Do you think about brain health?

The health of our brain is crucial to everything we do, affecting how well we move, think, and feel. Recent neuroscience discoveries indicate that regularly engaging in healthy lifestyle activities - like physical exercise, maintaining a healthy diet, sleeping well, meditating, and having strong social connections – can have a powerful effect on the structure of our brain, the way it functions, and our overall brain health. This means that much like our physical health, our brain health could be something we continually work to improve, all throughout our lives. But do you - or would you – engage in science-recommended lifestyle activities to enhance your brain health?

The research team at Monash University’s BrainPark (www.brainpark.com) are seeking the help of Australians all over the country to answer this question. Hundreds of young people have already completed a short survey about their attitudes towards brain health and using lifestyle approaches to enhance it. Now they need assistance from those who are over 60, to better understand their unique perspectives and attitudes. Can you help?

The survey takes 10 – 15 minutes and is done online, your responses are anonymous, and all entrants are invited into a prize draw to win one of three $50 Coles/Myer vouchers.

The BrainPark research team will use your responses to shape how they develop new science-based lifestyle programs for better brain health, how they encourage people to engage with them in the community, and how they work with the medical system to bring them into routine health care. By having your say, you are helping the research team create healthy habits, brains, and lifestyles across Australia!

Follow the link below to contribute:

https://monash.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ahKsbGoRvbgfSM5

If you find it interesting, please share the survey link with your friends and family so we can hear from as many people as possible.

If you wish to share on Facebook, please use the following link to our Facebook post

https://www.facebook.com/BrainParkMonash/photos/a.271144796796783/689975911580334/

*this research project has been approved by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee, project #24793.

9 comments

I had a stroke just under 3 years ago. I think it is very important to keep our brains as active and healthy as we can. I enjoy doing many types of word puzzles and other types of puzzles as well as watching quiz shows on the TV and answering the questions. I also try to keep up with current affairs. I am also an avid reader and can immerse myself in a book for hours. I am very lucky to have survived the stroke as well as I did and I want to be able to do things and keep as active physically and mentally for as long as I can. Unfortunately my husband has advanced Alzheimer's Disease and to watch someone who had a clear mind turn into someone who doesn't know you or what is going on or can't communicate, or feed himself is a very sad thing. Brain health is very important.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us, I'm sorry to hear about your husband. We hope that further research into brain health can open up more opportunities for lifestyle medicine activities to become part of routine care and act as preventative measures towards cognitive decline and neurological illnesses in the future. 

Hi everyone, I am one of the researchers from Monash University who is conducting this study. 

 

I just wanted to thank everyone who has responded to our survey so far, it's been an overwhelming response in the last couple days. I could never have imagined getting such a great response and I'm truly greatful to you all, its been an awesome few days watching the number of responses go up and up. 

 

In fact we've had such a great response from you all that the 60+ age group has more than double the numbers of the other two groups and we are now pushing for more people in their 40s and 50s to have their say. If you have already completed the survey and would like to help us further, please share the survey link with your friends and family, especially those in their 40s and 50s.

 

For those of you who are yet to complete the survey, please don't hesitiate to get involved, we still want to hear from you!

 

I'll be around to answer any questions that you may have so feel free to post here or email me at JPIT0003@student.monash.edu if you have any questions or queries. 

I have started to fill this survey in BUT there are many questions that are unable to be answered -  the way they have been put -- and we should have to be able to put answerers that are able to explain -- these questions are too black and white  once you get to a certain age

 

I completly understand where you're coming from, there is an opportunity to explain your responses at the end of the survey where there are open-text response questions if this helps at all.

The reason why we have limited response options available in the majority of the survey is to allow for standardised measurement across participants but I understand it can be frustrating if they're not entirely appropriate for your individual circumstances. 

If there are specific questions that were particularly difficult please send me an email and I'll discuss these with my team. Thank you for your feedback and interest in our survey :)

 

I guess having read this and have half filled it out -- unable to finish because of what I said in the above post

I have seen and had something to do with  "mindfulness" and I was an absolute total waste of time -- for pain control and other illness that has no cure, but they kept telling me that meditation would cure it --I have done yoga all my life and am still very supple but that does not help my -- or anyones pain pain caused by a medical problem

In my situation thee are no black and white answers -- if you read my above post you will understand.

What you are recommending MIGHT work for some mental problems or forms of depression -- but it will not work for medically diagnosed physical conditions.

Yes brain health is VERY important - and keeping it active is also important --

I completely understand what you are saying, it is very important for us to hear from people who have varying opinons on brain health and lifestyle medicine. The motivation behind our research is to hear about what people think and try and address any barriers or issues that people have in the future. 

I havn't had any training into medicially diagnosed physical conditions so I don't know much about the efficacy of lifestyle medicine approaches for these conditions, especially to do with pain management. Like you said our recommendations and the focus of this study is on brain health. Having said that it makes sense that your previous experiences wuth mindfulness would impact on your opinions for its use towards enhancing brain health.

I'm really glad you brought up these issues and if you wish to contibute these thoughts into the study you can continue from where you left off if you click on the link again and use the open-text responses at the end to outline these issues you have had in the past with mindfulness. 

Thank you -- I would like to do the survey, however, there are a lot of questions that I believe are very true but I am unable to answer right -- ie -- I used to be VERY active and would LOVE to be now but I am unable to do such -- maybe I will have another crack at it when I get time maybe tomorrow

No worries, thank you so much for discussing this with me and again I appreciate your interest in our survey!

BTW I have done the survey

Thank you so much for completing it!

Ive carried out the survey and hope on completion that you will share the research results with us.

Thank you for completing the survey! I will 100% share a summary of results once we collate our data later on in the year :)

 

Looking forward to it :)

 

In the meantime Suze, if you know anyone in their 40s and 50s who might be interested it would be great if you could share the survey link with them

OK I will email it to my friends :)

Awesome, thank you :)

I'd like to take the opportunity and thank YLC Admin for giving us the opportunity to participate in this research.

Hey everyone, I'd just like to thank everyone again, this community has been huge reason our data collection was such a success! We are now in the final stages of our data collection and we are trying to get another 40 or so people aged 40-59. This is to balance out our sample so we have roughly 300 participants in each of our 3 age groups (huge numbers compared to our initial goal of just 200 which we got from members of this community alone!). So if there are any members in this forum in their 40s and 50s, we'd really appreicate it if you could have your say. For others, if you could please share the link to the survey with your sons, daughters, friends, colleagues, and anyone else that comes to mind it'd be a huge help!

Thanks again everyone, you've all been awesome :)

 

To share:

SURVEY LINK: https://monash.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ahKsbGoRvbgfSM5

FACEBOOK LINK: https://www.facebook.com/BrainParkMonash/photos/a.271144796796783/689975911580334/

YOUR LIFE CHOICES LINK: https://www.yourlifechoices.com.au/the_meeting_place/post/do-you-think-about-brain-health 

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE: We have just about hit our target numbers for each group!

We are now looking for 10 more members of this community aged 60+ to have their say to bring the group up to 300 participants! Please have your say if you havn't already or send it to anyone who you think might be interested in helping us out in this final phase. 

Thanks again everyone :)

9 comments



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