Young-Onset Dementia

A growing concern over young-onset dementia has sparked our own interest in it, lately. Young onset dementia affects individuals under the age of 65. It is often misdiagnosed or overlooked due to its rarity and the age of those it affects. It encompasses a range of neurological conditions, with Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, and frontotemporal dementia being the most common types. The symptoms can vary widely but generally include memory loss, difficulty with problem-solving, and changes in mood and behavior.

The Role of Physical Activity in Prevention

What research has been confirming over and over again, is that physical activity can be a cornerstone of dementia prevention. Here’s how:

1. Boosting Cardiovascular Health: Exercise improves cardiovascular health, which is directly linked to brain health. A healthy heart pumps blood more efficiently, delivering essential nutrients and oxygen to the brain!

2. Enhancing Neuroplasticity: Physical activity stimulates the production of neurotrophic factors, chemicals that support the growth and survival of neurons. This enhances neuroplasticity aka the brain's ability to form new neural connections.

3. Reducing Inflammation: Chronic inflammation has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases. Exercise can help to reduce inflammation levels in the body, potentially lowering the risk of dementia.

4. Stress Reduction: Chronic stress is a risk factor for cognitive decline. Exercise, particularly aerobic activities, can reduce stress levels, thereby indirectly protecting cognitive health.

OTHER PREVENTATIVE MEASURES:

1. Social Engagement: Engaging in social activities more than once a month can be protective against early dementia, while social isolation can increase the risk.

   2. Vitamin D Levels: Maintaining healthy vitamin D levels is crucial. Severe deficiency has been linked to a higher risk of YOD. Consuming vitamin-D-rich foods and supplements can be super beneficial.

   3. Physical Strength:

   • Grip Strength: Improving grip strength, an indicator of overall physical strength, can help to lower the risk of YOD.

While the risk of young-onset dementia can be influenced by genetic factors, lifestyle choices play a significant role in our genetic expression. By adopting a routine of regular physical activity, focusing on cardiovascular health, and engaging in exercises that challenge the brain, individuals can significantly reduce even a genetic predisposition to dementia.

BBH Tailored Fitness Programs

At BBH, we understand the importance of a personalized approach to physical fitness, especially when it comes to cognitive health. Our programs are designed to cater to individual needs and preferences, in hopes that we can help you hit your own personal goals.

1. Personalized Cardiovascular Training: We focus on cardiovascular health through a mix of aerobic exercises, tailored to suit each individual's fitness level and preferences.

2. Cognitive Challenge and Variety: Our routines include exercises that challenge the brain, such as coordination and balance activities, to stimulate mental engagement.

3. Mind-Body Approaches: We love sharing ways you can better connect your mind-body connection. Often times you will hear us referring to shifting your focus to a certain muscle you are trying to engage, to form that connection.

4. Stress Management: We love to weave in stress reduction techniques, recognizing its critical role in overall brain health.

Download the BBH Fitness App for fitness programs and nutrition plans you can trust to improve your physical and mental health!

Pickleball, What’s with the hype?!

Okay, who’s played it? Who loves it? We do. And here’s a little on why we’re hooked.

But first, for those who aren’t familiar, what even is pickleball?!

Pickleball is a dynamic paddle sport with roots in badminton, tennis, and table tennis. For all you history intrigued friends out there, it was actually invented not too long ago. It was birthed on Bainbridge Island, Washington, in 1965. Contrary to what some might believe, it wasn't named after pickled cucumbers. Instead, the sport was invented by three fathers, as a way to entertain their bored children. Hah!

So what about the name, why PICKLEball? There are 2 main theories, it turns out. Some say it was named after their dog, Pickles, who loved chasing the ball. Others believe it comes from the pickle boat in crew where oarsmen are chosen from the leftovers of other boats. So who really knows?! But it sure is a name that sticks!

Over the years, pickleball spread beyond the boundaries of Bainbridge Island. By the 1990s, it had established itself across the US, and in the 21st century, it expanded globally! 

Why do we love it so much? We mostly love that it’s a friendly competitive sport that can be appropriate for all ages and even athletic ability. BUT, we strongly believe you should include a good warmup (shared below) and even start including some agility work in your workouts if you want to stay injury free because pickleball injuries are on the rise!

Here are 3 health benefits that we associate with playing:

1. It’s a full-body workout! Pickleball gets you moving – from quick lateral moves to gentle sprints and volleys, it exercises a variety of muscle groups. The continual movement provides cardiovascular benefits, helping to increase endurance over time. During these movements, we target different muscles, offering a well-rounded physical activity sport.

2. Improves Reflexes and Balance. The gameplay involves quick decision-making and reflex action. This not only keeps the brain engaged but also helps in refining hand-eye coordination. With the repeated change in direction and short sprints, it’s common to improve our balance and agility, which is so important as we age!

3. Low Impact Yet Effective.  One of the charms of pickleball is that it's easier on the joints compared to a lot of other sports/exercises. This makes it suitable for older individuals or those recovering from injuries. The game provides an intense workout without putting too much stress on the body, promoting longevity and reducing the risk of injury, which is key!

Wait one more…4) it’s so much FUN! Talk about a little friendly competition…this game can quickly become an addictive activity, one you don’t want to stop playing (especially until you win! ;)

See you on the court :)

Pickleball Warmup

When More Is Not Better

“You either need to start eating more, or cut back on your exercise.”

When I told this to one client who wanted to lose fat and build more muscle, she told me she hard a hard time wrapping her head around that idea. Isn’t the goal to push harder and eat less when you want to lose weight and build muscle?

More exercise is only better if we can meet the demands of more. If more is leaving us always sore, prone to injuries, in constant pain and feeling “heavy” all the time, irritable and anxious or unable to mark improvement in our workouts and in making body composition changes, we may be doing too much. Or, I could also share the perspective that if you may not be over training, but you may be under recovering.

When we consider the balance of movement and recovery, we have to remember that if we are exercising more, our recovery needs to be even more intentional and meet the demands of what we’re asking our body to do, otherwise, we send our body into a stress response that can prevent us from feeling our best and meeting fitness goals like weight loss and strength gains.

On average, most of us benefit best from training 3-5 days per week of moderate to intense workouts. You can certainly exercise 7 days per week but likely some of those days should be mobility focused or lower intensity.

If you’re participating in the BUILD program in the BBH Online Studio, you’ve already noticed that even though we schedule out 6 days of workouts for you each week, we want you to focus on meeting the 3 priority days workouts first! If you’re recovering well from those 3 workouts, you’re invited to complete our supplementary workouts. Always included are mobility focused workouts and recovery focused workouts. Every single workout shouldn’t crush you.

If you’re hitting these recommendations and not seeing results and notice your body is always exhausted, you likely need to prioritize recovery better to meet the demands of your moderate/intense workouts with these tips:

• Fuel Better: Often when I have clients track their nutrition to help troubleshoot why they aren’t seeing results from all of their hard work, I find a lack of nutrients and proper hydration. Not enough protein is a big culprit for a lot of women but also lack of energy from very low-carb diets with frequent exercising contribute to lack of results.

• Sleep Better: Ya’ll, I cannot stress the importance of this one for better recovery. Get on a schedule. Go to bed earlier. And try to keep the routine at least most weekends too.

• Consider your program: Stop over doing it! If you’re training 6-7 days per week and doing a heavy full body workout or HIIT workouts every single workout, you may want to consider varying your workouts to include recovery based workouts, lower intensity cardio and mobility focused workouts between heavy days to give your muscles more time to recover.

• Supplement: Many times, lack of important minerals from for example an insufficiently nutrient dense diet can lead to deficiencies that aid in better muscle tissue repair. Start with a basic multi-vitamin if you haven’t already!

If you feel like you need more guidance, it’s not too late to join the BUILD program on the BBH Online studio. As a member of the BBH Online studio, you can expect the availability of more personalized coaching just by reaching out to your BBH trainers any time you have a question.

What I’ve Learned About Correcting Movement, Balancing Hormones & Improving Your Fitness

I’ve always tried my best to commit to a growth mindset. In an industry where science is still being uncovered, we must accept that we don’t know it all. I’ve continued to evolve my training practices around the latest science but also around daily discoveries I make with each individual client. 

I want to share a few things I was confronted with this year that really challenged what I know about correcting movement, balancing hormones, and improving your fitness.

Is Corrective Exercise Overrated? 

I have been a self proclaimed “form police” type of trainer. I’ve always believed one of my biggest responsibilities as a trainer is to fix my clients muscle imbalances through corrective exercises. There’s a very big message in our industry claiming that we are broken and we need to be fixed or else we’ll get injured. Well, that’s not necessarily true and that messaging with clients only instills fear of movement. It can prevent many from even getting started on their fitness journey. In reality, we are not as fragile as we may believe.

I recently dove into numerous published studies around movement dysfunction and their relationship to injuries. Excuse me while I grossly summarize these findings for the sake of this article- I’ve cited sources below for reference if you are interested. 

In these prospective design approaches where we look at the outcome (injury) first to hypothesize a causation (why it happened), we see that joint dysfunctions was not the likely cause for injury. Clients rehabbing from injuries got stronger and became pain free over time simply by following a gym strength training program EVEN THOUGH they showed no change in the way they moved. So they got better, but still moved the same way.

So how does this change the way that I train? I still demand better form from clients, but I am less rigid about it. While we can still agree that major muscle imbalances can create problems over time, it appears that some degree of imbalance is totally safe. If the movement isn’t absolutely “perfect”. I’m less hung up on addressing it solely through corrective exercise before moving forward. I confidently lean more into the “where do you feel this exercise? Or “how does this exercise feel” question I always ask my clients. If the exercise is eliciting a muscle burn in the intended muscle group, we’re moving in the right direction. We can “correct” and strengthen at the same time. And what seems to be more important for becoming pain free, is to prioritize getting stronger using heavier load.

Sources: 

Swain et. al, 2020 PMID 31451200

Menezes Costa et. al, 2011 PMID 20655254

Alfonso et. al, 2021 PMID PMC C8067745

Pardos-Mainer et. al, 2021 PMID 33419178

Hormonal Health. 

For the past two years I’ve been on a more in depth journey to see if there was anything new I could discover around women and their hormonal health at every stage of life. I completed multiple online continuing education courses and soaked up information from experts in the field hoping to uncover some new truths.

The biggest truth remains unchanged, and that’s that our first line of defense for creating a more flexible metabolism and balancing our hormones to maintain a healthy weight, achieve weight loss, gain energy and to build muscle at any age, boils down to managing stress through diet and exercise (specifically strength training). 

That’s not to oversimplify the fact that our hormones fluctuate depending on our monthly cycles and reproductive age, but regardless of whatever stage we are in, a healthy diet and focus on strength training should be our first approach to encouraging a more flexible metabolism.

My mission in 2023 is to help women become more in sync with their own biofeedback so we can translate it into what their exercise and nutritional approach should look like. You may be eating too much, you may be eating too little. You may be over training, you may be under training. You may need more recovery. You may need to focus on a few lifestyle habits to combat insomnia and improve energy. In the new year, I’ll be focusing more on coming up with easy methods for interpreting our hormonal cues to be able to implement more effective training and nutritional strategies. 

Focus on PROTEIN and Improve Your Fitness.

I’ve wavered from not really paying much attention to protein (just paying attention to eating whole foods and keeping it healthy), to (after reading Proteinaholic) believing we get way too much protein and in the next year limiting animal protein to no more than one meal per day or less, and now swinging back around to the power of protein for faster recovery and more efficiently achieving body recomposition. 

Whether you choose to get your protein primarily from plants or from animal sources is your own choice but I do wholeheartedly believe that getting animal protein has incredible advantages. Animal protein is more bioavailable, it’s a lower total caloric whole food protein option, and holds unique micronutrients you can’t find as available in plants. 

If you have goals to lose weight more easily and build muscle for better metabolic health, then eating enough protein must be a priority for reaching those goals more easily. 

We’ve explored prescribing protein rich diets in our BBH Nutrition Corner for our online studio clients as well as encouraged clients in the studio to track protein and in every case where the client has been compliant consistently, we’ve witnessed them achieve body recomposition goals. They have lost fat AND built muscle at the same time which is typically no easy task! If you want to become MORE FIT in 2023, prioritize protein. Don’t know where to start? Well, I’d say reach out for a personalized evaluation. Or start by following our BUILD program featured for the next 3 months this year.

“The more you know. The more you realize you don’t know.” - Aristotle 

Keep on learning in 2023.