REVIEW #39: SMARTER SHARPER THINKING FOR THOSE WHO WANT A HIGH PERFORMING BRAIN!

SMART IDEAS TO SHARPEN YOUR THINKING SKILLS

Smarter Sharper Thinking
By Jenny Brockis
First published as Future Brain in 2016
John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

Being a medical practitioner with ‘postgraduate qualifications in Lifestyle Medicine, Nutritional and Environmental Medicine and the Neuroscience of Leadership,’ Jenny Brockis is eminently qualified to offer advice on the way to ensure we have a healthy brain, capable of working creatively and staying healthy as we age. I appreciated her lifestyle tips designed to ensure our brain is fit for purpose and performing at its highest level. Moreover, Brockis recognizes that this is not an individual enterprise because our brain’s capacity for creativity and insight depends upon its sense of safety which is affected by the relationships with our colleagues, members of our family and neighbourhood. In a fast-changing world, we need to be ready to adapt and that is made easier, if we are in an empathetic environment, where we feel safe to offer and respond to ideas in a spirit of camaraderie where all the team members share a common goal and desire to share the responsibility for achieving it.

According to Brockis, our performance at work starts long before we clock on. Our sleep patterns, our physical activity and the way we fuel our brain are three important keys to our brain fitness and performance and, as a corollary, the productivity, efficiency, innovation and shared vision that creates a positive work environment that is equipped to face the changes and challenges of the future. In the current environment, when everyone is an expert in what constitutes the healthiest eating, it is brave of Brockis to wade into this flood of competing theories, but I liked her summary of the best food for the brain which favoured the Mediterranean diet of ‘green leafy vegetables, lean protein (especially cold-water, oily, carnivorous fish), seeds and nuts, whole grains, deeply pigmented fruits, olive oil and red wine (in moderate amounts).’ Research on this type of diet had been shown to lower the risk of cognitive decline by 19 percent in comparison with a ‘typical Western diet that is considerably higher in trans fats, saturated fats and sugar.’

It was the sleep and exercise sections that I found the most helpful, even learning a new term, ‘sitting disease!’ I really sat up and took notice, when I read the following: ‘sitting most of the day gives you about the same risk of heart attack as smoking’ according to a Mayo Clinic cardiologist. Scary stuff! Brockis explains how this affects our brain and suggests that, ideally, we need to be walking about 15 kilometres each week in order to maintain our brain health, as walkers actually ‘grow bigger brains and preserve memory better.’ She also made the connection between greater physical activity and reduced stress and depression. And of course that is aided by getting a longer deeper sleep in which our brain has time to ‘take out the trash’ so to speak, keeping our brains in tip-top order. The benefits are manifold, including consistency of mood and performance, innovation, greater creativity, and greater motivation, just to list a few. Another staggering fact: ‘Reducing our sleep time to four or five hours a night over as little as one week reduces our cognitive capacity to the equivalent of a blood alcohol level of 0.01 per cent.’

Besides the science and the research Brockis has relied on to draw her conclusions, I particularly enjoyed the various anecdotes and examples from history and experiments done in real companies aiming to improve productivity and build a collegial atmosphere conducive to a happy and satisfied workforce. Throughout the book, Brockis stresses the importance of relationships and empathy in maximizing brain fitness. It is not an individual endeavour. We each exist in a context of relationships and they are important. Did you know that ‘loneliness reduces our cognitive skills,’ even if it is only perceived loneliness! This book is full of facts like this that we need to reflect on as we work out how to choose the best lifestyle to enjoy good health at home and at work. It is possible to make the changes needed to maximize our brain fitness, by making informed choices about all aspects of our lives that impact the health of our brains. This will pay dividends as it will increase the enjoyment we garner from our lives during our working years and into our retirement.