I SPENT my weekend reading and digesting a very interesting and fascinating book, Magnificent Mind At Any Age, published in 2008 by Three Rivers Press, New York, and written by Dr. Daniel G. Amen, a well-known neuroscientist, psychiatrist and brain-imaging expert.
In brief, let me share it with you: “The brain,” Amen said, “is the organ of loving, learning, behaving, intelligence, personality, character, belief and knowing, and the information in it travels at the speed of 268 miles per hour, unless, of course, you are drunk, which really slows things down.”
The brain, he explained, is also the most complicated thing in the universe with an estimated 100 billion nerve cells, with more connections in it than there are stars in the universe, consisting of only about 2 percent of your body’s weight and uses about 25 percent of the calories you consume.
“If you take a piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand, it contains a hundred thousand neurons and a billion connections all communicating with one another. If you are not thoughtful, the brain loses an average of 85,000 brain cells a day, or one per second,” Amen said.
Inside your skull with many ridges, the brain is comprised of 80-percent water and is the consistency of soft butter or custard, somewhere between egg whites and Jell-O. In Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, neurosurgeon Katrina Firlik, “describes the brain like tofu, the soft kind, which when caught in suction during surgery slurps into the tube.”
These ridges damage the brain during trauma, “so why would you ever let a child hit a soccer ball with their heads, play tackle football [even with helmets], skateboard, or snowboard or ski without helmets?”
“The brain loves physical activity and it is better to think about safer brain sports, such as tennis, table tennis, track and field [although not pole vaulting], and basketball,” Amen said.
A 2007 study by John Adams and colleagues at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine found that hitting a soccer ball with one’s head may be linked to long-term brain injury and memory problems later in life. Researchers found evidence of reduced gray matter in the brains of male college soccer players, compared with young men who had never played.
The single most important thing Amen learned from looking at tens of thousands of scans is that mild traumatic brain injuries change people’s whole lives (by damaging their brain) and no one knows it.
“The brain-injured person often suffers from emotional, behavioral, or cognitive problems that may lead him to a psychiatrist or psychologist, who typically never looks at the brain. Problems that are physically based are often considered psychological. If you never look at the brain, you will likely miss what many researchers have called the silent epidemic. There are 2 million reported new brain-injury cases every year, and millions of others that go unnoticed,” Amen explained.
“When I first started the imaging work, I saw a lot of brain injury patterns on scans. When I asked patients about a history of head injuries they denied them. When I pressed, a whole new world opened up. I found out that people often forgot significant injuries. I had to ask them three, four, even 10 times. Many people forget or they did not realize that they have had a serious brain injury. You would be amazed by how many people after repeatedly saying no to this question suddenly get an ‘aha’ look on their face and say, ‘Why, yes, I fell out of a second-story window at age 7,’” he said.
“Or they tell us they went through the windshield of a car headfirst, had concussions playing football or soccer, or fell down a flight of stairs. Not all brain injuries, even serious ones, will cause damage—there is an interaction between genetic vulnerability and trauma. Moreover, the brain is buffered by the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes it. Still, damage can occur more than most know,” Amen revealed. Many of the troubled people they see at the Amen Clinics have had a brain injury (or two or three), and damaging your brain may limit or impair your ability to be successful in any area of your life, he said.
“People who have experienced head injuries have a higher incidence of drug abuse, alcoholism, mood problems, divorce, domestic violence, arrests, financial problems and every other type of trouble that leads to failure,” the expert concluded.
So, protect your soft brain and be the best!
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@ gmail.com