STAYING SHARP

Sanjay Gupta’s new book shows how to improve your brain health

BY JANET REYNOLDS

Ask most people in middle age or beyond to name their greatest aging fear and you’ll likely hear the words dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Yes, the C word and heart disease are a concern but virtually no one wants to lose their cognitive ability.

Statistics suggest our collective fears around cognitive decline are not hyperbolic. Globally, the number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease will increase to 152 million by 2050, a 200 percent increase from 2018. By 2060, the number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease or cognitive impairment is expected to climb from 6 million to 15 million. At that point, a new case of dementia will be diagnosed every four seconds.

Enter Dr. Sanjay Gupta. A noted neurosurgeon and professor at Emory University School of Medicine, Gupta is also chief medical correspondent for CNN. His new book Stay Sharp: Build a Better Brain at any Age, is aimed at helping us realize that brain decline is not inevitable. Yes, brain changes can begin 20-30 years before any overt cognitive symptoms, but you can improve your brain function at any point by following some of his straightforward strategies.

The book is divided into three basic parts: fundamental facts about how the brain works and biological risk factors for cognitive decline; strategies you can take to protect and heighten our brain function, including a 12-week program you can follow to improve your brain; and finally the challenges of diagnosing and treating brain diseases.

Some readers might find the first part the scariest. That’s the chapter where Gupta asks 24 questions to help you assess your risk. He says it shouldn’t scare you but…see the first sentence in this story. Questions range from “do you avoid strenuous exercise” and “are you a woman” to “do you sit most of the day” and “are you over the age of 65.” If you answer yes to five or more of the questions (which is not that hard to do), your brain, he says, may be in decline or could be soon.

Gupta quickly moves to potential solutions, though. He dispels 12 destructive myths around brain health, such as that older people are doomed to forget things and can’t learn new things, and then offers what he calls the Five Pillars that can help you maintain or improve brain health. These include exercise, staying connect-

ed, relaxing (especially sleep), trying new things, and eating healthily.

None of those ideas is particularly shocking. It’s virtually impossible to get through a day without at least one story or advertisement touting the potential benefits of exercise or maintaining a healthy weight.

Following these general tenets, though, can often feel overwhelming. Gupta breaks down how little it can take to make a difference. Take healthy eating. Rather than insisting that eliminating sugar entirely is the only way to brain health, Gupta instead advises us to limit intake. (Also included in that group to limit are red meat, whole-fat dairy, fried food, and processed foods.)

To help people implement the Five Pillars, he shares a 12-week program to better brain health. He suggests habits to adopt each week, all of them designed to be manageable. Not enough time to exercise for 30 minutes in one stretch? No worries, he says. Research shows that 3 10-minute stretches of activity can be just as effective to your general health. Not sure exactly how to manage eating healthily? Keep this SHARP acronym in mind: S for slash the sugar, H for hydrate smartly, A for add more omega-3s from natural sources like wild cold-water fish, R for reduce portions, and P for plan meals ahead.

The book ends with a look at diagnosing and treating the unhealthy brain. Gupta looks at symptoms and offers ideas about treatments as well as information for caregivers looking for support and suggestions. Overall, he is hopeful. Vaccines are being explored as are other new therapies. “I am convinced that we have created many of the problems that plague us,” he writes, “and this presents an opportunity.”

YOUR BRAIN AT A GLANCE

•The brain is reason why roughly 73 percent water. That’s one only 2 percent dehydration can negatively impact attention, memory, and cognitive • • • • skills. The brain is the last organ to mature. Just ask any parent of a teenager or young adult. Your brain generates enough electricity to power a low-wattage LED light. The average brain generates tens of thousands of thoughts a day. Your brain processes a visual image in less time than it takes to blink.

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SPONSORED CONTENT Pinnacle Behavioral Health

Two Depression Treatments: TMS and ECT

What’s the difference between TMS and ECT?

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a procedure, done under general anesthesia, in which small electric currents are passed through the brain, intentionally triggering a brief seizure. ECT seems to cause changes in brain chemistry that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental health conditions.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive procedure that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain to improve symptoms of depression.

The problem is, ECT has many complications.

Sean Chappin, MD, a psychiatrist at Pinnacle Behavioral Health, focuses on people suffering from addiction and substance abuse and depression. He highly recommends the non-invasive TMS over the ECT route.

“With ECT, you have to be in the hospital, and especially during these COVID times, no one wants to be in a hospital if they don’t have to,” he said. “Those undergoing ECT may have seizures, it requires someone be sedated and has long-lasting side effects, one of the major ones being memory loss. With this population, you really want to hold on to the positive memories.”

Additionally, some ECT patients report difficulty concentrating and retaining new memories as well.

Pinnacle’s Laura McMahon, MD, who is certified in both adult and child and adolescent psychiatry, said that while most people have heard of ECT, many are still unfamiliar with TMS, and that needs to change.

“There are many risk factors with ECT, just look at the anesthesia piece,” she said. “You’re hospitalized with 12 treatments every other day. The risk of anesthesia every other day is a huge exposure, and that in itself can cause memory loss and complications. Most patients don’t remember what happens the day of treatment. That’s disturbing to people, not being able to remember time.”

With TMS, there is no memory loss and no neurological dysfunction. Pinnacle utilizes BrainsWay Deep TMS, which has proven to be more accurate and efficient in targeting the brain while maintaining safe levels of stimulation.

“It’s safer than ECT,” Dr. Chappin said. “It can have side effects, as with all things, but compared to other treatments, it’s almost a walk in the park.”

Jay Hamer, PhD, a psychologist at Pinnacle, says while people tend to benefit from ECT as well, the fact that you can do something that has the same effectiveness but not have to stay in the hospital or experience the memory loss and side effects, TMS just makes perfect sense.

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