Curious Conversations, a Research Podcast

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Travis

What do you think about how you think? What do you think can improve how you think? What do you think can improve your brain? Well, according to Virginia Tech's Ben Katz, spring is one of those things. In fact, he was recently a part of an article titled, Spring is Good for Your Brain. So naturally I wanted to know what it is about this season that makes it so magical for my cognition. And thankfully Ben was kind enough to join the podcast to answer that question and many more.

Ben is an Associate Professor of Adult Development and Aging within the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Virginia Tech. His research focuses on interventions to improve executive function capacities including non-invasive brain stimulation, cognitive training, and lifestyle change.

So Ben and I talked a little bit about spring and it turns out that it's actually less about the season itself and more about the choices that you and I are more likely to make during the season. Specifically we talked about cardiovascular exercise, spending time in nature, and how maintaining a healthy diet can actually. He shared with me some of what we do and don't know about those specific exercises and why they're actually good for our brain. And we also talked about the importance of sleep and the benefits of social interaction when it comes to our cognitive abilities. And being an expert in this subject, I was really curious to learn what he does to ensure that his brain functions as good as it possibly can. So I left this podcast with a little to-do list for myself and hopefully you will as well.

I'm Travis Williams and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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Travis

I want to talk to you about habits and things that we can do to help with our brain cognition. And so I was thinking that maybe a good place to just start that conversation is to just simply kind of lay out what is, what is brain cognition? What are we talking about?

Ben

Sure, so cognition, the word cognition more generally really just refers to all the processes that are involved in thinking, right? So these are things like attention and memory and executive functions and processing speed aspects of that. All of those things go into cognition. So it's really an umbrella term that refers to all these things involved with our ability to just think from day to day and moment to moment.

Travis

Okay. Well, recently I know that you have been talking a lot about brain cognition related to the spring. People have been very interested in this, about springtime and how it is good for our brain health and our cognition. And I'm curious, is there anything magical about the spring when it comes to our cognition? And if there is, what is it?

Ben

Sure, yeah, get it, right? This is, I've been talking about that a little bit because yes, it is springtime right now, right, in Blacksburg, although it's felt more or less like that over the last couple of weeks. And so to me, what's exciting about spring is not necessarily what's one thing, but all the different things that come along with it, right? Because it can be a little bit complex. So for example, you've got warmer weather, right? More sunlight. And we can talk about each of those different things and what they do.

But what I get excited about with spring is that having that additional time and ability to want to spend time outside, right, really facilitates more time spent doing cardiovascular exercise, which we know is really good for our brains and for cognition, and also facilitates our ability to spend time in nature, which there's some really cool evidence that that's positive, as well as a whole host of other activities from social engagement to cognitive engagement, different things that seem to potentially be protective for your brain later in life or even just help to enhance cognition at any point.

Travis

Okay, so the season itself may be not inherently magical, but maybe what it allows us to take on. Maybe those things are, maybe that's where the real magic is.

Ben

Exactly, right? Because if people say, you know, there's certain things they like about spring, right? you have longer days. And actually, it's less long than summer, right? Longer than winter. But, you know, there's some evidence even that having more light, right? That that actually might make you sleep a little bit less long. And that's not always a good thing, although it means more mixed things. There's more mixed research around what that actually means for the quality of sleep. Or, you know, for example, the warmer weather, well, you know, warmer weather in and of itself. If it's really hot, that's actually not always so great for cognition. There's some evidence around that from people in warmer climates or really hot climates. But exactly, it's these other things that think it allows you to do that are really positive.

Travis

Yeah, I have a lot of anecdotal evidence about it being too warm in a room, me not being able to, you know, just to even stay awake.

Ben

There's actually a ton of research on that. If you've ever gone to a conference and they keep it really cold sometimes, there's good empirical reasons why it's super ice cold, right? That's not great. But if it's a little bit on the cooler side, there is some evidence that that actually can help with some things, maybe our ability to attend or to stay alert and things like that.

Travis

I will remind those folks that it's not my fault that I fell asleep there. That's not my fault. Science says not Travis's fault.

 

Ben

Yes, it's not your fault it's too hot.

Travis

Well, you mentioned exercise and specifically cardiovascular exercise. I'm curious, what is it about cardiovascular exercise? What is it doing to help my cognition?

Ben

You mentioned cardiovascular exercise, which is good because exercise can be all these different things, right? There's yoga and stretching, but also, yeah, cardiovascular aerobic exercise, things like running and biking and swimming or hiking, right? These are things that get our heart pumping, right? And the reason it's, it's, there's number of pathways through which those can impact cognition and the brain, especially, but really one of the most direct ones is just the fact that our cardiovascular health is so closely tied to our brain health. And it's not that surprising when you start to think about the fact that your brain is highly vascularized, you need blood to bring oxygen to your brain. And so the efficiency of your cardiovascular system is very, very closely tied to brain health. And so anything you can do to increase your cardiovascular health, right, that's going to probably over the long term help you to maintain your brain health as well.

Travis

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me, just the idea that there's a lot of blood up here. And so the better it's flowing, like the better it'll work. Like in very, very simple terms.

Ben

Yeah, we all kind of know that, but we don't always think about it, right? you know, having a stroke, for example, is very, very bad, right? And that's literally right, cutting off that blood flow to the parts of the brain that need it and all the nutrients and oxygen that that would provide. so the exactly we kind of, we kind of implicitly understand that our cardiovascular health is important, but we don't always think, I think about how important like diet and exercise are for the brain in addition to the body.

Travis

Yeah. Well, you mentioned being in nature as well. What do we know about nature? What happens when we spend time in nature to us?

Ben

Yeah, so there's a lot of there's a bunch of really interesting studies on this. And to some extent, right, there's still good work to be done. But there's some studies that suggested that, say, being in a quiet green space, right, so surrounded by trees, think of walk in the forest with bird calls, minimal distractions. This is really usually as opposed to being in a more distraction heavy urban setting or something like that. There's some evidence that being in nature can be sort of restorative to things like attention. And again, I mentioned, right, this is there's still some questions about exactly how and when this works, what the boundary conditions are for this. But there's even been some studies that suggested even looking at pictures of nature may be positive. But the way I look at it is that we know these settings are probably good for mood. We know these settings may have some restorative effects by removing you from other distraction heavy or things that could distract you or could interfere with your condition in those ways. And so to me, it's well, if you're out in the springtime, doing cardiovascular exercise in nature, right? That's probably one of the best situations you could be in, right?

Travis

Yeah, that, I mean, it definitely sounds like that that's kind of multiple layers of good things for you. My wife has this belief she shared with me many times. It may be steeped in research. It may not, I do not know, but she believes that when we go on hikes into the woods and the forest and we're in those types of environments, that it's really good for her brain. And it's specifically, she thinks it's good for our child's brain. Is that true? Do you want to debunk her? I'll tell her not to listen to the podcast if you want to. ⁓

Ben

No, wouldn't. I wouldn't debunk her. the only challenge with that is sort of how do you separate out? No, no. First of all, there's actually been some research on hiking even, I think, that's positive. And there's all this research showing it's good for mood. when it comes to like, you can memory or attention, especially a of research on attention, right? I think the only thing that's tricky is separating out. We know that there are both transient and long-term effects of exercise, right? And hiking can be very, very good cardiovascular aerobic exercise. You get your heart pumping, you're hiking uphill. Right? We're right in the middle of the, don't know if you ever go to the Appalachian Trail, there's a part right near Virginia Tech, something called the Caffer Oak that my wife and I go to all the time. There's so many areas to hike around here, or McCaffey Knob or something like that. And so I think the only challenge is, no, I think your wife is right on. I think the question is, to what extent is it the exercise versus to what extent is it to being surrounded by a natural environment, spending time off of your phone, right? There's all these different parts of it that may be contributing to that. And I guess my argument would be, If it's something that makes you feel good and it's healthy for you overall, then we'll, as researchers, eventually figure out what parts of that are maybe most important. But definitely, the evidence suggests that it's something you can do. If it's safe and healthy for you to hike, then it's probably a really good activity for your cognitive health as well.

Travis

Yeah, just keep doing it. We'll figure out why it works later. Just keep doing it in the meantime is what it sounds like to me. It does.

Ben

I mean, why it works matters, right? But like, to me, it's like probably the cardiovascular exercise is maybe the first thing, but then some of the other aspects of being in quiet setting, having fewer distractions around you, right? There's a little bit of evidence that that kind of thing can be restorative too.

Travis

Yeah, well, I'm gonna cut the clip where you said that my wife was right and we'll just use, we'll use that. I'm gonna use that for multiple things, Well, you mentioned, I think, diet as well. And so I'm curious, what do we know about diet and the foods that we eat and how they interact with us when it comes to cognition?

Ben

Yeah, that's early. So a lot of the research we're doing in the lab right now is focused on that with my colleague, Brenda Davie and Alex DeFless Antonio up at the FBRI up in the Roanoke campus. And so we've been really interested in how what we call dietary patterns are associated with cognition. So I don't know if you've probably heard of like a Mediterranean pattern diet, right? So these are the diets that were adopted by folks around the Mediterranean. So, right, basically lean proteins and fish, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, right? And more recently in our lab, we've also been focused on diet called the DASH diet. And that's a diet that's focused on stopping hypertension. That's what the H stands for. And it's about really low in sodium. And we found that people that have a Mediterranean diet or even a DASH diet that actually adhere to those types of diets are more likely to have less cognitive decline when they're older. you rather rate, all experienced some cognitive decline, right? We get little less sharp as we age. But the folks that really adhere to the DASH diet had less of that.

And so we've been trying to really figure out more recently is well as dietary patterns, right, include lots of different things. And we think the pattern itself is more important than any individual item. But we've been trying to explore which food items may be most problematic. And so a second investigation we did was really looking at ultra processed foods. And we were able to figure because people know, right, there's all this conversation around ultra processed foods. guess we're thinking about springtime, right? Picnics, we might have those types of things outside. And what we found was kind of surprising because people are like, they're bad and they may be for other aspects of health, but for the brain, specifically for your risk of developing dementia, it looks like actually only two of them were really problematic, and those are processed animal products. So these think about like your off-the-shelf deli meat or something like that, and sugar sweetened beverages. So that's really sodas most of the time. And what we think as far as why that is the case, and then like the actual increase was pretty significant. We're talking about, you know, For the deli meats, was like something like 20 % or something like that for each serving. And this is on average, right? This is not like you eat a single serving of a deli meat one day, you're gonna have a 20 % higher risk. This is if you're doing this every day, right? But we think that is basically probably the sodium and maybe nitrates and some other things that are in the deli meats and then probably the sugar in the sugar sweetened beverages. And so what that tells me is alter processing or food processing isn't by itself necessarily bad, right? But when we talk about brain health, it might be specific things that come along with that processing that are really problematic. And so yeah, I've cut out sort of from my diet.

Travis

So like that maybe it's not just having one hot dog on the 4th of July that you're talking about, but it's these patterns that are maybe the biggest takeaway. And also, there a connection there between some of those things and heart health as well? Like, are we kind of at the same thing here?

Ben

Yes. So this again, this is true for exercise, it's true for diet. The things that have the greatest influence on brain health and cognition, we're probably talking about multiple pathways, right? So for example, with exercise, yes, you improve cardiovascular health, but there's also all these other things that it might be involved with from, from like BDNF, which is brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is basically something that's supportive of learning, right? That you actually see more of that BDNF in your brain when you, you know, for people that exercise more or after exercise. For diet, it's probably both cardiovascular health, but it might also be other aspects of metabolic health related to blood sugar and things like that, as well as maybe specific things, right? You see a lot of people talking about like, okay, well, if I'm having olive oil with omega-3s or something like that. And my argument is still, it's good to know about individual food items, but the pattern probably matters more. And I keep coming back to this though, cardiovascular health though, these other things may matter a little bit, but it's probably the cardiovascular health is a significant contributor to that above a lot of other things. So yeah, it's really the fact that that's related to your heart health. That's a big, big, big piece of the puzzle.

Travis

And yeah, well, I think of the things that you have mentioned and we've kind of talked about, one of the things I don't think that you have mentioned in any of your answers so far that I am curious about is this aspect of social wellbeing and social interaction. What role does that play in our brain health?

Ben

Yeah. So again, right, it's multiple pathways. We probably know spending time socially. So when we say social interaction, what do you mean by playing a team sport, right? Playing board games with friends, volunteering in a group or something like that. These are all things where you're doing you may be getting exercise, right? You may be having opportunities for cognitive engagement. We can talk about that, too. But also, yes, just the fact that you're doing there's some evidence that social interaction right through those types of things right, can be really positive. Now we're asking what does it do, right? Well, it probably has improved, we know that maybe improved emotional health and more effective things, right, with an A, but there's some really interesting research with older adults that suggests that people that are more socially engaged, right, that they also have better cognitive function into late life. And, you know, the reasons why I think, again, are probably kind of complex. Some of it may be, you know, the boost to effective health that may then contribute to other things you're doing or the fact that you may be doing other activities that are cognitively engaging or that are good for your health at the same time. But in general, you and also you to be careful because some of that research is correlational or cross-sectional where we don't know whether people who have better cognition are more likely to be social. But there's been a lot of interventions, multimodal interventions to improve cognition in late life that really have started to incorporate a social component because at the least, right, if you're doing something with somebody else or you're part of a team, you may be more likely to maintain the intervention or to keep at it keep trying even when it gets hard.

Travis

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess what I'm thinking right now is that, like you mentioned before, we should all be doing some sort of cardiovascular exercise in nature, probably with friends, and then not drinking sugary sodas afterwards.

Ben

Yeah, that would be my suggestion, right? it's, you know, exactly, maybe cutting out the, it's, deli meat's hard, right? Because again, you just mentioned it's not like having one once for the 4th of July is bad, having a hot dog or something like that. And that's certainly not the case. It's really, you know, like what I've done with that is switching to, you know, buying or making a roast chicken at the beginning of the week and using that in stuff too. But yeah, exactly. It's all these different things together. And that's why there's been a big focus on multimodal interventions in our labs. trying to do that, right? Not just exercise but exercise and diet, or not just diet, but diet and cognitive engagement or something like that. How can you combine multiple interventions together? Because there's really the story is there's not one silver bullet, there's not a royal road to being able to maintain cognitive function.

Travis

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad you mentioned the rotisserie chicken because I think that that's just a great life hack for anybody. I even if you're not worried about any of the other health stuff, like if you've listened this far, like that's an excellent life hack anyway.

Ben

Yeah, yeah. Well, and it can be as cheap as or, you know, it's a little tricky to plan it and buy it. And yes, if you buy a rotisserie chicken from the store, it may have more processing than if you make your own chicken, etc, etc. Right. But in general, my guess would be that that is going to be especially off the shelf deli meats. That's something where probably has a lot of sodium in it. Right. If you have more control over how much sodium is going into what you're making, that's probably going to be better. That's more consistent with a anti-hypertensive diet. Right.

Travis

Is there any other area that we haven't really talked about that is just really good for cognition that maybe I'm just overlooking?

Ben

There's one, yeah, there's sleep, which is critical, right? Not only for literally, it's when a lot of memory consolidation takes place, but people's sleep patterns, both time and quality, right? It's something that's really important. You know, I mentioned, we talked about maybe your sleep time actually gets a little bit lower, but maybe as long as your quality is consistent, actually exercise can improve your sleep quality. But yeah, sleep is probably up there. I would say, you know, top three lifestyle behaviors, maybe top four, along with actually not smoking is probably the other one. Yeah.

Travis

Yeah, how much, I mean, this is the question anybody's gonna ask you is how much do I need to sleep?

Ben

And so that's a fun question because it actually changes based on both your lifestyle, but also your age, right? You might find that you're sleeping a little bit less as you age, you know, so it's two things. It's the time spent sleeping and as far as we can tell, right, the average for people, know, six to eight, and that's really a window where too little and too much, both are kind of correlated with less optimal outcomes. But there's also don't forget quality, which is really like uninterrupted sleep that gets harder as we get older for a number of reasons.

 

but it's also very, very important, know, being able to sleep through the night, not taking as long to get to sleep, right? And those are things where actually like exercise, people that exercise regularly have better sleep quality. Sleep hygiene is really important. So you might've heard of like, right, how often are we doom scrolling or on our phones late into the evening, putting your phone away, leaving it another room. That's something that can be really positive for that. And overall, that's also actually associated with cardiovascular health sleep. But it is also been very, very closely tied to cognitive performance and cognitive health.

Travis

Well, you mentioned a couple of things as we've been talking that you have done. I'm curious, is there any other change or shift that you've made as you've gotten into this research just to help keep yourself healthy?

Ben

Yeah, that's a great question. What have I done and what do I recommend, right? When I'm talking to other people about it, I think one of the biggest ones for me is, is, and this is, you know, being, trying to be more conscious about distractions in my everyday life and things that can interfere with my attention, right? And this isn't necessarily, you know, there's maybe some evidence that over for the longterm, those things can be problematic, but, know, you think about this from a day to day moment, right? Your ability to sustain your attention on task, to be able to, to focus on the thing you want to focus on. How many things can interrupt that? So I've been more active in trying to find ways to reduce the number of notifications I get. I actually own a phone that has a, I don't think there's a lot of these, but it has a switch on it, and I can actually turn off notifications completely with a switch. So it makes it a lot easier to, there's actually even other phones that even have less notifications. They make phones that are just made for people that want to avoid that. But I've really tried to kind of curate the amount of distractions I have. And of course, right, Professor? I have students that want to come talk to me. I have office hours. have lots of fun and exciting things happening every day that I actually want to do. And so it's kind of a balance, right, in figuring out, what can I kind of, how can I remove some of these distractions? We talked about being in nature, right? Well, I'm right near the Han Garden. And so I will very frequently, if I notice myself feeling a little bit of increased cognitive load or burden or fatigue, I'll go for a walk because it's close to me. It's a quick, quick time to get out there. And I find that it's, at least personally, I find that restorative. it's probably, there's very little evidence that getting up and walking around is a bad thing almost ever. If you've been seated for a long time, if you're feeling tired for things like attention or health more generally.

Travis

Yeah, that sounds like another great life hack. Well, both of those try to limit notifications and when you can take a little walk in a garden,

Ben

there's evidence that even just a quick walk around the building. Yes, going and getting 30 minutes of strenuous exercise against your heart pumping is the best thing. But even just getting up and walking around outside briefly, get a little bit of that movement. There's some evidence that can be quite positive. There's all this research on like taking breaks from periods of work and studying. It seems like the brakes can be restored ever helpful. And, you know, that's the sort of thing where if you like being outside, it makes you happier. There's probably no reason not to do that.

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Travis

And thanks to Ben for helping us better understand the types of things we can do to best take care of our brains and our own cognition. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw at vt.edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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