So that means a rising tide of challenge or difficulty basically elevates all boats. If I need to contract all of my muscles to be able to get the highest intensity done, then I'm using my type one fibers and my type two fibers. So it's better than just using my type one fibers all the time for steady state cardio, all right.
Speaker 4:Now I'm going to succinctly wrap up here by telling you if you only did hit, you'll subject yourself to injury. Tissue hygiene won't be perfect. You're going to be more likely to have a bone stress injury, a musculotendinous injury or maybe even sustained damage to your cardiac tissue. For, actually, that prolonged effort of left ventricular hypertrophy, I'm not going to get way into the weeds. So again, we go to variety. Yes, hiit, yes, steady state cardio, different days and a balance on those within the physical activities that you prefer. You could be pushing a heavily loaded wheelbarrow in your backyard, moving cinder blocks and hit training. So let's keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you for answering that and indulging me personally on that question, and I appreciate you applying a practical application of that as well, in terms of you know, if you're out gardening pushing a wheelbarrow, you can, as you say, physical activity in any activity that you do in life, no matter what it is yeah, yeah and hey, you know, let's circle all the way back to the.
Speaker 4:You know, learn non-use. Let's go back, potentially, to your grandmother. Uh, janna and and let's just say hypothetically watches her great-grandchildren. Maybe they weigh 17, maybe they weigh 22 pounds. She's got a 22 pounder. Your grandmother hasn't run for the last five years. Has her brain lost the ability to run?
Speaker 4:If I were to give her the opportunity to hold on to one of the sturdy strollers that I wish we had when I was rearing our children, give her the opportunity and you could do HIIT training while being a caregiver for your great grandchildren, you know, jogging and reminding your brain how to jog while still being safe because you're holding on to the stable stroller. That's balanced, you know, with 22 pounds of grandchild in there. Then we walk, then we run. Now the child is getting enjoyment from the go, grandma go, and then we're seeing nature. I mean, you can't hardly think of a better way to actually pull all those things in together Purposeful power, hit, steady state outdoors, um, cognitively engaging, uh, you know, you know, and, and all the things. So then she just has to go to sleep that night, uh, and make certain that. Uh, you know she eats what she wants to eat well, that's interesting, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:You're doing such a um, you do a really great job um, just kind of breaking down concepts that people are often intimidated by right Like, so thinking about, you could actually do that type of high intensity, you know, with just everyday life and you know thinking about how to do that and incorporate that. That's a really practical and powerful, you know thing, a challenge for some people who are at home. A challenge for some people who are at home. So, thank you, daphne. Yeah, we could talk to you forever. I really, really, you know.
Speaker 2:We do have one last question that we like to read all of our podcasts with, okay, from our guests. But just before we do that, I'll say, on behalf of us, thank you for choosing to spend time with us today and to introduce yourself to us and to our listeners, and you know, you can consider that you now have two wonderful new Canadian friends and we'd be happy to connect with you anytime and we'll definitely share your work. So before we, I guess, say our goodbyes, the question that we ask all of our listeners, all of our guests, is what is your hope, you know, from either personally or from your professional vantage point, for the future for people who are affected by dementia. That's a great question.
Speaker 4:So my hope are, let's just say, several fold. Number one that we can control the incidence of dementia better through more healthy lifestyles in our 30s, 40s and 50s. That's the window where it can be most readily controlled. So that's number one. No-transcript, far finding happens and it resonates errors, and it's just like the child who goes to a piano recital, gets a note wrong, feels embarrassed and quits. We don't want an individual with early signs of cognitive impairment to quit because all they're seeing is errors. We want them to feel successful. Successful, gives them an opportunity to challenge and to stay healthy and to have some confidence, because when we lose our confidence we have a distraction of fear that interferes with all of our cognitive faculties. So it's really those three things, and it's prevention, it's purpose, and it's also give some purposeful play, uh, and give some success. Pull things back into their sector of expertise and everybody has a sector of expertise, whether they worked outside the home or not. Let them shine.
Speaker 2:I love that Really, really powerful answer. Thank you so much for being here, Jan. I don't know if you have any last thoughts or anything you'd like to share.
Speaker 1:Your answer to that really did truly warm my heart. Thank you for phrasing that so beautifully and, once again, many, many thanks for the opportunity to be able to chat with you today, and we know that our listeners will get so much valuable information from what you've shared.
Speaker 4:My pleasure entirely. I'm easily findable. I'm sure you guys will have show notes. You know, my website is basically just Mike Studer dot com. You feel that you, you know, wouldn't be in a position to reach out to me? Feel free to do so, even if it's just to help you, help a family member, it's totally fine.
Speaker 1:Thank you. We definitely will share all of your resources on our show notes and to any listeners who have any further inquiries, we will send them your way, thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for hosting me. You guys have done a wonderful job pulling out the essentials.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Redefining Dementia podcast. We hope the insights shared today leave you feeling empowered and connected, no matter where you are on the dementia journey, whether you are living with dementia or you are a care partner, a professional or an advocate. Together, we can continue shifting the conversation.
Speaker 3:This season. We're grateful for the opportunity to bring you new voices and perspectives. As always, we strive to offer practical tips and heartfelt stories that resonate with your experience.
Speaker 2:A huge thank you to our incredible guests who generously share their time and knowledge with us, and to everyone behind the scenes. Our music is written and produced by Scott Holmes, and this podcast was produced by Jana Jones. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss our upcoming episodes. And, as always, let's keep redefining dementia together.
