Health for life

There may be a way for older people to prevent natural aging of their minds, and it could be as simple as playing a video game.

Thats according to a study from the University of Iowa, which found that elderly people who played just ten hours of a game priming their mental processing speed and skills delayed declines by as many as seven years in a range of cognitive skills.

"We know that we can stop this decline and actually restore cognitive processing speed to people," says Fredric Wolinsky, professor in the UI College of Public Health and lead author on the paper published May 1 in the journal PLOS One. "So, if we know that, shouldnt we be helping people? Its fairly easy, and older folks can go get the training game and play it."

The study comes amidst a burst of research examining why, as we age, our minds gradually lose "executive function," generally considered mission control for critical mental activities, such as memory, attention, perception and problem solving. Studies show loss of executive function occurs as people reach middle age; other studies say our cognitive decline begins as soon as 28 years of age. Either way, our mental capacities do diminish, and medical and public health experts are keen to understand why in an effort to stem the inexorable tide as much as possible.

Wolinsky and colleagues separated 681 generally healthy medical patients in Iowa into four groups—each further separated into those 50 to 64 years of age and those over age 65. One group was given computerized crossword puzzles, while three other groups were exposed to a video game called "Road Tour." Briefly, the game revolves around identifying a type of vehicle (displayed fleetingly on a license plate) and then reidentifying the vehicle type and matching it with a road sign displayed from a circular array of possibilities, all but one of them false icons. The player must succeed at least three out of every four tries to advance to the next level, which speeds up the vehicle identification and adds more distractions, up to 47 in all.

The goal, naturally, is to increase the users mental speed and agility at identifying the vehicle symbol and picking out the road sign from the constellation of distractors (which are rabbits, by the way).

"The game starts off with an assessment to determine your current speed of processing. Whatever it is, the training can help you get about 70 percent faster," says Wolinsky, who has no financial stake in the game.

The groups that played the game at least 10 hours, either at home or in a lab at the university, gained at least three years of cognitive improvement when tested after one year, according to a formula developed by the researchers. A group that got four additional hours of training with the game did even better, improving their cognitive abilities by four years, according to the study.

"We not only prevented the decline; we actually sped them up," Wolinsky says.

Improving peoples processing speed is considered important for a host of reasons. One widely accepted benefit is widening a persons field of view. "As we get older, our visual field collapses on us," Wolinsky explains. "We get tunnel vision. Its a normal functioning of aging. This helps to explain why most accidents happen at intersections because older folks are looking straight ahead and are less aware of peripherals."

Recognizing this, the National Institutes of Health in the late 1990s commissioned the largest cognitive training study of its kind, called ACTIVE. The national, multi-site trial, in which Wolinsky was involved, showed the elderlys memory, reasoning and visual processing speed could be improved with interventions, thus slowing the aging of their minds. But the ACTIVE study had its limitations: Among them, the control group didnt get any training and the primary goal was to assess the effects on seniors field-of-view vision.

Wolinskys team added an active control group—those doing the crossword puzzles. The researchers found those who played the "Road Tour" game also scored far better than the crossword puzzle group on tests involving executive function beyond field-of-view vision, such as concentration, nimbleness with shifting from one mental task to another and the speed at which new information is processed. The improvement ranged from 1.5 years to nearly seven years in cognitive improvement, the study found.

"Its the use it or lose it phenomenon," Wolinsky says. "Age-related cognitive decline is real, its happening, and it starts earlier and then continues steadily. The good news is we can do something about it. The question is will we?"

Todays question comes from reader Marnie:

Q: I have sort of the opposite question from the one posted [last week]. I have several different size slow cookers and a couple of slow cooker recipe books from which I’ve mostly pulled relatively bland recipes. My husband and I are on a tight budget and we like to use fresh whole foods whenever possible. We don’t ever keep canned soups in the house nor jars of salsa or other short cut ingredients that are frequent staples in slow cooker recipes. We love flavor and are happy with meaty or meat free recipes as long as they are not bland and boring.

Any suggestions for great, flavorful and healthy recipes for the slow cooker that don’t use any short cuts?

A: Marnie, Ive heard nothing but good things about Not Your Mothers Slow Cooker. The recipes are more complex and take a more international approach than your regular crockpot cookbook. Searching Saveur and Epicurious might also be helpful, since theyre a tad more gourmet than say, All Recipe (Which I love! But not for everything.)

Readers?

Want to ask the interweb a question? Post one in the comment section, or write to Cheaphealthygood@gmail.com. Then, tune in next Tuesday for an answer/several answers from the good people of the World Wide Net.

Lorri Brown is a mom, writer, and avid Murder She Wrote fan, who lives far away in the Mountains of Western Maine with her four awesome kids and three cats. When she’s not working in public health, she writes for About.com and bunch of other fun sites. 

Greetings CHG readers! I am sooo excited about being a guest blogger while Kris moves! (I just moved to a new house, so I know how much work that is- bleck). Anyway, I’m here to share with you my super-easy slow cooker recipe for Mexican Beans.

By day I work in community health, in the Wilds of Western Maine, doing nutrition outreach (please note, I am not a dietician, nurse, or doctor- nor do I play any of these on TV). By night I am a single mother of four children ranging in ages 14 to 6. So, I like cheap, healthy, good and quick foods. Theore, my slow cooker is my BFF.

This meal, adapted from an old family recipe, is easy-peasy to make and it goes a long, long way. I freeze leftover beans and use them in everything from scrambled egg breakfast burritos to a base for bean soup or chili. I’ve tried different variation of the recipe, but none satisfy me like the original version. In one case I thought I’d spice ‘em up with a little of Dave’s Insanity Hot Sauce- If you’ve never tried Dave’s – he’s not joking. One teaspoon of the hot sauce made two pounds of dried beans taste like you were eating molten lava. No one- not even my Middle Son who puts Tabasco sauce on everything- could eat them. I chalked that cooking experiment up as a valuable lesson learned.

If you aren’t familiar with the benefits of beans, here are a couple of quick facts: Beans are an excellent source of protein, containing 14-16grams per cup. They have approximately 1/3 the amount of protein of beef, without any of the fat or cholesterol. Beans are also a good source of fiber, potassium, magnesium, iron and folate. Okay, health lecture over, on to the recipe.

Slow Cooker Mexican Beans
Serving size – 1 cup of cooked beans
Makes 12 servings


 2 pounds (or 4 cups) of dried pinto beans
1 diced onion
½ a bottle (roughly 3 tablespoons) of cumin – it sounds like a lot, but this recipe makes a lot of beans!
1 Tbs. black pepper
1Tbs. garlic powder
1Tbs. onion powder
2 tsp. salt

1) Rinse beans and check for any stones.

2) Throw beans (no soaking required! Yay!) and onion into the crock pot and fill ¾ of the crock pot with water

3) Add all the spices

4) Set to low (8 hours)

5) Round up the kids and go to work. Come home to the fragrant smell of dinner already done!

Nutrition Facts:
I used Nutritionist Pro to calculate the nutrition info.

• Calories- 224
• Fat - .08 g
• Sodium – 395 mg (16% DV)
• Fiber – 10 g (40% DV)
• Sugars – 2 g
• Calcium – 76 mg (8% DV)
• Iron – 3 mg (19 % DV)
• Potassium – 895 mg (26% DV)

Cost per serving: $0.19

• Bag of beans - $1.19
• Onion - $0.50
• Cumin - $0.50
• Onion powder -$0.03
• Garlic powder - $0.03
• Salt - $0.03
• Pepper - $0.03

Serving Suggestions
I like to serve the beans with a little bit of shredded cheddar cheese and a tortilla to dip into the broth. However, they would go great with salsa and guacamole. Of course, what doesn’t go great with guacamole? After a day or two in the fridge the beans thicken to a porridge-like consistency, good for quesadillas.

Things You Should Know
I’ll be honest- this is a trial and error recipe at first. You might have to up the amount of spices, depending on your tastes. But I always stick with the time-honored advice of you can put in more salt/pepper/cumin/whatever- but you can’t take it out.