Keeping Your Brain Healthy: Brain-FX

Caffeine Jolt: Good or Bad for Your Brain?

Here's some irony: People are loving coffee and other caffienated beverages, yet we are a nation of stressed out individuals. The new energy drinks are really jolting us. Caffeine...stress...caffeine...anxiety...could there be some connection?

You see people in Starbucks, working excitedly on their laptops, or conversing with high animation. Love that coffee buzz. You see energy drinks sold everywhere, 7-11s and supermarkets alike.

Forty years ago, people were loving martinis; thirty years ago it was pot, twenty years ago valium, and throughout history we've had a love affair with beer and wine. There was a time when doctors freely dispensed diet pills. Then lately there's been a period of Prozac, Paxil, and anti-anxiety meds. Just because we accept something and it becomes popular, doesn't mean it isn't harmful in the long term.

This is nothing new. As soon as we feel down, we want up. Then we want down again. Caffeine has enjoyed a long history of acceptability, mainly because too much of it really doesn't feel good. Nothing worse than an overdose of it.

But what about the slow-drip technique of a little caffeine all day long? There is no addiction per se, and no overdose here, no bad side-effects...or at least we think not. What are the long term effects on our brains? We already know that long term stimulants on the heart have long-lasting deleterious effects.

For sure, the brain habituates and continues working the way we want it too even after a drug is withheld. I think people are actually adrenalin junkies, and coffee is just a way of jump starting that whole process. The adrenalin pumping does the rest.

Here's an interesting report on the caffeine content of popular beverages.

Download caffeine_jolt.doc

What do you think about this issue? Hit the comment link below and reply.

In the Zone: Wu-Wei & NeuroCharge

 
An Effortless Effort (Wu-wei)
Posted by Zack Lynch at Corante Brain Waves Blog

We all work hard at what we do, yet some of us seem to be continually moving forward with amazing ease while others appear to be fighting a daily grind. I am always searching for tools, ways to look at reality, through which I can obtain a higher level of continuous contentment in my never ending life-work.

One perspective I've been working with lately comes from the Taoist concept of "effortless effort." A short piece Fortune magazine last week summed it up amazingly well:

Wu-wei (the state of effortless effort) describes a state in which the world seems to be working for us. We feel calm yet alert, focused yet receptive, drawing force from the storm while standing in its eye. Like the marathoner who feels pulled forward, we accomplish the most with the minimum of energy. In this state hard work does not feel like hard labor. Nor does it feel like play.

It feels a lot like the Aristotelian concept of doing. Edison and his researchers felt it at Menlo Park. They didn't get much sleep, but many would later look back at the periods as the happiest of their lives. "There is no substitute for hard work," Edison said. And indeed, we go rotten without it.

For me, this state of Wu-Wei is when we are "in the zone," whether during sports, work, or just living life. If only we could get the formula right, and package it, we'd have another healthy product to sell at Mind-FX Science!

For now, our NeuroCharge supplement is about the closest we've come to finding a way to artificially stimulate the brain towards wu-wei, or "the zone." Not to be getting up on my selling soap box, but two NeuroCharge 1/2 hour before a tennis match works for me.

The Power of Three's

Does the brain see things in groups of three's? It is easy for us to remember things in three's? Here's a blog post that says yes:

How the Brain Sees Things

The brain finds it relatively easy to grasp threes – elements, colours and fonts. Push that marginally up to four and the brain gets confused about where to look and what to do, and sends the eye scampering like a frisky puppy on a sunny day.

So why does this happen? For that we might have to go back a little to diaper country. As a child, everything you did and learned seemed to be centered around three — A,B,C; 1,2,3; Three blind mice, Three musketeers, Trinity, Three Stooges and Huey, Louie and Dewey. (Quack! Quack! Quack!)

This article was written by Sean D'Souza and posted on the Me, Myself, and I blog.

What do you think about this idea?

Brain Awareness Week March 13-19th 2006

Brain Awareness Week is an international effort organized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives to advance public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research.

The Dana Alliance is joined in the campaign by partners in the United States and around the world, including medical and research organizations; patient advocacy groups; the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies; service groups; hospitals and universities; K-12 schools; and professional organizations.

Visit dana.org for more information on how to become involved. Last year Brain Awareness Week was celebrated in 57 countries.

My challenge to you: do something to give your brain a boost: exercise, healthy eating (strawberries and spinach, not necessarily together), a new hobby or puzzle, or learn something new. If you are a parent, talk to your kids about the brain and how they can help keep their brains healthy and happy.

And if you're not, take your brain for a walk, smell the roses, go off caffeine for a week, do something kind to your brain.

The Creating Brain

An interesting book examines the relationship of the brain to creativity: The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius, by Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have been exploring highly intelligent individuals and those who create outstanding works of art, science or other products requiring significant original thought.

What they've found from a variety of IQ and other tests and studies is that most creative people are smart, but they aren't necessarily extremely smart. An IQ around 120 is generally good enough.

The most creative people aren't those with IQs in the 140, 150 and above ranges. Why is that? Stay tuned, I'll keep reading the book.

But I'd like to offer a wild guess here. Maybe I'm way out to lunch, but here's my proposed theory:

People with extremely high IQs never really fit in or relate well with others. Because of their extreme intelligence, they (possibly) spend some of their time trying to figure out how to  blend their ideas in so they can connect and be a part of the world. But they often feel like square pegs trying to fit into round holes. Let's face it, there aren't many others of their high IQ around to relate to.

People with moderately high IQs - say in the 120 ranges - know they are smart, and they don't have trouble fitting in. They also know they aren't that smart either. They don't worry about fitting in, so they have energy left over. They, in fact, look for unusual or creative ways to exist in the world. They have more energy available to them to use in creative ways.

Anyway, I could be way off base. But here's what else they've found about highly creative people:

They are open to new experiences, adventurous, rebellious, individualists, sensitive, playful, persistent, curious, and simple.

Creative people approach the world in a fresh and original way that is not shaped by preconceptions. The obvious order and rules that guide people with average intelligence just aren't that important to them. They do not wear the blinders of conventionality that others strive to pay attention to.

What do you think? Why aren't there more Nobel Peace Prize winners, inventors, artists, writers and other creative geniuses in the high IQ ranges? Why are so many of the higher IQ people - like some of the Mensa members - NOT successful at creating?

I would love to hear from you, just click the comment link below and tell me what you think.