The Hidden Foundations of Health

Why is walking so good for us, and retirement so bad???

Walking seems unreasonably good for us. The more you walk every day, the lower your risk of death from all causes, with the longevity-enhancement effect plateauing at around 8,000 steps.

On the flip side, health deteriorates rapidly when we stop walking. Bedrest is extremely hazardous to your health. In less than a week of bedrest, we lose significant amounts of muscle mass and bone mineral density, and experience widespread deteriorations in organ function. It’s as if the body hits the self destruct button.

Just from nothing more than not getting up and walking around.

Again, the impact of walking on our health seems unreasonably large.

After all, walking doesn’t hurt. And most of the time, it doesn’t feel like we’re expending much effort. It rarely even causes us to break a sweat.

And yet, there’s pretty much universal consensus that walking regularly should be the foundation of physical fitness.

The reason walking isn’t usually challenging is not because it’s inherently easy.

It’s because, over a lifetime of doing it every day, our body has become extremely well adapted to it.

The only time we get to glimpse its true challenge is when we lose those adaptations after illness or injury. Here, regaining the ability to walk is a monumental effort. In these circumstances, we realize that the “simple” act of walking around is actually a huge stimulus to our muscles and connective tissues.

The benefits of walking are hidden because walking feels easy. And the reason it feels easy is precisely because we do it every day. This is the nature of adaptation - the better adapted we are to something, the easier it becomes.

Fully maintaining our body’s adaptations to walking, which the research shows takes about 8,000 steps per day, clearly pays enormous health benefits. And losing those adaptations is clearly catastrophic to our health.

My suspicion is that there’s a similar story behind the connection between retirement, brain health, and cognitive decline.

As you may recall, multiple studies have revealed that retiring early is hazardous to your brain health and cognitive function. On average, those who retire early are at a significantly heightened risk of cognitive decline and dementia compared to their working peers.

But why?

You might think it has something to do with intellectual stimulation provided by one’s occupation. This may play a role at least in some cases, but it doesn’t appear to be the primary contributor. Especially for jobs we’ve been doing for extended periods of time.

What jobs do provide, however, is social engagement. Studies show that, on average, the biggest change to a person’s life before and after retirement is in their level of social engagement. Social interactions tend to drop markedly after retirement.

As you’ve likely heard me say before, early human life is extraordinarily demanding on the brain. A big reason why is because it’s the time when our brain is acquiring our core human cognitive capabilities, one of which is our social cognition.

We are the most social species on the planet. And it is our advanced social behavior, made possible by advances in our brains, that allowed us to leapfrog to the top of the food chain.

Like walking, it’s easy to overlook the monumental complexity and challenge of social cognition. And easy to under-appreciate its value. As with walking, our ease of execution has nothing to do with its intrinsic difficulty, and everything to do with how well our brain has adapted to it.

After all, we consider a hallmark of expertise the ability to make something we know to be really hard “look easy.”

We only truly appreciate the value of our adaptations to social cognition when we start to lose them. Just as not walking is catastrophic for the health of our body, not socializing is catastrophic for the health of our brain (with the drop in cognitive stimulation being one of likely several reasons why).

For the body and the brain, maintaining the adaptations that support our core human capabilities is the foundation upon which a program of fitness is built.

FROM THE BRAINJO LIBRARY...

Loneliness: Human Nature and The Need for Social Connection, by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick

You may have heard that the US surgeon general recently declared loneliness a public health epidemic, citing data showing that social isolation poses health risks as deadly as smoking up to 15 cigarettes daily.

That declaration, along with our growing awareness of the deep importance of social connection, likely wouldn’t have occurred had it not been for social neuroscientist John T. Cacioppo’s pioneering research on the startling and far reaching effects of loneliness on human health and well being. It is an enormously important and under-appreciated issue, and a problem we all need to be working to solve.

Organizations Combatting Loneliness & Social Isolation

While we’re on the topic of addressing the loneliness epidemic…if you’re interested in getting involved, here are a couple of organizations doing good work:

• Connect2Affect, from the AARP (US)

• Campaign To End Loneliness (UK)

This Week on Better Brain Fitness: “How To Support Concussion Recovery (and should headers in football/soccer be banned?)”

In this episode, we address a question from listener, Joao, concerning the concussion risks associated with heading the ball in soccer. In the process, we cover some related topics, including:

• How to enhance recovery after head trauma

• Why women may be at a heightened risk of concussion

• Nutrients that can improve concussion recovery

• The role of body temperature on concussion severity

• Sports with the highest concussion risk

Do you have a question for us for The Better Brain Fitness podcast? Submit it here.

That’s all for this issue of the Brainjo Connection. Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!

Josh