Curiosity & Brain Health

“I think the first step is to help people realize that you are the architect of your brain. That you do have a level of agency, that you can choose — day to day — how you use your brain. You can really shape it.” ~ Julie Fratantoni

Our brains are works in progress, capable of remarkable, continuous growth and strengthening. That’s called neuroplasticity and it’s at the heart of work at The Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas, Dallas. 

They want to empower people to be the architects of their own brains.

How might curiosity contribute?

Dr. Julie Fratantoni is a cognitive neuroscientist, with a specialty in making neuroscience approachable. She is head of research integration and partnerships at the Center and leads the user experience and content creation for the Center’s 10-year long Brain Health Project. She is leveraging behavioral science to create a dashboard and mobile app where participants can access everything from assessments to coaching and training. 

When you’re curious, you’re sparking a special chemical cocktail of neurotransmitters, things like dopamine and norepinephrine… When you’re learning and it doesn’t feel like effort, it’s because your neuropharmacology — your brain chemistry — is working in your favor, and that’s something curiosity ignites that is really powerful and great for keeping your brain healthy.

Choose to be Curious · Ep. #218: Curiosity & Brain Health, with Dr. Julie Fratantoni

Listen to Choose to be Curious #218: Curiosity & Brain Health, with Dr. Julie Fratantoni

Be part of the Great Brain Gain movement. Start by joining the 7-day text challenge – take simple steps toward better brain health by learning and applying a daily brain-healthy tip. Text GAIN to 888-844-8991

Check out the Center for BrainHealth and the Great Brain Gain movement: https://centerforbrainhealth.org

Find Julie Fratantoni on Instagram at @drjuliefratantoni 

Read up on Julie’s latest research on kindness and brain health here.

Listen to my whole (lovely!) conversation on Curiosity & the Craving Mind, with Jud Brewer.

And if you want more on the brain, check out these C2BC shows from the archive: This is Your Brain on Curiosity, with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor; Resilient & Brave, with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor; What Makes Us Curious, with Dr. Mario Livio;  Neuroscience Eyes Curiosity, with Dr. Jacqueline Gottlieb; Neurodiverse Curiosity with Kristy Johnson; James Danckert Is Curious About Boredom; and Why Neuroscience Matters, with Ilya Monosov.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “Mind Body Mind” by Bodytonic, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to be Curious on Apple Podcasts and now on Spotify. 

Wear your curiosity on your sleeve. Check out the Choose to be Curious shop

Curiosity & Health Advocacy

“When patients and their family members understand the why, they’re much more likely to follow through.” ~ Nicole Rochester, M.D.

Studies show that health information seeking behavior (HISB) raises individuals’ self-care management skills and medical treatment compliance, and enhances shared decision-making and medical treatment satisfaction.*

So choosing to be curious about our own health and health care options is good for us.

I know from my own experience, when health concerns get complicated – which is to say any time we’re talking about healthcare – it’s incredibly helpful to have more than one person asking questions, hearing answers, and wondering about alternatives. That might be a family member, friend, trusted community member — or a professional health advocate. Dr. Nicole Rochester, physician and founder of Your GPS Doc LLC, is such an advocate.

Listen to Choose to be Curious #109: Curiosity & Health Advocacy, with Nicole Rochester. M.D.

Check out Dr. Nicole Rochester at Your GPS Doc LLC.

*It turns out, health seeking behaviors are good for you. Take a look at the research.

Our theme music is by Sean Balick . Check out Sean’s new album “From the Pines”.  “Mind Body Mind” by BodyTonic, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to be Curious on Apple Podcasts/ iTunes and Stitcher.

Everyday Heroics

There were many things to love about this curiosity conversation with Raya Kheirbek, but I think hearing a doctor describe the everyday heroics of the people with whom she works might be my favorite.

This was one of those programs that reminds me how much we can surprise and delight ourselves when we slow down enough to listen deeply…

Listen to Choose to be Curious #14: Narrative Medicine & Curiosity – with Dr. Raya Kheirbek.

 

 

Mission: PASSABLE

This is how many wheelchair-accessible houses I passed on this morning’s walk: five. That’s a little over one per mile. I passed hundreds of homes. Five had a genuine, universally accessible welcome mat at the front door. Five.

I’ve been thinking about access because I’ve been thinking about aging in place, thanks in no small part to what’s been going on with family, and B. who, though younger, seems always a step ahead in these things. She‘s thinking about aging in place, doing now what will empower her then. It is not a short list.

Then this week I learned about N.’s son, who has suffered the consequences of a devastating collision of youth and gravity. Strong, vital, vigorous, and blessed with a family determined to be grateful for what they still have, S. is now almost certainly wheelchair-bound, facing a rewrite of life’s script that none of us would ever see coming.

I look at doorways differently now.

Also: porches, stairs, light switches, showers, closets, stoves, cars, buses, sidewalks, storefronts… It is not a short list, either.

Another not-so-short list: everything for which I am grateful. Today, in particular: the reminder that life is both precious and precarious, and is most rich when seen through others’ eyes.

 

 

5-5-5: my new favorite thing

Thanks to my most recent “Choose to be Curious” conversation, I find myself using Jenn Seiff’s  5-5-5 technique all the time.

Bored at the traffic light? Distracted in the market? Relaxing on the dock?  5-5-5. What are the first five things you see? The first five things you hear? The first five things you can feel?

Dappled sunlight. Painted toe nails. Birds on a wire. Kids at the curb. Dog on a leash. Wind. Laughter. Airplanes. My own breathing. A hiccup. Sun on my face. Wind in my hair. Hands on the wheel. Feet on the floor. Beat of my heart.

It’s grounding. Deeply grounding. Brings you back to the moment, to the essential, to the now. My new favorite way to be quickly, quietly, wonderfully curious.

Listen to Choose to be Curious – Episode 8: Curiosity, Body Awareness and Yoga.

#fittestever, A Live Report

A day before the birthday and the morning after the party at which the question inevitably came, this seems a good time to come clean:

So, are you your fittest ever???

Um, no.

But it does depend on how you count. (And for those of you new to this thread, a little context: in a moment of inexplicably unbridled enthusiasm at the end of September, I declared before a group of 40+ witnesses that I wanted to be my fittest ever by the time I turned 55…which would be tomorrow. What was I thinking?)

On an overall, total fitness, strength-endurance-flexibility measure, I’m not there. Not even close. But. But.

The morning after my spontaneous declaration, I went to a Zumba class, thinking “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” and, because I’m that kind of girl, I took the metaphor to its natural extreme and decided I would make the forthcoming six months a journey of a thousand miles: 5.5 miles a day, every day, until that 55th birthday.

And that? That, I did.

As of this morning, with still a day to go and lacking a few that never got logged for one reason or another, I can–with confidence and authority–say I have walked 1,086+ miles in the last six months.

Lessons Learned? Plenty…

• A digital tracker’s accountability and encouragement work. Embarrassingly.
• There are a lot of Little Free Libraries in this county. I should know, I visited most of them. Having  destinations helps.
• Fitness and walking buddies are the best. You know who you are – thank you!
• Rain isn’t as bad as you think, but wind might be.
• Wild, spur-of-the-moment goals are totally worth it, even if you don’t hit them.
• It’s a beautiful world out there.

Where next?

Steps: Out Of/Back/Into

We’re a week into January and I am not on pace. I feel like I’m a step behind the marching band, or still trying to get between the ropes in Double Dutch, or have my feet tangled in the sheets as I rise from the bed.

Just not into the post-holiday, new-year rhythm yet. Not quite there.

I knew it was bad when I bounded up the stairs the other day, intent on catching the warming sun for a second walk of the day and realized I’d never put on my Up pedometer in the morning. All those steps uncounted. As if they didn’t exist.

Now, you know I’ve been keeping track. I have worn that blessed thing everywhere. But not that day. And then the next, yesterday, I spent flat on my back, wiped out — again! — by a bug whose tenacity and congestion have been unparalleled. Barely moved.

See? Not on my game. Literally out of step.

Trying to focus, I took a step back. I thought about what makes me feel in step, what makes me feel well. Thought about everything we know about the interplay of immunity and well-being. Thought about all the practices that weren’t [yet] back in my day. Thought: you really need to do something about that.

This morning I woke a little less foggy, a little less lumpy. I thought: take another step back – go back to things that worked for you. Recidivism is only bad in a criminal context…

Aspara of Angkor Wat – my muses: both in step and mindful.

And so I clicked through on the “today’s your last chance” email offer,  re-upped with Headspace and settled in for a good, old-fashioned guided meditation. Minutes later I could feel my breath evening, my neck softening, my inner gyroscope recalibrating.

I rose with a spring in my step.

Take 5 @ 3

No doubt you have seen the video of the Accenture employees in Mumbai who take five minutes at the start of each day to dance.  I’m a sucker for this sort of thing. When I am Queen of the Universe, we’ll all start our days with dance.

Some years ago I tried to launch a five-minute break in the middle of the afternoon in my office – my singular effort to push back against the doldrums and the general confines of office decorum.

Didn’t happen.

I did manage to pull it off, once, when some portion of my colleagues joined me in the elevator lobby to boogie with Pharrell at 3:14 one Pi Day. When I left that job it was one of the stories recounted in the farewell party, an example of the kind of workplace colleagues hoped we would have.

Sadly, I never managed to make it a habit. But you can!  It’s not too late!  So simple…

1. Pick a time, any time.  I think of 3 pm as the afternoon dead zone. Doing something disruptive right then offers the opportunity to re-energize the day.
2. Let people know it’s coming and then make good on the promise.
   
3. Press play. Any music that makes you want to move and elicits a smile will do. Just be sure it’s loud enough to hear down the hall.
4. Start dancing. Do this whether anyone is there or not.  On that day in mid-March I was alone in the corridor when the music started – but not for long.

Life Lesson #26: It might seem crazy what I’m about to say/ Sunshine she’s here, you can take a break ~ Pharrell Williams

Biking While Tutu’d

Facts: 

• I saw a line of tutu’d cyclists one Saturday morning.
• I took pictures.

Assumptions:

• They were cycling for a cause.
• They are fun people.

Speculation:

• This started as a dare — and grew from there.
• Despite the early hour, there will be beer at the end of this ride.

Conclusion:

• These are my people!

Admitting My Addiction

Those infernal little pushers are back. Guilelessly, they wait, confident we will come.

My utter lack of control in the face of Girl Scouts’ Thin Mints recalls a post I wrote but didn’t publish last fall:

Every year, it’s the same. I know it’s coming. I know I will feel powerless in the face of it. I feel an annual sense of dread that others will find me out, will discover that I have this urge….

So I’m coming clean.

Here it is: I love candy corn.

And not in a wholesome, happy memories, nice to reminisce kind of way. I love candy corn in an ugly, out of control, snarfing sort of way. An eat-the-whole-bag-in-a-sitting kind of way.

I can’t explain it. I believe I am otherwise a rationale and health-conscious human being. Intellectually, I know there is nothing — NO THING — of redeeming value about those little techno-colored corn syrup kernels. But. I. Love. Them.

And: I. Loathe. Them. They’re not actually all that tasty. The sugar is cloying, the texture uneven. Don’t even get me started on the colors and free radicals. And yet, I cannot resist them if — when —  I dip in. I feel sure the recipe satisfies some basic physiological dependence, some primal biological need, but I am at a loss as to what that might be. I harbor no illusions that nutrition comes into this in any way.

That we crave — and sometimes crave things that are demonstrably, desperately, devastatingly bad for us — is a potent thing. I am humbled, in awe of the courage and fortitude of those who face down far more insidious urges, moment to moment, day by day, year after year.