Episode #80. How exercise helps us remember better and extends our lifespan with Dr Tara Walker, neuroscientist.
02/16/22 • 64 min
I can hear you now. I don’t run, or I am too old to run or the classic, I want to protect my knees, and the list goes on. This is exactly what I use to think. Exercise is the one thing shown across several studies to help the brain produce new cells or neurons, also called neuroplasticity. Dr Tara Walker, a neuroscientist, at the Queensland Brain Institute has spent the last 20 years trying to work out how running helps the brain’s memory centres function more effectively. In a recent high-profile journal, she and her colleagues published a remarkable discovery, that a trace element, selenium, they found in the blood leads to the production of more brain cells in the part of the brain, called the hippocampus, that helps us learn new things and remember old ones. Selenium can be found in nuts, grains and fresh fruit and vegetables and particularly in brazil nuts. For example, one brazil nut a day is enough. Having brazil nuts does not help and can lead to problems.
As much as we might like to take a supplement rather than run or exercise. There will never be enough benefits conferred from supplements that are equivalent to exercise. The main reason is that exercise gets the heart pumping blood and oxygen to nearly every place in the body and keeps the heart and body fit. It activates skeletal muscle that helps with insulin sensitivity and diabetes. The benefit list goes on and on. There is a lot of debate about how much exercise is the right amount. Can you do too much exercise? The right prescription of exercise has not been worked out. But there is no doubt that some form of movement everyday matter to stay healthy. For those of us not able to walk or run, then we can move our arms. If this is not the case, then we can learn something new, like a language, or meet new people. The brain needs a lot of novelty, and learning to stay healthy.
Dr Walker has gone one step further than many of us and that is to work out through experiments how exercise improves factors in the blood that leads to changes in the brain. This was ground-breaking research. The most surprising discovery was just how much memory is improved with aging from adding exercise and the supplement, selenium. This leads to the idea that what you eat matters to getting the brain benefits from exercise.
Dr Walker also didn’t think she could run. She was a swimmer when she was young. But by taking small steps, she slowly built up to running. She thought a 10km fun run was her limit, but then came the half and full marathon and now she is training for a 60 km trail run in the mountains in Brisbane. While she runs, her best ideas come, and this is how she decided to examine the blood of animals exercising to discover that proteins related to selenium are changed. This was the beginning of an 8-year project to demonstrate how exercise changes the brain. It takes a village running together to make breakthroughs in neuroscience. What amazing work, and how lucky are we to interview her on the Thriving Minds podcast. Learn more about Dr Walker here.
https://qbi.uq.edu.au/dr-tara-walker
Subscribe and support the podcast at
https://www.buzzsprout.com/367319/supporters/new
Learn more at www.profselenabartlett.com
I can hear you now. I don’t run, or I am too old to run or the classic, I want to protect my knees, and the list goes on. This is exactly what I use to think. Exercise is the one thing shown across several studies to help the brain produce new cells or neurons, also called neuroplasticity. Dr Tara Walker, a neuroscientist, at the Queensland Brain Institute has spent the last 20 years trying to work out how running helps the brain’s memory centres function more effectively. In a recent high-profile journal, she and her colleagues published a remarkable discovery, that a trace element, selenium, they found in the blood leads to the production of more brain cells in the part of the brain, called the hippocampus, that helps us learn new things and remember old ones. Selenium can be found in nuts, grains and fresh fruit and vegetables and particularly in brazil nuts. For example, one brazil nut a day is enough. Having brazil nuts does not help and can lead to problems.
As much as we might like to take a supplement rather than run or exercise. There will never be enough benefits conferred from supplements that are equivalent to exercise. The main reason is that exercise gets the heart pumping blood and oxygen to nearly every place in the body and keeps the heart and body fit. It activates skeletal muscle that helps with insulin sensitivity and diabetes. The benefit list goes on and on. There is a lot of debate about how much exercise is the right amount. Can you do too much exercise? The right prescription of exercise has not been worked out. But there is no doubt that some form of movement everyday matter to stay healthy. For those of us not able to walk or run, then we can move our arms. If this is not the case, then we can learn something new, like a language, or meet new people. The brain needs a lot of novelty, and learning to stay healthy.
Dr Walker has gone one step further than many of us and that is to work out through experiments how exercise improves factors in the blood that leads to changes in the brain. This was ground-breaking research. The most surprising discovery was just how much memory is improved with aging from adding exercise and the supplement, selenium. This leads to the idea that what you eat matters to getting the brain benefits from exercise.
Dr Walker also didn’t think she could run. She was a swimmer when she was young. But by taking small steps, she slowly built up to running. She thought a 10km fun run was her limit, but then came the half and full marathon and now she is training for a 60 km trail run in the mountains in Brisbane. While she runs, her best ideas come, and this is how she decided to examine the blood of animals exercising to discover that proteins related to selenium are changed. This was the beginning of an 8-year project to demonstrate how exercise changes the brain. It takes a village running together to make breakthroughs in neuroscience. What amazing work, and how lucky are we to interview her on the Thriving Minds podcast. Learn more about Dr Walker here.
https://qbi.uq.edu.au/dr-tara-walker
Subscribe and support the podcast at
https://www.buzzsprout.com/367319/supporters/new
Learn more at www.profselenabartlett.com
Previous Episode
Episode #79. Why kindness at work works. What is your money, joy and love equation with James Rhee.
James Rhee now has 1 million views on TED, for his kindness at work talk. This is not the “being nice” version of kindness nor the “Love Eat Pray” version of love. This is about the human need to be seen and heard and the feeling of safety generated that leads the people and their brain health toward creativity, innovation, and purpose. James is an expert at building back businesses, especially when they on their knees, through optimising the unmeasurable, “goodwill” of its people and translating this into the balance sheet. In the process of turning around Ashley Stewart, a near bankrupt, consumer women’s clothing brand for plus size, moderate income, black women. He captured “goodwill” by operationalising our collective human ambition to be better. In this interview, we discuss businesses that operationalise “goodwill”, through kindness and love toward their people.
In contrast, workplace stress, does completely the opposite, as Forbes recently published an article showing the main reason people want to leave their job is an awful boss or a toxic and stressful workplace. Similarly, people remain in jobs because they feel appreciated, thanked, and feel part of driving the purpose of the business. Goodwill pervades every aspect of the business, and it is almost akin to that feeling you have when you are part of something much greater than yourself. Some refer this feeling to “energy or soul or spirit”, words not often used in business. The synergistic benefit derived from the “combined human capital” of a team behind its leader is notoriously difficult to measure, and unfortunately, when it leaves, it is felt fast and furious.
James has learnt that authentic leaders, not only lead by example, but capture and bottle the essence of the communal nature of human capital. He discusses how kind people across a business, raise the whole business to unforeseen levels, drive thriving processes and balance sheets and most importantly build better future leaders. We talk about ways to transform the inevitability of a future being a technology driven and much-touted universal base income, a concept of providing a low payment to everyone, due to the disappearance of work to giving individuals opportunities and knowledge to grow businesses that build back better Societies.
Within each of us, lies a renaissance opportunity springing forth in the post-pandemic 2022’s. James was given a red helicopter when he was 5 by a father of his friend at his school, to say thank you to James giving his son something to eat at lunchtime. The red helicopter materialised “goodwill” and gave James his most important lesson for life, and that is, how to make tangible the intangible nature of human capital component of “goodwill. James is the founder of Red Helicopter, a media EdTech start-up to accelerate business school education for all, he teaches at MIT Sloan, and Howard University. The first assignment the students are given is to answer the question: what their optimal money is, joy, love equation for life. What is yours? Join us on an exciting episode of the Thriving Minds podcast.
James Rhee is an acclaimed impact investor, founder, CEO, goodwill strategist, and educator who empowers people, brands, and organizations by marrying capital with purpose. He is an award-winning thought leader on topics such as multidimensional transformation, the intersection of capital, race, and gender, the future of capitalism, and values-based investing and leadership. James has dedicated his life to making knowledge, opportunity, and capital accessible to all. His practical theories on Money, Life, and Joy marry capitalism with ethics and offer individuals, brands and organizations an actual playbook on ho
Subscribe and support the podcast at
https://www.buzzsprout.com/367319/supporters/new
Learn more at www.profselenabartlett.com
Next Episode
Episode #81. The Slow Silent Killers hidden in foods and drinks and what we can do about it. Dr James Mueke AM, Lieutenant Governor South Australia, Australian of the Year 2020
Imagine knowing that there are ingredients in food and drinks that when consumed over time are slowly and silently leading toward type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and in the worst case blindness. In this powerful episode with Dr James Muecke AM who is the Lieutenant Governor of South Australia and an Adelaide-based eye surgeon we discuss how a poor diet is the leading cause of death. The startling understanding that type 2 diabetes may be preventable through changing our diet. A pivotal moment happened for James when his patient Neil, woke up and was blind in both eyes, as a result of his type 2 diabetes. Further still, even if you have type 2 diabetes, imagine knowing that it may be possible, in some cases, to change your diet and have remission?
James is Australian of the Year for 2020 for his 32 years of humanitarian work. He is using this powerful platform to raise awareness of our poor diet, laden with sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods, which is devastating the health of Australians. Not only is he improving awareness in Australia through his influence with government and other organisations. He and I discuss how we were both addicted to sugar and what we did to reduce it and improve our health.
You can learn about what to do about reducing and removing sugar and other carbohydrates from your diet at www.profselenabartlett.com
More about Dr James Muecke here.
He graduated with Honors from Adelaide University Medical School in 1988. Following his internship at Royal Adelaide Hospital, James lived and worked as a volunteer doctor in Kenya in 1989. After completing ophthalmology training in Adelaide in 1995, James worked as an eye surgeon in Jerusalem for 12 months. James furthered his expertise with a Fellowship in Ocular Oncology at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. He returned to Adelaide in 1998 where he has been a Visiting Consultant and Senior Lecturer at Royal Adelaide Hospital (retired 2020) and Women’s & Children’s Hospital (retired 2016). James established the Ocular Oncology Units at these two centres upon his return.
James has taught the diagnosis and management of eye cancer in ten countries in Asia. He founded not-for-profit organization Sight For All in 2008, turning his boundless energy into a fight against blindness in the Aboriginal and mainstream communities of Australia and many of the poorest countries of the world. Sight For All’s comprehensive and sustainable projects are now impacting on the lives of over one million people each year.
His commitment to social impact and humanitarian endeavors has earnt him a number of awards including an Order of Australia in 2012, the Australian Medical Association’s President’s Leadership Award in 2013, and Ernst & Young’s Social Entrepreneur for Australia in 2015.
· Degree of Doctor of the University (honoris causa), University of Adelaide, 2021
· Australian of the Year, 2020.
· South Australian of the Year, 2019.
· University of Adelaide Distinguished Alumni Award, 2019
· Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Australia, Social Category), 2015
· Finalist, Pride of Australia Medal, 2014
· President’s Leadership Award for blindness prevention in developing countries - Australian Medical Association, 2013.
· Rural Health and Wellbeing Award for service to Aboriginal eye health in South Australia, 2012.
· Member of the Order of Australia for the provision of eye health services to Asian and Australian Aboriginal communities, 2012.
Learn more about Dr James Muecke AM here.
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Subscribe and support the podcast at
https://www.buzzsprout.com/367319/supporters/new
Learn more at www.profselenabartlett.com
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