Handicapping – Fountain of Youth?

Posted by ginag2 on Feb 6, 2013 in Blog | 4 comments

Can handicapping keep your brain young?

There is a lot of new evidence out there that indicate that in fact it could not only keep your brain functioning at a higher capacity, but can even help regenerate new brain cells and brain cell connections – and turn your mental clock around.

Now, I know not all of you are of the age that you might yet have even considered this, but if you aren’t there yet – you will be.

It has been discovered that in most people brain functioning begins to fade from optimal somewhere during their mid-thirties. We are born with some 100 billion brain cells (I wonder who counted them?!) with a quadrillion of these connections – neurons and their synapses. And one of the keys to keeping the brain young – to prevent the dying off of these cells and their connectors – is to continually challenge the brain with new problem solving situations.

What could fit the bill better than handicapping a horse race? 

Every race is different – the challenge remains ever-new. There has even been recent research that certain aspects of using the computer will help increase cognitive functions and mental dexterity.

Here is how one of the intellectual ‘white coat’ types – Dr. Konstantinos Arfanakis describes it, “We discovered that elderly persons with a high frequency of cognitive activity have higher microstructural integrity in brain white matter than persons with lower frequency of cognitive activity,” Arfanakis said. “Since the microstructural integrity of white matter naturally declines with age, our findings suggest that cognitive activity in late life may be protecting cognition by maintaining the condition of brain wiring.”

Whew! – but which is just another way of saying “use it or lose it!”

 

There is, however, a potential bug in the ointment . . .

It is also now known that ‘stress’ can decrease brain functioning and counteract the positive results of handicapping. Of course when you are betting according to the results of your handicapping, and lose, stress levels can elevate – most particularly if the money lost is money needed for important aspects of one’s life – like the mortgage!

So – it’s as if the Fountain of Youth is there waiting for you, but the player needs to have long-term profitable results to prevent the ‘stress’ part of the equation from cancelling out the positive benefits of the handicapping exercise.

A couple of other factors of great importance for optimal brain functioning are; physical exercise, and mental relaxation.

Break the handicapping and betting up with short bursts of at least mildly energetic exercise – a fast walk around the yard, a few jumping jacks – etc. And also take a few minutes every so often during your race day to simply relax the brain – think of a time, place or event you have loved and been extremely happy, visualize it, dissolve back into it . . .

. . . then return to the challenge at hand with renewed vigor – and maybe a few million extra brain connectors!

 

As always – we invite you to leave a comment               – Gary