14 days and 8 steps to a new you

One of the most impressive characteristics of the human body is how fast it responds to change. So if you’re ready to feel better than you have in a long time, or maybe just want to make sure your body and mind will be as strong as they can be in your later years, have I got something for you…

By following just eight simple steps you can achieve a night and day difference in your health. And the best part about these improvements is, you don’t have to wait long to experience their benefits. That’s exactly how it worked when scientists at UCLA enrolled a group of people in a simple program that consisted of:

• Doing crossword puzzles and brain teasers to stimulate brain activity.
• Taking daily walks to boost physical fitness.
• Eating five small meals a day to prevent sharp drops in blood sugar.
• Eating a diet containing more omega-3 fats from fish and fish oil.
• Eating more fruits and vegetables with antioxidant nutrients.
• Avoiding high-glycemic foods like white bread, cakes, cookies and other processed foods that spike blood sugar.
• Consuming low-glycemic carbohydrates like whole grains, beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, nuts, spinach, peppers, zucchini, broccoli, cherries, grapefruit, apples, peaches and oranges.
• Controlling stress with daily relaxation exercises like meditation.

In just two weeks, brain function showed improvement. Two weeks!

The researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to measure their subjects’ brain activity. They found that the program decreased brain metabolism in the part of the brain directly linked to working memory (a section called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex). The scientists interpreted the result as showing that each brain they scanned was working at a higher level. ^[1]

Cognition ignition

“The finding suggests that for participants who had followed the healthy longevity program, the brain functioned more efficiently and didn’t need to use as much glucose to perform effectively,” says Dr. Gary Small, professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

The study also showed that, compared to a control group of people who did not change their sedentary lifestyle or diet, the participants also performed better in verbal fluency, a cognitive function controlled by the same brain region.

“The research demonstrates that in just 14 days, simple lifestyle changes can not only help overall health, but also improve memory and brain function,” Small says. “Our next step is to assess the individual effects of each lifestyle strategy, which may help us develop an optimal combination.”

Heart help

In a similar way, changing your lifestyle and losing a little weight can also make a big difference in how your heart operates. When researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis put overweight people on a regimen that caused them to merely lose a pound a month for a year, they found that their heart function beneficially reverted back to a younger state. ^[2]

As you and your heart age, heart tissue becomes more fibrotic and less flexible. Collagen fibers accumulate in the arteries and muscle, and they grow stiffer and less able to relax. But losing a little bit of weight seems to partially reverse this process, allowing more blood to be pulled into the heart with each heartbeat.

Extra elasticity

“(When the heart fills with blood), the left ventricle is a suction pump,” explains researcher Sándor J. Kovács, Ph.D, M.D. “Think of the rubber bulb of an old-fashioned bicycle horn — you squeeze it (the analog of the ejection phase of the cardiac cycle), then let go (the analog of the filling or diastolic phase) and the rubber bulb springs back to its original shape, sucking air back in. Similarly, the heart’s muscle and connective tissue are elastic, and after ejecting blood to the body during contraction (systole), the left ventricle springs back to draw in new blood (diastole). It’s during this filling phase of the cardiac cycle that subtle changes in heart health can be most readily detected.

“Lose weight and right away you can have better cardiovascular health,” says Kovacs.

The message of these kinds of studies is clear: Not only can more exercise and a better diet improve your health, doing so makes you feel better pretty quickly. So put down the bag of chips, take a walk and pick up an apple for your next snack. You’ll be impressed at how fast your body gets the message.

[1] Small GM, Silverman DH, et al. Effects of a 14-day healthy longevity lifestyle program on cognition. Am J Geratr Psychiatry, 2006 Jun;14(6):538-45.
[2] Riordan MM, Weiss EP, Meyer TE, Ehsani AA, Racette SB, Villareal DT, Fontana L, Holloszy JO, Kovács SJ. The effects of caloric restriction- and exercise-induced weight loss on left ventricular diastolic function. American Journal of Physiology. Heart and Circulatory Physiology. 2007 Dec 27