The Power of Reframe, Potential Risks of Heartburn Medications, Dual-tasking Improves Memory
Lightbulbs & Pearls | 011—My 2024 Commitment to You
My 2024 Commitment to You
Happy New Year fellow Ageosophers! As you may have read in my last post of 2023, Reframing “Resolutions,” I’ve shifted my mindset to more action-oriented “Commitments.” To that end, I’ve given a great deal of thought as to what I’d like to accomplish with Ageosophy in 2024. While I believe I’m on the right path, there is still much more I’d like to learn, so I’m going to commit to expanding my horizons to seek out the best information available to provide you with the optimal tools to take control of your health and well-being.
I firmly believe we have the power to determine our longevity, and I sincerely hope to inspire you to take charge of every aspect of your life to live well, age great in 2024! Let’s get started…
The Power of the Reframe
To aid in retooling and rebooting in 2024, I want to expand on the power of reframing—purposefully looking at situations differently—for our overall health and well-being. While this is essentially the notion of the “glass half empty or half full,” reframing how we view our circumstances gives us control in nearly every area of our life.
Although I strive to view life's challenges through the lens of gratitude and faith, reframing goes a step further and I have found it to be a fascinating tool. I discovered this when Megyn Kelly was interviewing Scott Adams about his book, Reframe Your Brain: the User Interface for Happiness and Success. Scott Adams is perhaps best known as the creator of the remarkably successful cartoon, Dilbert, but he is also a social commentator and a highly prolific author.
I was so intrigued by Adam’s idea of purposefully shifting perspective, which then in turn dramatically changes a situation, that I bought yet another book. Full disclosure, I haven’t quite finished it, but I’ve gotten far enough to learn very useful applications. Scott repackages this tried-and-true concept in very relevant, practical situations so that you can immediately apply it to your life for seriously big changes.
For instance, as some of you may remember, my husband and I were uncharacteristically late in decorating our home for Christmas last year (yes, it’s a new year!), to the point that our 16-year-old son was complaining about the missing decorations. Never fear, we finally got everything in place with 10 days to spare and something very unexpected occurred: since it wasn’t the protracted, diluted holiday season we’re surrounded by out and about, it immediately transformed the house in a way that felt magical and special. I reframed my thinking from kicking myself “gosh, we are so late this year” to “wow, this is the perfect time to decorate, now it’s Christmas!”
Let the reframes begin!
Heartburn Medications May Lead to Osteoporosis
When my mom moved in with us back in 2007, naturally she brought along all her medications and daily pills…which included a slew of over-the-counter acid reflux remedies. As I unpacked big bottles of Tums (I didn’t even know they came in such enormous bottles) and boxes of Prilosec, the first thought that crossed my mind was “Why the heck does she need all these heartburn pills?!”
I eventually weaned her off all of them by eliminating processed foods from her diet and making most of her meals from scratch; in fact, I don’t remember having to replenish the acid reflux meds at all during the thirteen years she lived with us before she passed in 2020. But my memory snapshot of the collection recently resurfaced when I read that heartburn medication may hamper the absorption of minerals that could lead to osteoporosis. Good grief, my mom indeed suffered from bone loss to such a degree that when she had hip surgery, the surgeon said her bones were mush…he could literally push the screws in by hand.
I’m a wee bit concerned that I inherited her bones, so I decided to delve a little deeper…and I discovered that “proton pump inhibitors” also known as PPI (which treat a myriad of upper GI disorders) were associated with an increased risk of vitamin and mineral deficiencies that could impact vitamin B12, vitamin C, calcium, iron, and magnesium metabolism. These include over-the-counter meds Omeprazole (Prilosec), Esomeprazole (Nexium), Lansoprazole (Prevacid), as well as prescriptions Rabeorazole and Pantoprazole.
While the risks appear to be relatively low for the general population, there seems to be a lot of speculation as to precisely what all the “potential risks” of long-term PPI use are. For sure there were many other factors at play with my mom, but my philosophy is why take a chance—use them as little as possible, if at all. If these are meds that you use, perhaps look upstream to determine what might be causing excess stomach acid; focus your diet on “gut-friendly” foods as well as foods high in natural enzymes such as pineapples, papayas, mangoes, bananas, and honey; try a soothing tea made from fresh ginger and lemon; the healing properties of Manuka honey are amazing; and try a clean, non-pharmaceutical alternative such as Wonderbelly.
Dual-tasking Exercise Enhances Cognitive Function
I came across a post where Dr. Heather Sandison, a naturopathic doctor specializing in dementia, was teasing “the best exercise” to stave off Alzheimer’s. While I am normally skeptical of the “best things,” I stopped to listen as part of my daily information sweep and was intrigued by her recommendation: to undertake dual-tasking exercises, such as walking while talking. This made a lightbulb go off, as I have written in the past about the efficacy of racquet sports (which clearly is thinking and moving) for longevity as well as cognitive function.
This dual-tasking, which is defined as simultaneously performing two or more cognitive and/or motor skills, has indeed been found to be very effective for a range of neurological issues, including memory and balance. I found a clinical trial article from 2021 that concluded that “multimodal physical exercise training and multisensory cognitive stimulation in a dual-task paradigm improved cognitive performance on visual episodic memory, verbal episodic memory, sustained visual attention, and also improved functional capacity on cardiorespiratory conditioning, lower limb strength resistance, functional mobility, gait speed on a single task, dual-task performance and quality of life.”
Granted, the regime utilized in the study was more robust than a single modality of walking and talking, but as with all exercise programs, every component matters and builds to the overall impact. I discovered that there is a whole world of dual-task training that ranges from broad-stroke overall betterment to ailment-specific healing to athletic performance improvement. And it doesn’t have to be complicated: at its most fundamental level, it can be as simple as walking and counting, or playing an instrument while reading sheet music.
Now that this is on my radar, I’m going to incorporate some form of dual-tasking exercises into my weekly program. Perhaps when I take the stairs, I’ll do simple math in my head…
Dress for Exercise Success
As many of you may be trying to jumpstart exercise programs, I thought I’d share a pearl that puts me in the right frame of mind to exercise: apparel. This may seem obvious, but I think clothes are underutilized as a powerful tool in guiding actions. Think of when you get all dressed up for an event or a wedding: you act according to how you are dressed. Likewise, for me, what I wear to exercise puts me in the frame of mind for that particular activity and I feel very obligated to follow through.
For instance, my husband and I have a regular morning exercise schedule: we walk early on Monday and Wednesday; hike on Friday; and weight train on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. So the first thing I do after I wake up is to put on my workout clothes for that morning—and immediately my mind shifts to knowing that is one of the first things I need to accomplish for the day.
I go a step further and only wear exercise clothes to actually exercise…I am not one of those women who runs errands in leggings and running shoes. That’s a pet peeve that I’ll set aside for now, but suffice it to say that I find that having attire dedicated to specific activities creates an influential mindset and commits me to follow through. Not that I’m a clothes horse…I’m very simple in my wardrobe and literally have only one outfit per type of activity, but it’s enough to do the trick. Even on the occasional busy morning when I think I’ve run out of time to exercise—because I’m dressed and feel guilty changing without doing something—I’ll squeak in 10 or 15 minutes…it’s better than nothing!