{"id":276623,"date":"2023-12-27T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-12-27T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.naturestudio.com\/?p=276623"},"modified":"2024-03-05T15:07:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T15:07:05","slug":"improve-your-brain-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naturestudio.com\/improve-your-brain-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Improve your brain health by learning to paint"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row padding_top=”0″ padding_bottom=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]I\u2019ve recently been stepping out of my comfort zone to paint in different styles and in different mediums that are new to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s something I\u2019ve felt I\u2019ve needed to do, and it\u2019s been very rewarding. The thrill of expanding my skills and, after some trial and error and \u2018mistakes\u2019, getting a result I\u2019ve been happy with has been really satisfying and empowering. <\/span>
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\n<\/span>And now I\u2019ve been reading that it\u2019s not just fun.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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Pushing yourself to learn new skills like this is a form of \u2018good stress\u2019 that can also improve your brain health.<\/b><\/p>\n

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By growing new neural pathways, the act of learning keeps our brains \u2018plastic\u2019. This in turn builds our capacity to adapt and cope with the challenges of life, activates our curiosity and creativity and may even protect us from developing forms of dementia as we age.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you think of the brain as being like a muscle, then learning new things is like flexing that muscle and causing it to grow. <\/b>[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”276627″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]I\u2019ve learned about this in the book \u2018How to Stay Sane\u2019 by psychotherapist Phillipa Perry.\u00a0 If you\u2019re wondering what brought me to pick up a book with that title, it was because we are currently in the process of moving house (4th time in 6 years) and I felt I needed a little help! That story I\u2019ll share in another post soon\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

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Positive Stress & brain reserve<\/b><\/p>\n

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In the book Perry describes learning a new skill as providing the brain with a good kind of \u2018positive stress\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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As opposed to the kind of stress that overwhelms us and causes us to panic, \u2018positive stress\u2019:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018promotes the neural growth hormones that support learning. Good stress\u2026can be experienced as pleasurable; it can motivate us or make us curious. More importantly, it triggers neuro plasticity\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

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If we\u2019re well practised at growing new neural connections, we can be described as having good <\/span>\u2018brain reserve\u2019.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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And it turns out that you can improve your brain health by actively taking steps to grow your brain reserve.<\/b><\/p>\n

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What \u2018brain reserve\u2019 and the nun experiment shows us about dementia symptoms.<\/b><\/p>\n

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Right now one in nine Americans (10.7%) aged over 65 has Alzheimer\u2019s. The figures are similar in the UK and Europe. This is truly a health crisis as our populations age.<\/span><\/p>\n

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We all know families touched by this cruel disease, and if your own has been touched by it my heart goes out to you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Which is why I also wanted to share what Perry writes about how learning can help protect us from developing the symptoms of dementia. She cites another book I\u2019ve subsequently gone on to read and highly recommend: <\/span>Ageing with Grace: the nun study and the science of old age by David Snowdon. <\/b>
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\n<\/span>In the \u2018nun study\u2019 David Snowdon, one of the world\u2019s leading experts on Alzheimer’s disease, and his team of researchers, conducted a long term study of 678 nuns aged from 75 to 106<\/span>, all of whom agreed to donate their brains for research after they died.<\/span> In terms of exercise levels, diet, routine and financial circumstances the nuns’ lives were the same. But they discovered that the more the nuns stayed engaged with learning, socialising and embarking upon and maintaining new interests, the fewer symptoms of Altzeimer\u2019s they showed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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This was despite the fact that, after their deaths, many of those nuns who showed no dementia symptoms were found to have had signs of significant damage in their brains as the result of Alzheimer’s.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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Their research led them to propose that the nuns who had continued to learn had built \u2018brain reserve\u2019 and their brains were better able to cope with the damage caused by Alzheimer\u2019s by making new neural connections and finding new routes around the damage<\/span>: \u2018in a sense patching around the damage caused by Alzeimers\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Whilst the research is not conclusive, circumstantial evidence seems to suggest a link between continued learning and curiosity and building brain reserve.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”276628″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Learning a new art skill grows brain reserve<\/b><\/p>\n

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Learning to paint or draw (or like me, to do so in new ways) provides great \u2018positive stress\u2019 because it requires the brain to work in different ways to how it does in the normal day-to-day. The parts of the brain that handle shapes & colour as well as hand-eye coordination & taking in the \u2018whole\u2019 get a serious work-out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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So if you\u2019re even a little bit interested in learning to paint, why not do this to improve your brain health as well as for your pleasure.<\/span><\/p>\n

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DECIDE to do this for yourself and MAKE yourself follow through.<\/b><\/p>\n

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You think \u2018Yes, I\u2019d really like to try this. I\u2019ve been meaning to for years.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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But then another part of you pipes up with some anxiety and some reasons why you can\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t bother.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span>This is to be expected. Resistance to learning something new goes with the territory.<\/span><\/p>\n

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As Perry writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

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It is often the case when we are embarking on a new activity (be it ballroom dancing, meditation or other new ventures) that we feel in two minds about it. However if we <\/span>decide<\/span><\/i> to override that part of us that is reluctant to change (instead of merely <\/span>trying<\/span><\/i> to override it) and undertake a new regime anyway, we give ourselves the chance to experience the difference that the new regime makes to us. If we are not feeling more stimulated, more interconnected, more alive, no harm will have been done and we will drop it. Starting a new habit means feeling the impulse to maintain your current way of being, but beginning the new regime anyway: it can feel like a wrench. We usually start sending ourselves messages – like \u2018this isn\u2019t really me\u2019 – clock such excuses and decide to persevere with establishing a new habit anyway.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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I know from my work with those who long to make art but have put it off for years that often there is some old \u2018shame\u2019 linked to it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Often there\u2019s an \u2018art scar\u2019 lurking in their past – usually resulting from a time when a teacher or a parent criticised their art when they were young. And this stays with them, inhibiting them from giving it a go again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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OR they suffer from an attitude to learning that we can pick up in adulthood: that we want our results to be great from the very point when we start, and we feel shame and self-consciousness when those results fall short of what we\u2019re wanting to see. It\u2019s as if we feel we SHOULD be good at this already, even though we\u2019ve not given ourselves the chance to learn.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Again, Perry speaks directly to this:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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When I talk about the benefits of learning, sometimes people confide in me that what stops them embarking on learning something is a sense of shame that they do not know it already. Susan Jeffers wisely said \u2018Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway.\u2019 I say \u2018Feel the shame and learn something anyway.\u2019 No one likes to feel vulnerable but unless we learn to tolerate some emotional vulnerability we will be endangering our growth, and if we do not grow we shrink – and if we do that we jeopardize our sanity.\u2019<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Let this be a year when you grow and don\u2019t shrink.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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You deserve it.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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I\u2019m rooting for you.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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Isn\u2019t it empowering to know that you can improve your brain health by doing something fun and rewarding? Please let me know in the comments if this has motivated you to start to learn something new or if you\u2019ve a story about dementia you\u2019d like to share. I know so many of us have one or more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”276032″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

References: <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>How to Stay Sane by Phillipa Perry<\/span>
\n<\/span>Ageing with Grace: the nun study and the science of old age by David Snowdon. <\/b>
\n<\/b>Figures on Alzeimers in the US: <\/b>See the <\/span>Alzeimers Association<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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The thrill of expanding my skills and, after some trial and error and \u2018mistakes\u2019, getting a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":276625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,6,12],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nImprove your brain health by learning to paint - Nature Studio<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.naturestudio.com\/improve-your-brain-health\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Improve your brain health by learning to paint - Nature Studio\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[vc_row padding_top=”0″ padding_bottom=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]I\u2019ve recently been stepping out of my comfort zone to paint in different styles and in different mediums that are new to me.\u00a0   It\u2019s something I\u2019ve felt I\u2019ve needed to do, and it\u2019s been very rewarding. 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