Information Regarding Neuron Growth and Rewiring Our Brain

New Research regarding Alzheimers gives weight to the fact that we CAN rewire our brain throughout our life.

A healthy brain weighs about 2 pounds, Networks of blood vessels keep oxygen flowing to 100 billion brain cells. There are branch-like tentacles that extend from the ends of those cells, which are the brain’s own specialized wiring to communicate. A healthy brain can continue to grow new neurons and rewire and adapt itself throughout old age — and you want your brain to be as bushy as possible.

It is known that growth starts in childhood, such as when parents read to very young children, and depends heavily on getting lots of education. The less educated have double the risk of getting Alzheimer’s decades later than people with a college education. Therefore it is thought that people who are less educated and have a not-so-challenging job have three to four times the risk of getting Alzheimer’s.

Your brain is like a muscle — use it or lose it. Brain scans show that when people use their brains in unusual ways, more blood flows into different neural regions and new connections form. So, do a new type of puzzle, learn to play chess, take a foreign language class or solve a vexing problem at work. Try to challenge your brain daily.

Stress and anxiety also leads to declining cognative function. People who have what’s called chronic distress — extreme worriers — are twice as likely to develop some form of dementia, reports Dr. Robert Wilson of Rush University Medical Center. Upon autopsies, it is shown that these people actually have fewer bush-like tentacles, or dendrites, linking their brain cells, meaning their brains were more vulnerable when disease struck.

Hypnosis helps to relieve that stress and anxiety and I believe that when we release the old and install new suggestions that new neuronal pathways are formed....like a new highway of behavior.