BITS AND PIECES!

It’s summer, a lot of you are on holiday so this post will be a short selection of the most recent scientific advances that you may find interesting.

1. Getting older so you think you can’t multitask any more? Think again!

At the University of California, research has been done into how exercises done on line regularly as games can enable people in their 70’s and 80’s to multitask as well as those 50 years younger! They explain that the brain is not a muscle but if we work out and train it, we can improve our mental performance. Multitasking splits the way your brain focusses on what it is doing and dilutes the focus.

 

We have so much ‘stuff’ coming into our brains now that it was thought that as we age, the ability for our brains to shift between thought process and moving is challenged. Thus you see older people fall over or hurt themselves by moving awkwardly when they are looking at something else while moving around more than those who are younger – they just can’t process too many things at the same time any more. However, those who played a game that is designed to challenge the brain’s ability to move from cognitive processing to movement, were found to match or exceed the performance of younger people who had not played the game much. The game used was called “Ebb and Flow” and the study was published in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

2. Reduce your Blood Pressure to improve your Brain Health.

It has been found that reducing your blood pressure helps lower the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. The newspapers are saying today that 1,000 people per day are being admitted to hospital for dementia treatment. How many of those admissions could have been prevented if their high blood pressure had been properly treated?

Published in the American Medical Association Journal this week, they examined the brains of 449 people using MRI. They found that tightly controlling blood pressure to 120 mm Hg – the systolic figure you see when someone tells you your blood pressure – which is the first figure  – the xx of the “xx over yy“ that you are quoted – significantly reduces the amount of damage to the white matter of the brain along with maintaining the actual volume of brain matter, which reduces with higher blood pressure.

Even blood pressure of 130/90 was enough to be considered high and enough to cause these issues. Therefore if you want to reduce the likelihood of developing dementia – take the comparatively simple steps to keep your blood pressure tightly under control – it’s easy really!

 

3. Empathy and Understanding most important when treating patients with chronic pain.

Greater levels of physician empathy mean patients report lower levels of disability and they are better able to cope with their pain. This was reported in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association in August 2019 following a 2 and a half year study conducted by the PRECISION Pain Research Registry.  Chiropractors and osteopaths do not issue prescriptions for opiods to help with chronic pain. We use our listening skills and hands on treatment and exercise advise to try to understand what you are going through rather than just issue pain killers which can cause addiction and do not necessarily resolve the pain. If you have chronic back or neck pain, you should come in to see one of the practitioners at the Avenue Clinic who DO have time to listen to your problems and will develop a treatment plan to help you to cope.

 

 

CHIROPRACTORS AT THE AVENUE CLINIC ARE HERE FOR YOU!