The mental aspects of longevity involve our thoughts and feelings about ageing and how society treats ageing. The two books reviewed here explore our thoughts about ageing and how this affects our abilities.
The Life-Changing Power of Mental Fitness
When it comes to improving our health, mental fitness is often overlooked. Our understanding of mental health issues has improved, which is important, but what about mental fitness? This is the proactive approach, preventative medicine. Reinforcing well-being, like physical fitness, requires practice. How often have you thought “Why can’t I stop doing this?” or “Why can’t I stop eating too …
Running keeps the connections strong
Exercise is good for your body and your brain. This should not be a surprise, but even some experts don’t understand the important connection between physical and mental health. By mental health, I mean your brain. A new study highlights the mental benefits of running through middle age. Lifelong exercise shows significant benefits for ageing brains. It may even prevent …
Improve your memory with this one technique
There is an easy way to improve your memory, keep your mind sharp as you age and relax. The best part is that it only takes 10 minutes a day.
Stress Makes Your Brain More Susceptible to Stress
Stress changes our brains. Your brain, like your muscles, has limited resources, meaning when one part of your brain is active, other regions are not. While you are active, working muscles get increased blood flow while it is diverted from other areas. That is one of the reasons why it is so hard to eat while exercising. Your stomach and …
Mental health, does it start in your guts?
You know the old saying “it is all in your head” maybe it actually starts in your guts. Your vagus nerve, the gut-brain axis, has a lot to do with how you are feeling. This nerve is a large part of our parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest system. As opposed to the sympathetic nervous system also known as …
Depression or inactivity, which came first?
Exercise makes you feel better. Exercise is also an effective treatment for depression. Being depressed can mean feeling less likely to exercise… The COVID pandemic has brought many changes to our lives, uncertainty, and stress among them. The Canadian Mental Health Association states that requests for help have been increasing as we head into another pandemic winter. While it is …
Is fear motivating?
Is fear a good motivator? I don’t think so. Let me explain why. I have helped hundreds of people change their health and fitness. Some were initially motivated to change because of fear of illness or even death. The initial wake-up call may have caused a fear of the unknown, of an unwanted future, but that fear fades fast. Real …
The soul destroying myth of motivation
According to Psychology Today motivation is “the desire to act in service of a goal.” That is probably true, but there are a few critical components missing when it comes to understanding our own motivations. When it comes to the definition of motivation there are a few things missing including, Which goal? Why? When? We are motivated by many things …
One Proven Way to Quiet your Mind
There is a lot of noise in our heads. From the thoughts that are on an endless loop, to the background noise that surrounds us, to our own neurons, and yes, they make noise. Our brain is busy and complex The human brain is made up of 100 billion cells. These cells can live for as long as we do …