Denise Medved, founder and CEO of Ageless Grace, joins Suzanne to talk about the brain fitness program taught in 50 states and more than 30 countries. Brain fitness is an aspect of intellectual wellness, one of the 8 foundational principles of wellness, a topic of this month’s portion of The Vitality Revolution podcast series sponsored by Humana.
More than 3,600 educators have been certified to teach the program. It consists of 21 simple exercise tools, based on everyday movements that are natural and organic, and focus on the healthy longevity of the body and brain. Denise explains, “There are five primary functions of the brain. I’m not talking about regions or sections of the brain; that’s anatomy. I’m talking about what does the brain do. All five functions must be activated on a daily basis, and strengthened because, if only one or two functions are strong, that doesn’t mean the entire brain is healthy — all of those functions must be healthy.
“First, the brain does strategic planning, and it is based on physical movement, because the primary purpose of the brain is to control movement of the body. By strategic planning, I mean, how do you physically get from point A to B to C? How do you navigate across the room? How do you navigate to get in and out of your car?
“The next one is called memory and recall. As it relates to the purpose of the brain, it’s controlling movement of the body, remembering a physical experience that you had. And a lot of people don’t realize this, but any memory is actually remembering a physical experience, whether you realize it or not. Try to remember a fact learned in geography, and right away, you probably go to a picture of your classroom in your brain, or a picture of your teacher or where you sat when you were learning this thing. It is a physical memory experience that you are stimulating, and recall is slightly different than memory because recall could mean that you might be recalling what you know about something and the physical experience you had learning about that even though you don’t do it yourself. So an example would be if I said, pretend you’re playing the trombone. Well, you may never have even touched a trombone, but immediately you’re gonna recall what you know, that it has a slide, that it has a mountain, and that is a form of memory.
The third function of the brain is analytical thinking. And again, it has not anything to do with analyzing numbers particularly, or words, it has to do with understanding all the parts or components that make up an activity of your daily life. What are all the parts and steps that make up the idea of playing baseball? What are the parts and steps that make up the idea of I’m gonna get in my car and drive to the gym and I’m gonna have a workout? That’s analytical thinking as it pertains to the brain.
The next one is called creativity and imagination. And we are all creative. It’s one of the functions of the brain. And what that really means is being moving or acting in some way that’s a little new to you, or different, or a little out of the box. It can be as simple as brushing your teeth — with the other hand instead of the one that you always use. That is a form of creativity. Dr Norman Doidge discovered that imagination and physical activity light up the same parts of the brain in an MRI. I can imagine that I’m playing a trombone, or I could really play a trombone, and my brain would light up the same way. It’s fascinating.
And then the last function of the brain is kinesthetic learning. And that means we learn through our brain body first, and later on our brain kicks in, and advises our body on how to make it more efficient. That’s how we learned, from the time we were children to maybe teenagers, or in their 20s, because we were learning how to do something for the first time.”
Learn more about:
* Denise Medved: https://agelessgrace.com/denise-medved/
* Ageless Grace: https://agelessgrace.com/about/
* The Vitality Revolution podcast series: https://answersforelders.com/vitality-revolution/
* Humana: https://www.humana.com/
* Answers for Elders: https://answersforelders.com/welcome-to-answers-for-elders/
Answers for Elders is part of the SeniorResource Network: https://www.seniorresource.com/
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks: https://alzheimersspeaks.com/
