Rewire Your Brain: The Five Healthy Factors
John Arden, PhD, ABPP, is the author of 15 books, including his most recent, Mind-Brain-Gene: Toward Psychotherapy Integration. Brain2Brain, The Brain Bible, as well as Rewire Your Brain, and Brain-Based Therapy with Adults and Brain-Based Therapy with Children and Adolescents. Dr. Arden previously served as Director of Training in Mental Health for Kaiser Permanente in the Northern California region. He oversees the training programs in 24 medical centers where over 150 postdoctoral residents and interns are trained each year. He has presented seminars and workshops in over 30 countries and in all US States. Dr. Arden has written books on anxiety, OCD and PTSD as well Improving Your Memory for Dummies; Consciousness, Dreams, and Self: A Transdisciplinary Approach (winner of the Choice 1997 Outstanding Academic Book Award); and Science, Theology, and Consciousness.
There is tremendous misinformation about brain health in the popular press and in the pop psychotherapy genre. Every year there is a new fad which very soon drifts away when a new one emerges that supposedly improves the brain. This webinar describes five key factors that research has consistently shown to support brain health. The research behind each factor of the formula is strongly supported by new developments from neuroscience that overthrown many of our preconceived beliefs about mental health and the brain.
Attendees can remember those five by using the mnemonic “SEEDS.” The SEEDS formula represents the important healthy brain factors that you need to “plant” now and cultivate through the rest of your life.
Areas Covered
1. The Social Factor
- Strong Social Support is identified with greater longevity, positive mood and cognitive skills. The social brain networks are critical for affect regulation, the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala.
- Social Deprivation: is associated with depression, illness, and greater vulnerability to dementia.
- Loneliness: is associated with shortening of telomeres and reduced longevity; loneliness can be as detrimental to health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
2. The Exercise Factor
- How Exercise Alters Brains: It is the best antidepressant and antianxiety treatment. It is associated with the stimulation of BDNF, a growth factor that supports the rebirth of neurons, elevates mood and reduces anxiety.
- Reduction of Inflammation: the marker of chronic inflammation, C-Reactive Protein, is associated with a healthy level of cortisol, a key hormone associated with chronic stress; role of atrial natriuretic peptide.
- Glycemic Control: how glucose transporter-4 gene (GLUT4) regulates glucose activity, the key energy source of the brain.
- Cell Repair: insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), vascular endothelial growth factor and fibroblast growth factor supports neuronal health through the other class of brain cells, glia.
3.The Education Factor
- Cognitive Reserve: evidence that lifelong learning enhances brain span, reduces risk of dementia, and increases longevity. On-going learning helps those suffering from depression and/or anxiety look ahead to possibilities and builds interest in life beyond their psychological problems.
- Memory: enhancement of attention, working memory, mindfulness and the prefrontal cortex; biographic memory (explicit) and habit (implicit) memory.
- Memory Improvement For Brain Health how education supports brain circuits that enhance storage and retrieval long-term memory; using associations and mnemonics, memory-enhancing techniques.
- Attention and Mindfulness: how attention, curiosity, and focus on the present moment can activate the prefrontal cortex and promote affect regulation.
4. The Diet Factor
- Brain structure and neurotransmitter reserve is dependent upon a balanced diet. Key amino acids are essential for synthesizing neurotransmitters needed for positive emotions, calm focused awareness and learning.
- Sugar and Advanced Glycation End-Products: role in aging and age-related chronic diseases including Type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and depression as well as anxiety.
- Healthy Fats: essential fatty acids, transfatty acids and their sources in the omega families, a new understanding of brain health.
5. The Sleep Factor
- Good quality sleep consolidates new memories and may help erase remove unessential memories; how dreams may contribute to memory-consolidation.
- Removal of Neurotoxins: new data indicate that a major function of sleep is to remove harmful waste products, e.g., amyloid, a factor associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
- Cortisol: poor quality sleep or insufficient sleep disrupts stress hormones including cortisol and undermines the prefrontal cortex and its role in decision-making and emotional regulation.
- Guidelines for Better Sleep: regulation of temperature, sleep scheduling, light exposure, meal times and nutrients, and thoughts that keep us awake; applying cognitive approaches to enhance sleep.
Course Level - Intermediate
Who Should Attend
The general public as well as healthcare professionals.
Why Should You Attend
With so much misinformation about the brain and body still circulating, this webinar: Rewire your brain, is presented for the general public. This webinar brings down-to-earth the roles of metabolism, gene expression, the immune system, neuroscience, as well as how to deal with anxiety and depression. This book outlines the 5 health lifestyle practices encoded in the mnemonic SEEDS.
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$200.00
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