Neurology and Ageing

It’s only risky if it’s not risky!

What do you think happens to your brain and central nervous system as you age? We know that left to its own devices - our brain will shrink with age. Maybe you are already blaming balance/memory issues on your age? Perhaps you are feeling less tolerant/more fixed in outlook/more restricted in your life and feel with age your nervous system has altered in an unhelpful way?

Perhaps your nervous system has become etched with unhelpful pathways as a result of life events/trauma/being stuck in a life that hasn’t inspired you? Or maybe you feel more freedom to express who you are in this world with each passing decade? What we know is that every thought, action and experience whether it is physical, cognitive or emotional influences our central nervous system, our autonomic nervous system and our enteric nervous system instantly.

As some of you may already know, I have been an Upledger craniosacral therapist and international healthcare educator for 30 years or so and the heart of both has been a blend of understanding the anatomy, physiology and function of neurology accompanied by developing keen palpation and dialoguing skills to facilitate people’s growth toward health and good function. I have also studied the enteric nervous system (the nervous system in the gut or second brain) for about 10 years now and am an author and educator/conference speaker in that field. As a result, I aim to stay abreast of at least an overview of new research in these fields.

Today, I am here to bring you some of those new insights, to bring you hope and to possibly give you strategies that may or may not be new or interesting to you.

I am going to dip into the following areas: neuroplasticity and glial plasticity as well as the vagus nerve and its development into polyvagal theory. I have probably have bitten off more off than I can chew!

But let’s take a glimpse at evolution first. The bottom line is that as creatures our nervous system is there to enable us to survive and everything involved with that survival: eating, not being eaten, procreation, moving towards what serves us and away from what does not serve us or threatens our existence. At the beginning, early simple creatures like marine polyps only had a nervous system like a tube so food entered one end and waste was expelled out of the other end. This was very similar to our enteric nervous system.

Neural systems then developed in mammals and higher mammals to give us optimal responses (approach /withdrawal) to our external and internal world. And interestingly the gut/long tube is the longest external surface in our body (mouth to anus). The enteric nervous system is embedded in this tube ready to respond instantly to every experience.

Then, our limbic systems evolved first from the enteric system and they remain deeply connected in us to this day. Our emotional brain, autonomic nervous system and our gut brain are united. This is where we experience intense emotional events and feelings and are the seat of altruism and parenting. Cortical regions evolved later. There are many more messages from the deeper reptilian/survival aspects of the brain and the limbic systems to the cortex than from the cortex to the deeper regions. Therefore, our idea of the rational cortex being in charge is mostly mistaken.

Our brain has adapted through evolution. It continues to adapt day by day to our lives, what we do, what we think and believe, as well as to our physical body. It is neuroplastic. It is constantly changing and this is what gives us hope and confidence, especially in the second half of our lives. This is the quality that helps us recover from strokes and other challenges or accidents as well as learning new skills both mental and physical.

The rapid response is incredible - if we break a bone for example and have a plaster cast, the area of our body with the cast on in our brain map immediately begins to vanish as there is no feedback, and the areas either side of the cast start to grow towards each other to bridge the gap. Once the cast is removed and function returns, the brain changes again and redraws the map. Not only that, but every thought and belief alters our brain and multiple studies have shown this will change how we recover from illness and injury. If we believe we are stuck and cannot progress or that because we cannot do what we could do before we will have a barrier to progress. This is something worthy of its own article and is not about falsely positive thinking but about removing our own limiting beliefs. If you think you can or think you can’t, you are probably right.

Neuroplasticity gives us hope as we can change our brain much more than we might think. But I must introduce you to another part of our plastic brain. Neuroplasticity is talking about our neurons. Glial Plasticity is talking about our glial cells that accompany and nourish every neuron and outnumber them 10 to 1. Glial cells are about creativity, memory and learning and our neurons cannot survive without them. Glial cells are much smaller than neurons and so share the brain space 50/50 with our neurons. If you ever wonder what made Einstein so clever - it was his exceptionally large number of glial cells, not neurons. Glial cells are responsive and plastic as well and we can change them. Without effort, they will reduce in number as we age. All this knowledge is empowering!

As we go through life – it would support us to nourish and nurture our neurons and glial cells to avoid neurodegenerative diseases, cognitive decline, memory loss etc. This mostly starts in our 30s with decline expressing itself in our 60s or 70s. The loss of neuronal connections and glial cells is inevitable if we approach later life with less awareness and a lifestyle that does not support our nervous system. Science now shows that only 3% of Alzheimer’s disease is hereditary. It is often now referred to as type 3 diabetes. This alone demands a significant shift in our thinking.

However, it is never too late to start investing in our cognitive reserves that protect us from stress, sleep deprivation, surgeries, oestrogen deficit (if we are not on HRT as there are many oestrogen receptors in the brain that reduce through menopause). The tendency when ageing to seek comfort, familiarity and a more sedentary lifestyle is not good for the brain and will not build cognitive reserves. If we focus on our cognitive reserves - we can look forward to a high functioning later life.

How? I sense a heavy sigh will come from some readers, but the science shows without doubt that exercise, in particular heavy weight training, is the finest way to do this and there is no way round this! When we do heavy resistance training, our muscles produce myokines that go up into our brain and stimulate our BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic growth factor) as well as impacting our mood positively, increasing our natural killer cells which kill cancer cells (studies show greatly reduced rate of 13 cancers in people who exercise in this way) and improving our gut health via the gut/brain axis. BDNF regulates neuronal growth, survival and plasticity in the brain. Building muscle is non-negotiable for avoiding a healthy non shrinking brain as we age. A massive predictor of longevity is leg strength.

Another important way to keep your brain healthy and clear as you age is novelty. New and creative occupations use more parts of the brain than any other activity. In addition to all the above - challenging yourself to do things you don’t want to do builds your brain’s muscle, the Anterior Midcingulate Cortex, located deep in the brain and our hub for effort and motivation. This area grows from challenge and discipline, from pushing through obstacles not comfort. The AMCC is crucial for cognitive resilience and successful ageing, as it supports tenacity, willpower, and resilience to cognitive decline.

A glimpse into the endlessly complex world of neurology would not be complete without a dip into the bright new world of polyvagal theory. Most of you probably know a little about the vagus nerve, the wanderer, travelling from our brainstem via heart and lungs to the small and large intestines. There is so much new insight into this complex nerve. Traditionally it was considered as our ‘rest and digest’, the parasympathetic balance to our sympathetic nervous system, our fight and flight, but now understood to be far more complex.

It appears our autonomic nervous system is more varied, adaptable and responsive than we imagined. The key to its health is our ability to respond to our life in an appropriate way and not get stuck predominantly in one state but be able to move fluidly between states. A tendency to be stuck can begin in utero, babyhood, childhood or adult life. For example, if our main carer as a baby or child was mostly in fight or flight - then our system will tend to be in fight and flight much of the time too and we will not be able to develop healthy vagal tone unless there are opportunities later in our life.

Our vagus nerve has two branches. The dorsal vagal nerve which is mostly below the respiratory diaphragm and associated with our enteric nervous system in the gut. This spikes when we are in overwhelm, when the threat is great, when fight and flight doesn’t work anymore and takes us into a freeze state, into dissociation and shame. The other branch is our ventral vagus nerve found above the respiratory diaphragm and is active when we feel safe. It facilitates social attachment and engagement with others.

How do we create healthy vagal tone? What does our vagus nerve love? Exercise (especially lifting heavy weights and dancing), breathwork, humming, doing our emotional work, eating a clean diet (impacting the gut/brain axis which is mainly the vagus nerve), being outside in nature (lowers cortisol), singing and be discerning about the people we surround ourselves with as we are impacted by the state of other peoples’ autonomic nervous systems. Like pendulums in the same room - we co-regulate. The safer we feel with a person or persons, the happier our vagus nerve. Think about how you feel when you are with people who are angry or agitated?

There are many blended states however which would be a whole other article! We can be in partly fight and flight partly one of the freeze states to give one example. Enough for now is to know our autonomic nervous system is complex and responsive according our life, our thoughts and our beliefs and not a simple dualistic system. A healthy autonomic nervous system is one that can respond appropriately to our environment and experience in that moment and move fluidly into other states as they change.

The message regarding ageing is that so much more is in our hands than some might think. Yes - we get older but how that looks and feels is to a great extent up to us, and of course, it is never too late to upgrade our brain!