Memory Loss Misconceptions There are a lot of things that many of us think of as truths around our memory and our brains. This podcast covers some of them. The first and most important one is that our memories are accurate. That is absolutely not correct! Not only are our memories not accurate, they change every time we bring them up out of our brains. That explains, for instance, why you and your spouse never seem to agree on something you both saw, experienced, or participated in. It also expl...
Jun 30, 2020•14 min•Ep. 58
Inside-Out Thinking: An Interview with Clesia Mendes Clesia Mendes is a Speaker and Mindset Coach who has over 25 years of experience in the personal development world. She loves traveling and teaching a new paradigm of psychology that, in her words, “has been discreetly emanating throughout the world”. I had invited Clesia to come on the podcast as a part of my continuing brain series of podcasts and because I felt that she could help me and all of you to better deal with the uncertainty and up...
Jun 22, 2020•39 min•Ep. 57
BDNF - CREATING BRAIN NEURONS Improving Your Brain with BDNF This week’s podcast is one from the archives. As I’ve been doing this brain series I thought that this one about BDNF would fit in well. BDNF is something that many people in the health & wellness field have started using to wake up and improve their brains. BDNF stands for Brain-derived neurotrophic factor and it is a protein found in the brain. BDNF is important for long-term memory because it creates new neurons in your brain. I...
Jun 15, 2020•12 min•Ep. 56
Food and the Brain - How They Impact Each Other In putting this podcast together I learned so much about how food can affect our brains as well as how our brains control and influence satiety, overeating, and obesity. I found so many different kinds of studies dealing with food and our brain that I couldn’t even include them all. Colorful fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains, avocados, oily fish, coffee, and green tea are so important to maintaining our brain health. Eating them i...
Jun 09, 2020•18 min•Ep. 55
YOUR BRAIN & YOUR PURPOSE This is the second show related to our brains and how we can improve them. Did you know that our brains like having purpose in our lives. A reason to get up in the morning, to do things, learn things, and figure things out. All of those give the brain exercise and improve health physically as well as psychologically. We human beings work best in a community and having a purpose is a major part of being in a community. A defined life purpose (you don’t have to write ...
Jun 02, 2020•15 min•Ep. 54
Ways to Deal with Stress & Anxiety from Covid-19 This podcast is the start of a series where I’ll address the different issues that are affecting our brains during this difficult time. I’ve looked at some of these areas before but never as a whole and never in the environment that we’re living in today. There are many different ways to deal with stress and anxiety and I talk about some of those in this podcast. In addition I mention a number of methods that I have done previous podcasts abou...
May 26, 2020•15 min•Ep. 53
Manage, Improve, & Heal Arthritis Growing up I always thought that Arthritis was something you got when you were older and it didn’t go away. Now I’ve learned that you can actually not get it to start with and if you have it you can manage it, improve it, and actually cure it. This podcast gives you information about how exercise can help strengthen your muscles and your joints which will improve your arthritis, if you have it, and will also set you up to not develop it if you don’t. But you...
May 19, 2020•15 min•Ep. 52
Learning From Previous Quarantines Many of us are still Sheltering-in-Place while some places are starting to open up and in others people are creating a hazard by ignoring the public safety orders. This podcast is about how enforced isolation has affected earlier populations during and after the SARS, Ebola, H1N1 Influenzas, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and Equine Influenza epidemics. The studies included hospital and health-care workers, residents in the areas affected, and college studen...
May 12, 2020•14 min•Ep. 51
Now May Be The Best Time to Declutter ****This is a repeat of a podcast from earlier this year but I thought it was very valuable to share again as we are all at home and it's probably a good time to clear up our clutter.**** How has clutter impacted your life? It’s a very controversial subject, especially with people at both ends of the spectrum – hoarders & obsessive cleaners. I am not a hoarder but do tend to be on that side of the middle point. The article I quote from in the UC Berkeley...
May 05, 2020•16 min•Ep. 50
A Glass of Wine Makes For a Healthy Life This podcast is all about the many benefits of drinking one glass of red wine each day. There are many studies which I talk about that show the positive benefits of red wine. It has been shown to have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer behavior in your body as well of benefit in the fight against cardiovascular disease. I talk about studies that have shown it reduces the risk of diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and stroke along with heart disease...
Apr 28, 2020•12 min•Ep. 49
Changing Your Eating Habits for the Better Today’s podcast is all about Intermittent Fasting, what it is, how to do it, and how it’s actually hit the mainstream. Seems to me that now is a good time to try Intermittent Fasting - you won’t have the usual temptations to cheat and/or give up. I talk about 4 main types of fasting and a couple of other variations on those as well. The easiest (I think) to do is the Restricted Eating Window Diet (REWD) which the Harvard Women’s Health Watch Newsletter ...
Apr 21, 2020•12 min
Finding Your Balance With Yoga and Mindset Training I am sure that you will all enjoy this week’s podcast. My guest is Louise Tyrrell, Inspirational Speaker, Yoga Teacher, and founder of ZenLife Yoga & Wellness Retreats. We had such an interesting conversation about her life and the current Shelter In Place and Quarantine happening to us and all around us during this pandemic. (Louise lives in Ireland) Louise talks about a car accident she had in her 20’s and how yoga literally helped her to...
Apr 13, 2020•40 min•Ep. 47
Tips to Stay Calm & Maintain Your Health This podcast covers how to eat well, exercise, and use vitamins to bolster your health and keep it strong. Then there is a centering meditation along with some mindset exercises to keep you balanced and out of worry. A few extra suggestions related to sleep, hand washing, and thankfulness for all of the medical workers, grocery workers, and others keeping our lives going during this stressful time. All of these items can apply to our lives whether we ...
Apr 06, 2020•21 min•Ep. 46
Eat Well For Heart Health Today’s podcast talks about 5 types of food that are very good for your heart health. This is especially important during what is for many people a stressful and overwhelming time. Keeping a good diet of healthy foods can help us to maintain a strong immune system. Stress is one of the hardest things on our immune system so we all need to remember to eat well, sleep well, and exercise regularly. The info in this podcast will help you to do the first part and can actuall...
Mar 23, 2020•26 min•Ep. 45
Spend Less Time Worrying & More Time Doing! Spending time worrying about things that happened in the past or may happen in the future is like throwing that time away. You can’t change the past and you can’t create the future until you get there. We should live our lives in the present - we can only influence the future once it has becomes the present. Information from the Massachusetts General Hospital Mind, Mood, and Memory Newsletter suggests that we set up time periods during the day/even...
Mar 16, 2020•24 min•Ep. 44
Brain Booster Interview Very interesting interview with Susan Gibson, founder of Vivolor Therapeutics. Listen to our conversation about what things can negatively affect your brain and what you can do to improve not just your brain but your overall health. We speak at length about Susan’s F.A.S.T. model of describing the individual items that each of us should be watching out for as we get older and/or have memory issues. Susan also talks about her mission, why she is so determined to help peopl...
Mar 09, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 43
Plant Milk vs Cow's Milk? Which is healthier for you? It all depends on what you’re looking for. If you have cow milk allergies or soy allergies then the answer is pretty obvious - whichever milk you don’t have an allergy to. The only thing you should look at in the plant based milks is the sugar content to make sure that it doesn’t have a high total sugar content. This can happen when the manufacturer adds additional sugar to satisfy the sweet tooth of the American public. I buy “unsweetened” m...
Mar 02, 2020•20 min•Ep. 42
Interview with Ronald Hunt Ron is truly a Renaissance man - Reiki Teacher Master, NLP Certified, Life Coach, Modern Minister and Life Cycle Celebrant. He has a passion for helping people to expand their minds through mindfulness and the development of a growth mindset - changing the lives of people of all ages. In addition to all of this he is a Life Cycle Celebrant who helps couples to create their Dream Wedding, perfect Ceremony, and brilliant start to their lives together. His website is list...
Feb 24, 2020•39 min•Ep. 41
Should You Care About the New Nutrition Label? This is the first update since 2006 of the Nutrition Label on food products. You may have already seen companies using this new label. Most of the information is the same but there are some important changes. Added Sugars are broken out from the Total Sugars, they took out Vitamin A & Vitamin C Daily Values and replaced them with Vitamin D and Potassium, and most importantly they enlarged and bolded the print for serving size and Calories. Anoth...
Feb 17, 2020•20 min•Ep. 40
What is Intuitive Eating? Meet Lynnea Courtney in today’s podcast interview. She is an Intuitive Eating Coach and teaches Mindful Intuitive Eating to her clients - she tells us what Intuitive Eating means. Lynnea spent 15 years in the corporate world so many of us know - commuting over 1.5 hours each way to her office. After developing health problems she realized that being mindful and intuitive in her eating habits made all the difference in improving her health and her own life view. She talk...
Feb 10, 2020•43 min•Ep. 39
Curious About Gray Hair? Hair turns gray when the melanocyte cells stop being able to produce pigment called melanin. Interestingly the hair doesn’t actually turn gray - it’s white because it has no pigment. It just looks gray next to the hairs with color. Men get more gray hair than women and Caucasians get more than people of Asian and African descent. Stress probably could make you go gray faster due to inflammation and free-radicals which affect the level of melanin. Smoking has been linked ...
Feb 03, 2020•24 min•Ep. 38
Good Posture for Strong Muscles Posture-related muscle weakness and rigidity can develop as you get older. Poor posture can affect your balance, strength, and flexibility and lead to chronic pain. There are many exercises that can help to improve your posture. Not surprisingly yoga is good for improving your posture, it seems to be good for everything! Tai Chi is also good for you. You want to strengthen your upper body, arms, back, and abdomen to help hold your torso erect. Get in the habit of ...
Jan 27, 2020•21 min•Ep. 37
Managing Stress - Is It Possible? Manage your stress to maintain longer term memory and brain capacity. Learn about how fast stress can injure your brain (it doesn't take very long) and what to do to avoid the negative consequences. Some stress is good for you - it's like exercising your brain and your vascular system. After a short stress period your brain and body should go back to normal. A few things you can do to help you deal with stress are laugh, meditate, get a massage, and/or journal. ...
Jan 20, 2020•29 min•Ep. 36
Short Days Got You Down? SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is a type of depression that is caused by the shorter days of late fall and early winter. The symptoms are similar to those of typical depression - feelings of hopelessness, fatigue, loss of interest in activities they usually enjoy, difficulty concentrating, etc. The difference is that SAD only happens seasonally not all year round. Doctors usually prescribe antidepressants and/or light therapy depending on how severe the symptoms are. ...
Jan 13, 2020•19 min•Ep. 35
How to Cleanup Your Clutter How has clutter impacted your life? It's a very controversial subject, especially with people at both ends of the spectrum - hoarders & obsessive cleaners. I am not a hoarder but do tend to be on that side of the middle point. The article I quote from in the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter, included an interesting Q&A with Michael Tompkins, Ph.D. at UC Berkeley about clutter which I go through in the podcast. Tompkins talks about other issues that go along with la...
Jan 06, 2020•19 min•Ep. 34
Closing Out 2019 3 new items of interest to bring 2019 to an end. Green Tea Extract (GTE) as a supplement has been used by a lot of postmenopausal women to try and lower their breast cancer risk. A NIH-funded study found that instead of reducing cancer risk GTE actually raised the risk when compared to a group taking a placebo whose risk went down. A separate study had previously found that high-dose GTE in weight-loss supplements can cause liver damage. The second item is that there is an incre...
Dec 30, 2019•19 min•Ep. 33
Meditation for Calming Fearful Memories Volunteers trained in Mindfulness Meditation were able to break their "anxiety habit" caused by fearful memories. In this study the researchers used "safety memories" to help the participants in conjunction with the mindfulness meditation to do this. They also learned through mindfulness how to stop judging their own thoughts. Overall the meditation group did better than the control group who used exercise based stress management. Meditation classes are av...
Dec 23, 2019•17 min•Ep. 32
Breast Cancer and Hormones New research in the Lancet show a stronger connection between Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT) and Breast Cancer. The risks go up starting the first day of going on MHT. Expert recommends a limit of only 1-2 years on MHT and then don’t just stop them, gradually lower the dosage Women should try non-hormone strategies first before going on MHT. Vaginal estrogen is not an issue so can be used for longer periods of time. Also, information included about giving all women w...
Dec 16, 2019•20 min•Ep. 31
Food & the Brain Listen to the podcast to learn about the info below and a lot more... Willpower may not be the reason that many overweight or obese people can't stop overeating. There are many studies that show a relationship between the brain and what are called "food cues". Advancement in genetic tests, brain scans, and research into dependencies and drug addiction are showing why some people can't lose weight on the usual "diets" like calorie counting and avoiding highly processed carboh...
Dec 10, 2019•19 min•Ep. 30
Berries for the Holidays Information about Cranberries, Blueberries, and Vitamin A The Pilgrims used cranberries to prevent scurvy and we use it these days to help with urinary tract infections (UTI's) - both from Vitamin C Cranberries are native to North America (new info to me) Cranberries and Blueberries have phytochemicals which have potential to help with cancer prevention, cardiovascular health, and digestive health Blueberries have been linked to healthy aging in multiple studies. Vitamin...
Dec 02, 2019•13 min•Ep. 29
