Course on how to care for your brain as you age to retain optimum brain function and create optimum enjoyment of life.

1. The Healthy Brain
How To Care For Your Brain & Reduce
The Impacts of Stress and Premature
Aging
Brenda McCreight Ph.D.

2. Disclaimer
• I am not a neuroscientist and I do not have a
medical degree – I am a Registered Clinical Social
Worker license # 4399, a Registered Clinical
Counsellor license # 235 and a member of the
Canadian College of Professional Counsellors &
Psychotherapists license # 1126.
• I am presenting this information as a support to
your mental and physical health.
• My sources for this information are publically
available and to my knowledge these sources are
accurate.

3. Everyone knows about heart health – even if
you don’t practice good heart health you read
about it, you see ads about it, you know what
you should do take care of it.
BUT
Did you realize that many of the same things
you do to take care of your heart
will also take care of your AND
Taking care of your brain can change, and even
save, your life!

4. • The human brain is the most intricate and
complex thing, or system, yet discovered.
• Until recently, it was thought that the brain
stopped developing at a young age.
• We know now that it continues to change and
respond and re-wire throughout our lives –
this process is known as NEUROPLASTICITY

5. • According to Medicine Net.com,
neuroplasticity can be defined as: The brain's
ability to reorganize itself by forming new
neural connections throughout life.
Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve
cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and
disease and to adjust their activities in
response to new situations or to changes in
their environment.

6. The current knowledge is that the brain
develops and grows until the age of 25; and,
after age 25, it continues to produce as many as
10,000 new neurons every day - right up until
the day we die.
Researchers now believe that the brain changes
in response to every single experience and every
single stimuli that occurs
Learning something new and learning
something different are just some of the things
that trigger neuroplasticity.

7. Brain Structure
• Why should you know about how your brain is
structured? Because you are smart and you
understand that the more you know, the
better you will manage & support the health
of this magnificent system.

8. • We won’t examine all parts of the brain in this
course. We’ll just provide an overview of the
parts of the brain that you likely already know
something about and are the easiest to
support and take care of.

9. Brain Biology (simplified)
• The rumply looking outside layer includes the
cortex and the subcortex as well as the
different lobes – including the very important
frontal lobe. The cortex handles language,
thought, judgment, personality, abstract
reasoning, visual orientation, insight, mental
calculation, behaviour control, & disinhibition.

11. • Neurons play an important role in the
communication of information throughout the
body. They are vulnerable to damage from stress
hormones and toxins such as illicit drugs and
alcohol.

12. • The subcortex is an older part of the brain and
deals with the more automatic parts of
functioning – such as motor skills, balance,
swallowing, the speed at which we process
information, and coordination.
• There is constant interplay between the cortex
and the subcortex – in fact, there is constant
interaction between all parts of the brain.

13. Frontal lobe
• Many of the severe behavioral and psychiatric
challenges are thought to be related to the
pre-frontal cortex.
• These include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder,
OCD, adhd, and there is some research to
show problems in this area related to autism
and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

14. Hemispheres
• The brain is also divided into hemispheres –
right and left. There has been a lot of
mythology about the functions of each – and
although each hemisphere has primary
responsibility for certain tasks – they interact
constantly with each other and with the rest
of the brain.

15. Brain Hemispheres
• This picture presents it well.

16. Hypothalamus
• The hypothalamus is involved in several functions of the body such
as hormone control and includes:
 autonomic function control
 endocrine function control
 homeostasis
 motor function control
 food and water intake regulation (thirst)
 sleep-wake cycle regulation
 When information comes into the brain –
it goes to the hypothalamus which then
sends it on to what it believes it the appropriate place ie if there’s
trouble – it sends the hormone adrenalin to the amygdala to get the
whole alarm system going

17. Hippocampus
• The hippocampus takes in all the new input, or
information, and assigns the information to memory
where it is used for learning and for recall. It’s also
involved in emotional response and spatial orientation
• When you are under chronic, unrelieved stress, the
neurons in the
hippocampus can be
damaged by the stress
produced cortisol which
makes it more difficult for you to
learn and remember.

18. Amygdala
• This part of the brain is located in the limbic system
which evolved very early on in order to keep us alive.
• It is crucial to managing stress and
trauma.
• It is involved in many of our survival based
emotions and motivations
• It is involved in the processing of emotions such
as fear, anger and pleasure.
• It also decides helps you decide by setting off a survival
response of either flight, fight, or freeze.

19. • The amygdala, the hippocampus, and the stress system
(hypothalamus) work together to hold onto fear
• The hypothalamus initiates the stress response
• The hippocampus registers the details of the event
which will trigger
the amygdala to
anything that
is even remotely similar
• The amygdala memorizes
and the emotional atmosphere of life and remembers
the negative experiences and their associated negative
feelings and then evaluates their importance

20. The Amygdala has a learning disorder!
• It learns to fear very quickly
• Then it produces a fear response in anything
resembling the first event
• It doesn’t have a mechanism to *unlearn* the
fear response
• *Unlearning* doesn’t have the
intensity of *learning*
so reducing stress has to
be longer term and more
consistent than building stress

21. How These Parts Interact to Wire the
Brain
• Information comes in to the brain in the form of an
activity, an event, words, an experience…
• The brain compares the incoming information with
past similar experiences (the hippocampus)
• It chooses the most dominant or strongest neural path
or wiring
• If there is no similar wiring it will create new wiring
• Different areas will become linked by neuronal paths
that automatically ignite together whenever one is
triggered (Hebbs Axiom) “the neurons that fire
together wire together”.

22. • Input, or information, has to go first to either
the hippocampus or the amygdala (thought
and feeling) – this where you have choice.

23. Adjusting your response
• Anything that alleviates the stress is an
adjustment
• This can be positive or negative
• The brain will seek the familiar
• To re-wire for something new you have to risk
discomfort and it
has to be conscious

24. Mirror Neurons

25. • Located in the frontal lobes and the parietal
lobes
• They activate when we watch someone doing
something

26. • They relate to learning – they create an
internal model of what we’re watching
• Our brain activates the same neural structures
as the brain of the other person ie if they are
angry, you will become angry

27. • You have a choice about whether to let
yourself become overwhelmed by, and
hooked into, the other person’s mood – or
whether you will be responsible for your own
mood and emotionally walk away.

28. Telomeres
• A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA at the end of a
chromosome that protects the end of the chromosome
from deterioration.
• Telomeres protect a cell's chromosomes from fusing
with each other or rearranging which can lead
to cancer or other forms of poor health —and so cells
are normally destroyed when their telomeres are
consumed.
• Telomeres, then, are linked to both health and the
aging process.
• Unmanaged stress damages telomeres and can lead to
premature aging and ill health.

29. Brain Health and You
• The main facts that you need to know are:
• Fact 1) You need your brain to be healthy in
order for you to have a quality of life
• Fact 2) You have control over the health of
your brain = you have control over the quality
of your life!

30. How To Damage Your Brain
• Your brain is vulnerable to damage from both
internal and external forces which can include:
 Drugs abuse
 Alcohol abuse
 Stressful events
 Chronically stressful
relationships
 Anxiety producing situations or people
 Lack of exercise

31. • Chronic work related stress
• Unemployment or under employment or job
uncertainty
• Living with family members who have
behavior disorders or mood disorders
• Chronic marital discord
• Chronic financial stress
• Physical illness
• Loss of a loved one
• Poor diet

32. • Change or unpredictability
• Moving
• Unresolved childhood trauma
• Constantly trying to change the unchangeable
• There are many more causes of stress, feel
free to add your own to this list.

33. Summarizing…
• These can all be put under the umbrella of 5
major ways to promote poor brain health:
• 1) chronic stress from any source
• 2) poor diet
• 3) lack of exercise
• 4) lack of sleep
• 5) lack of joy

34. STRESS
• Stress is a biological response to an event, a person, a
thought, a relationship, or a behavior.
• It’s very important to understand the role that chronic
stress plays in destroying your brain and shredding
your telomeres!
• Stress can lead to physical problems, such as
headaches, stomach problems, cancer, hypertension,
and it can increase your vulnerability to colds and flu.
Enough stress over a long enough period of time can
trigger depression and anxiety so that you have the evil
triplets – stress, depression, and anxiety – all at once.

35. Here are some of the cognitive
symptoms of chronic stress
• When you experience stress from a perceived
threat the nervous system responds by releasing
a flood of the major stress hormones, which are
:
adrenaline and cortisol.
• These hormones immediately get the body set up
for emergency action. The heart beats more
quickly, the muscles tense, blood pressure rises,
breath quickens, and senses become sharper.
• These physical changes increase strength,
stamina, speed, and reaction time, as well as
create an enhanced ability to focus.

36. • The brain feels overwhelmed by all of this, and in
turn, it over activates the limbic system and
creates the following cognitive problems:
• Information that is coming in from the external
world is misunderstood or misinterpreted
• The brain gets in the habit of looking for trouble
• This makes all events, feelings, relationships,
tasks, etc seem too important, too imminent, too
frightening, too threatening, too difficult, and
unrecoverable.

37. Optimizing brain health
• Let’s start with stress:
• To re wire your brain to be the healthy, positive,
thinking machine it’s supposed to be, you will
need to take some active steps and make changes
in how you live your day.
• None of these are easy – especially if you don’t
have control over the source of the stress, but if
you want to have healthy brain, you have to be in
charge of the care of your brain!

38. • Exercise: the basic and first step to good
neural health is exercise. Perhaps you already
do enough, but if not, it’s time to start and it’s
an essential factor in your recovery. Exercise
gets the oxygen flowing through your brain
which reduces the cortisol that does so much
damage.

39. • Neurofeedback: this is an electronic means of
exercising the brain. It’s easy, painless and you can
either find a neurofeedback practitioner or you can
invest in some “do it yourself” equipment. Check out
http://www.mindalive.com to see what they are
offering for stress reduction.
• Biofeedback: another electronic means of
measuring your stress and then controlling how your
heart, lungs, and brain respond so that you literally
retrain your brain to function better and to alleviate its
own stressors. Check out http://www.heartmath.com
and see what they have for you.

40. • Cognitive behavioral therapy: a trained therapist
can provide this form of relief from stress
symptoms.
• Tapping: this is a controversial form of therapy,
some would even dispute that it is therapy, but it
has been effective for many and you can do this
yourself or find a therapist who offers it. Check
out http://www.eftuniverse.com or my web site
http://www.hazardousparenting.com
• EMDR: another form of therapy which requires a
therapist who is trained in the method. Check out
http://www.emdr.org or my web sites

41. • Medications: I recommend medications only
when all else has failed. If you need meds it
doesn’t mean that you have failed, only that
your brain and your stress are presenting a
challenge to other forms of stress reduction.
• Support: others who are recovering from
stress can give you tips and ideas for your own
recovery.

42. Take care of yourself!
• Creating and maintaining a healthy brain takes
time, energy ,planning, commitment, and
work. But it takes less time and effort than
taking care of all the other problems that
arise from poor brain health.

43. • Skill & knowledge acquisition: learn everything
you can about stress reduction and stress
management. You spend lots of time researching
when you want to buy a new car, or when you are
choosing schools for your child, so invest the
same amount of time and energy into learning
how to build your own stress reduction plan.
• Positive & nurturing self talk: your brain will
respond to what you say and what you make
yourself think about – you can re-train it to go to
the positive by focusing on the good in your life
and the good you have to offer the world.

44. Poor Diet
• We all know we need to eat properly, but its’
too difficult for many of us with overly busy
schedules and too many demands on our
time.
• So, don’t try to overhaul what you eat – just
try to add something healthier on a daily
basis.

45. For example…
• Substitute one cup of coffee with one cup of
green tea
• Add two servings of vegetables to your normal
dinner
• Add two servings of raw vegetables to your
normal lunch
• Add a cup of blueberries to your breakfast or
for your mid afternoon snack
• Add nuts and seeds to
your mid morning snack

46. • Add some raw avacado to your green salad
• Substitute your lunch sandwich with a soup
made with lentils or beans
• Drink a cup or two of pomegranate juice daily
• Enjoy a bit of dark chocolate in the evening

47. Exercise and Your Brain
• Exercise makes your brain release neurotransmitters that
lessen physical and mental pain.
• Exercise generates new neurons
which improves your cognitive
functions such as the ability to learn
and remember.
• Exercise triggers endorphin release
(the feel good hormones).
• Find an exercise you like – swimming
walking, going to the gym, anything
that gives you an oxygen boost and
gets your heart rate up.

48. Sleep and Your Brain
• During deep sleep, the brain repairs itself and
boosts the immune system.
• During rapid eye movement
(REM) sleep, the brain
consolidates information
learned during the previous day.
• Poor sleep or sleep loss leads to
fatigue, immune suppression,
memory, concentration and mood disorders.

49. If you can’t sleep…
• Make sure your room is dark
• Have a regular bed time and awake time
• Watch how late you drink caffeine and don’t
drink alcohol (it will wake you up later)
• Do a meditation or a relaxation exercise, and
keep doing it till it works! You can find these
on the web – or here’s one I created and really
like (you should do it in bed, with the lights
out and the room quiet).

50. Quiet the Monkeys
Picture a tree – try to make it make it big and thick with many
branches and full of shiny green leaves. Now, picture monkeys
on the branches – they may be swinging from one branch to
another, or they may be settled firmly on their favorite spot,
peeking out at the world from behind smaller tree limbs, still
leaf filled.
Picture the monkeys chattering away – all chatter at the same
time, without pause, without meaning that you can discern.
Now, picture the monkeys slowly quieting. One by one they
cease their noise, one by one they close their eyes and
assume a resting position. They begin to fade behind the
leaves, and tree stands strong and silent.
• The monkeys are quiet.

51. Quiet the Monkeys continued…
• Square your shoulders to allow maximum O2
in to your lungs
• Think about a word that describes how you
intend to feel ie calm, sleepy
• (When your thoughts wonder, just bring them
back to the meditation)
• Breathe a little bit deeper and a little bit
slower than usual for about 30 seconds
• Think about your heart for about 30 seconds

52. • Picture your oxygen rich blood flowing up to, and
through, your brain
• Picture the oxygen washing out the stress
hormones and toxic thoughts that fill your brain
for about 30 seconds, or longer if you have time
• Think of something you love or something that
makes you feel wonderful, or think of a person,
place or event that brings you joy --- for about 30
seconds
• If you’re still awake, do it again.

53. Illicit Drugs and Alcohol
• There is more than enough research to show that illicit
drug use harms the brain.
• Research has shown that, in chronic users, marijuana
has a negative impact on learning and memory that
can last for days or weeks.
• As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day
may be functioning below their normal intellectual
level all of the time.
• Many studies have shown an association between
chronic marijuana use and increased rates of anxiety,
depression, and schizophrenia.

54. • Cocaine interferes with dopamine production (a
feel good hormone) which results in increasing
amounts in order to feel high or to feel good at all
and that leads to addiction.
• Interruption in cocaine intake leads to
depression, fatigue, and mood disorders.
• Differing doses of cocaine can also produce
neurological and behavioral problems such as
dizziness, headaches, movement problems,
anxiety, insomnia, depression, hallucinations, and
even death.

55. Alcohol
• One or two small glasses of wine on occasion isn’t believed
to be harmful, but regular use, or overuse, of any alcohol
can lead to all kinds of damage.
• Alcohol kills brain cells which leads
to brain shrinkage, and to memory and
learning problems.
• Other parts of the body that can be
damaged include the liver, the heart,
and overall nerve damage.
• There is no research to indicate that
alcohol has ever solved anyone’s
problems or improved anyone’s brain!

56. Brain Health and Joy
• You probably spend plenty of time worrying or
stressing about the negative things in your life –
when you do that – you harm the neurons and
you harm the telomeres.
• Be prepared and willing to
spend equal or more time
triggering the healing and
positive hormones that will
protect your telomeres and
stimulate the growth of new neurons.

57. Joy suggestions…
• Do the Quiet The Monkeys meditation at least twice a
day to increase O2 flow to your brain and reduce the
stress hormones – that will allow time and energy to
seek the positive and make room for joy
• When you find yourself ruminating on the negatives,
give equal time to ruminating on things that are
positive or hopeful.
• Look for things that make you smile during the day – a
butterfly that flew near, a bright flower garden in your
neighborhood, a friendly encounter with a co-worker -
don’t wait for these things to wave a flag to get your
attention – LOOK FOR THEM OR CREATE THEM!

58. Creating a moment of joy
• Hug someone you love at least twice each day
• Try to do one thing you like each day – it doesn’t have
to be a major
event – it can be a warm
bath at the end of the day,
listening to some music in
your car that always makes
you feel better, petting your
dog for more than a few
seconds, phoning your mom
(if she’s a positive influence).

59. • Smile whenever you have a choice – you don’t
have to walk around like a grinning fool – but
notice how many times you could smile when
you haven’t been doing so

60. • Just before doing the Monkeys meditation at
night – make a mental list of all that you have
to be grateful for during the day – it might be
a stretch on some days – but you are still alive
and breathing and at least be grateful for that.

61. Suggested Additional Resources
• Neurobics
http://www.keepyourbrainalive.com/exercise.
html to find great brain exercises
• Neurofeedback entrainment glasses at
http://www.mindalive.com
• Dr. Daniel Amens books and clinic
at http://www.amenclinics.com

62. • Remember – you have control over your brain
health just like you do over heart health and
general health. Change can be hard –
but it’s easier than senility and
death!
• Best wishes to you all and remember –
You’re entitled to a better day!

63. • Sooner or later your brain will get in the habit
of falling asleep with Quiet The Monkeys and
you will drop off as soon as you begin the
meditation.
• If you wake up in the night, just begin the
meditation again and keep doing it.

64. Thank you for sharing this time with me
• You can check out other services and products at these sites:
• http://www.lifespancounselling.com
• http://www.theadoptioncounselor.com
• http://www.hazardousparenting.com
• The Hazardous Parenting facebook site
• Udemy.com (search under Brenda McCreight)
• Slideshare.com (search under Brenda McCreight)
• Amazon.com (search under Brenda McCreight)
• brendamccreight@gmail.com
• Brenda provides counselling and parent coaching worldwide via
skype, telephone, and email. Please contact her if you would like an
appointment.