Active brain key to better health, consultant says

When you enter a room and can't remember what you are there for or see an approaching acquaintance but can't remember his or her name momentarily, try grabbing the upper part of your ear and roll it back and then forward.

"It's a powerful technique," says Bruce Boguski, a performance consultant and president of The Winner's Edge in Findlay. The top section of the ear is an acupuncturist's site for needle placement for dealing with the limbric system in the brain, he said. "It's acupressure instead of acupuncture" but it may bring up the memory.

Boguski was speaking on "Keeping Your Brain Alive" to a full house of women attending the annual Ladies Night Out 2007 at the Galleria in Celina on Thursday evening. The program included a series of free tests, such as blood pressure and osteoporosis screening, prior to a meal. There also were two speakers, Dr. Lisa D. Yee, an oncology surgeon and professor with Ohio State University who spoke about breast cancer prevention and Boguski, who has a BA in business and education from Bowling Green State University and a level two certification in brain-based learning strategies.

Boguski said people learn or remember points better if there is humor -or any kind of emotion - associated with it. "If you laugh, you'll remember it and if you cry, you'll remember it," Boguski said. "The more emotion you can pack into it, the more you learn."

He follows his own instructions. His audience laughed a good deal during his presentation.

He said after he had given a group of students some techniques for remembering prior to a testing session, one of the supervisors told him an awful lot of students left the place with red ears.

Boguski told the group that, contrary to common belief of the past, you are always growing new brain cells.

"Its been proven," he stated. "The problem is not the lack of cells but the cells are not communicating."

"It is how the cells are speaking to each other," Boguski told the group. "Stress is a big problem here (for learning and memory). Stress can begin very early in life. Children don't know how to relax," he warned.

Stress (and how we deal with a minor memory loss) may be worse than the memory loss itself, Boguski said.

The brain is not static, Boguski continued. Most people in his audience knew the creative side of the brain is predominantly on the right. But Boguski said the two sides fight for dominance every day. One part of the day, you may be more creative than another time. If you want to switch, try making a lazy eight (a figure 8, lying on its side) with your left hand several times. Boguski gave a demonstration.

Tips to help memory and learning: Spray peppermint in the area where you are studying, then when it comes time to recall the learned items for a test or speech, pop a peppermint in your mouth the smell will aid recall; read something aloud if you are an auditory learner, read it in an accent (Boguski prefers a Texas accent); kinetic learners should try a hand-held stress ball while trying to learn. Also, deep breathing, exercise, enough sleep and good nutrition factor into keeping the brain alive long into old age.

Anybody who has to take a test, including teens, should wear a Breathe Right Strip, maybe in school colors.

"Super Bowl players wear them for better breathing, Boguski says. "Why not us."

He related the story of Shirley Miller whose dream it was to write a book. The problem was Miller had a hard beginning and had to drop out of school before she really knew how to read or write. Three months after friends tried to talk her out of the effort, Miller's book "Everything Men Know About Women" was published. It had blank pages. She sold 1.5 million copies at $3.50 each.

"The secret of life is attitude. Go for it. Go for your dreams!" he advised.

In her speech, Dr. Yee told the women in the audience that the breast was a gland that changed at various times during a woman's life. It changed at puberty, at pregnancy, at menopause and at post-menopause.

High risk factors, other than being female, includes a history of breast cancer in the family, and age beyond menopause. Diseases such as obesity and diabetes or other inflammatory related diseases are also risk factors for the disease.

Preventative care is annual mammograms, at least by age 40, medical exams by doctors and self exams. Good health in other areas such as diet and exercise, help as well.