053: Where Did You Go? How Movement Brings Your Brain Back

[00:00:01] 12 Hours in the Air, Minneapolis to Haneda Airport, Direct. No sleep, not the right kind of food. Water, yes I drank water but not enough and no alcohol which I mentioned because drinking on a flight is actually not a very good thing to do. And I did make good decisions at 30,000 feet.

[00:00:28] I landed in Tokyo and was not feeling quite like myself. Not really sick, not dramatic, just feeling like it wasn't me. I wasn't quite all there like part of me had just gone somewhere or left over the Pacific Ocean and had not caught up with me yet.

[00:00:49] The customs line was long. It moved quickly but I can tell you I know what the full-blown Diana feels like and that was not it. I was meeting a group there so we all met. Two train rides to the hotel and by the time I got to the room I had one priority. I needed to eat something real and to sleep.

[00:01:18] And it just happened that next door to the hotel was a 7-11. Now the 7-11 there are much different than the ones that we have here in the US. They actually have fresh prepared food. Real food like fruits and fruit salad and different kinds of chicken salad or chicken with different kinds of salad underneath. And it's all really fresh.

[00:01:50] And I knew that I needed to eat something that would be good but I didn't want to eat too much because we were going to go to dinner later. And we did. The nice thing was that we walked to dinner and back. And this was nothing that I said I need a walk. It wasn't intentional. It was just we moved through the city and that was very much how I started to feel better.

[00:02:19] And it was me negotiating with a body that had no idea what time zone it was in, what it needed to do. Are we supposed to be eating? Are we supposed to be sleeping? What are we supposed to be doing? By the time I sat down to eat after the short walk to the restaurant, I started to feel different. And it wasn't because the food because we hadn't eaten yet. The food was not there yet. It was because of the walking.

[00:02:49] The walking helped reorganize me. By morning I was back. Not all the way, but enough. And by the time I was standing on the grass outside the Osaka Castle three days later, in my sparkly deck shoes, by the way, leading a group of 20 strangers through a movement sequence, I was completely and entirely myself.

[00:03:16] Your body knows how to come back. It just needs the right signal. And that's what we're talking about today. Tired of feeling stuck, unseen, or like your body isn't yours anymore? It's time for a reset.

[00:03:40] Welcome to An Ageless Life, the Midlife Reset Show, where science, movement, and mindset help you feel strong, energized, and like yourself. I'm Diana Debbie, a clinical pharmacist, Argentine tango dancer and instructor, and your guide for redefining how women thrive and grow in midlife and beyond. Let's get started.

[00:04:10] I'm Diana Debbie, clinical pharmacist for 40 years, Argentine tango dancer and instructor, and host of the Midlife Reset Show. This is episode 53, part 3 of Running on Full. When was the last time you felt like yourself? Not the functioning, not the I'm fine, not the I have got to make it through the day. Actually yourself. Clear.

[00:04:40] Present. Sharp. In your body. For a lot of women I talk to, the answer is somewhere between vague, I don't know when, and it might have been a long time ago. And they describe, is that in the meantime sounds like this, forgetting words, mid-sentence. Walking into a room and not remembering why you came in there. Looking in the mirror.

[00:05:08] Looking in the mirror and recognize a face, but not quite the person behind it. One woman told me, she said, I feel like an alien has moved into my body and has taken control. And all I can do is watch. She wasn't wrong exactly. And she wasn't broken. And neither are you. You're disconnected. And there, there's a difference. And at the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what to do about it.

[00:05:40] In the last episode, I talked about cortisol. If you haven't heard it, that's okay. You can go back and listen to it after we're finished. How the rhythm breaks. And how the 2 p.m. crash in the afternoon and the wake up at 3 a.m. are the same system that is misfiring. Here's what that does to your brain.

[00:06:04] And before I say something more, if you've been feeling slow or foggy or unlike yourself, I want you to know this is not weakness. It's not aging. That's not who you're becoming. That's a cortisol problem wearing you as an old costume. Let me say that again.

[00:06:29] That's a cortisol problem wearing you as an old costume. In other words, it's a costume that you're putting on that says that you're old. It's not the truth. And the reason nobody told you about that is because it's complicated. It's because most people aren't looking at the whole system. You have been.

[00:06:57] And here's what sustained high cortisol level does to your brain over time. It damages the part of your brain that's responsible for memory, learning, finding words. That's why when you walk into a room, you forget why you came in there. That's why the word that you want disappears mid-sentence or, heaven forbid, the name of someone that you've known for a while and you're trying to introduce them.

[00:07:28] That's why the woman in the mirror feels slightly unfamiliar. There's a clinical term for this, what happens with the cortisol, and it's called neurotoxic. And I'm going to use it because that's the right word. And this is what it means in plain English. Your brain has been working in a chemical environment that it was not designed to sustain. It was not designed to be there all the time.

[00:07:58] And there's a cost. And here's what I want you to know. It's reversible. Not partially, but substantially. The brain can rebuild. It can respond to the right interventions. And that intervention, which is one of my personal favorites, is movement.

[00:08:22] Here's what, and to be very precise about it, when most people say movement, they mean exercise. Cardio, lifting, steps, all those things are wrong. But they're not the whole story. And there's a lot of research that points to some very specific things. It's not just that movement is good for your brain.

[00:08:45] It's that movement which requires your brain and your body to work together at the same time. Does something totally different. Something so much more. And that's the exciting part. Think about what happens when you learn a dance step. Your brain is processing the music, coordination right and left, anticipating the next beat, reading your partner, managing balance, storing the sequence.

[00:09:14] All simultaneously. That's not exercise. That's a full brain workout. Wearing the costume of movement. Can you feel that for a moment? The music, the coordination, your body doing something it doesn't quite know yet. The slight beautiful chaos of learning. That's your brain rebuilding itself.

[00:09:43] A woman that I met several years ago, Madeline Hackney, she's at a university now that is studying this principle exactly. Her work is with Tango and with Parkinson's disease. And then she gradually broadened it to other populations.

[00:10:02] And what she has demonstrated in her work is that consistent movement improves balance, memory, coordination, and your ability to navigate, that is to know where you are in space. Not from pills. Not from cognitive training apps. Those brain teasers. From Tango.

[00:10:27] There was another study with the nature of communication that talked about the brain activity. And it was a big study across 13 countries. And they compared people's chronological age to their neurological age. And they put them through different types of movement activities. And Tango was specifically identified as one of the activities most strongly linked to slower brain aging.

[00:10:56] There was a third study. And it talked about the executive function nets, the higher level of thinking for older adults. And found that physical exercise didn't change in the Tango group. The cognitive benefits weren't just from getting exercise. They were from specific movements themselves. Let me say that again.

[00:11:23] In Tango, and I'll say it in a slightly different way. In Tango, you have movement. You have a partner. You have music that all come together and really train the mind and the body, the brain and the body to work together. And for the woman who says she doesn't have time for Tango, in 2025, there was a study that said,

[00:11:49] hey, five minutes of movement a day reduces dementia risk. Five minutes. That's a pretty low threshold. And I want to bring it back now to your body because the research is useful, but not everybody's a data person and that's not really going to get you moving. And that's what we want to do. In midlife women, there are a couple of other factors involved. One is estrogen.

[00:12:19] Estrogen has a direct protective effect on the brain. As your estrogen goes down, that protection goes down. Your brain becomes more vulnerable to inflammation, to cortisol damage, to the cognitive effects of poor sleep. In other words, those things become even more pronounced. That is why many women report the brain fog,

[00:12:47] sometimes between, I'd say, 40 to 45 to 55 or so. It is not imaginary. It is real. And I want to say, it is not your fault. Again, because this is really important. Because this is what we do a lot. We say it is, but I'm here to tell you, it's not your fault.

[00:13:16] But here's the part that changes everything. Movement, the right kind, tells your brain to grow. So, literally, it triggers the production of these compounds that act like fertilizer for your neurons. New connections are formed. And the ones that are already there get stronger. I think of it as like building a highway system. And you have gravel road, dirt roads, gravel roads, paved roads, and super highways.

[00:13:46] This stuff builds super highways, which is exactly what we want. When you do this, the brain fog starts to lift. Not because you push through something, but because you've made those super highways in your brain. You've given it what it needs to repair itself. For those of you who are of the more technical nature and want to know what that is,

[00:14:14] it's called BDNF. BDNF means brain-derived neurotrophic factor. I mentioned it only because if you wanted to research on your own, you know what to look for. So walking is good, but it's not enough on its own. There's something you need to add. And what you need is movement with music.

[00:14:43] Movement with a partner is good or a prompt. Movement that requires you to pay attention to something other than your to-do list. That's when your brain really comes alive. It starts firing. It's paying attention. It's engaged. And when it does, you'll notice it's first in small ways, a word that comes back faster. You walk into a room and it takes maybe a second and then you remember why you're there.

[00:15:12] A moment of clarity in the afternoon when you've really stopped expecting it. These are not accidents. This is your brain responding to the right signal. The walking reorganized me in Tokyo. Five minutes of the right movement every morning can start doing the same thing for you. What actually moves it? Three things accessible today.

[00:15:42] One, five minutes of complex movements every morning. And I'll define a little bit later what complex movements are, but understanding how this is different. It's not a workout. It's not a class. Five minutes of something that requires coordination. You can follow a short dance video. You can do a sequence from memory. You can put on a song and move to the beat intentionally.

[00:16:08] The research says five minutes changes the brain environment. So start there. Just five minutes and you'll notice the difference in a few days. Maybe a little bit longer, depending upon how committed you are. And that's one of the other things is that consistency rules here rather than perfection. I dance in my kitchen every morning while I'm making my matcha latte. The cats are pretty much used to it by now.

[00:16:37] Once in a while, I pick one up and dance with it, but to each his own. Two, learn something new with your body. The learning is the medicine. A new dance step. A new yoga sequence. A new walking route that requires navigation without the use of your phone. Thank you very much. Even pickleball will work. Anytime your body has to learn something new,

[00:17:06] your brain builds new pathways. This is not a metaphor. This is how your brain works. Do something your body doesn't already know how to do. Pick one. Do something this week. One. And the third one is move with music. Music and movement together activate more of the brain than either one alone.

[00:17:35] The auditory part, the motor part, the balance, all of those things in the part of the brain that you really need to have firing. The cerebellum. That's for the people who need the technical. Auditory, motor, limbic, cerebellum. All of these different parts start firing together. And that is why dance outperforms walking in almost every cognitive study. The music isn't decoration.

[00:18:04] It's part of the intervention. It's part of the toolkit that you have. You don't need a tango class, although I personally wouldn't stop you if you wanted to. You need music and movement in five minutes and a willingness to feel slightly out of your comfort zone, maybe even ridiculous, while your brain quietly repairs itself. Your cat can judge you. She's a cat.

[00:18:33] That's what they do. But your brain will thank you. Here's what I want you to see. A few weeks from now, you're moving in the morning. Five minutes a day. Music on. Something your body is still learning. And somewhere in the middle of it, you catch yourself not thinking about the email or the meeting or the thing that you forgot to do. You're just there in your body,

[00:19:00] listening to the music, feeling it in your body. This is not a small thing. That's you coming back. The alien in your body is not a permanent resident. Thank you very much. She moves in when your cortisol rhythm is broken, when your estrogen has shifted, when the protection of your brain relied on quietly changed.

[00:19:27] And she stays there when you stay still. Movement is a correction. Not because it burns calories or because it's good for your heart. Because it's the one thing that tells your brain, come back. Come back online. To rebuild. To remember who you are

[00:19:57] and where you are going. It works on a level like nothing else. And you already know how to do it. Very little required. Five minutes. Music. Something your body doesn't already know. That's the prescription from a pharmacist who happens to teach tango. If this landed with you and you want to go deeper, I have something for you.

[00:20:27] Go to an Ageless Life for its life superpower. It's in the show notes. It's free. And it's a place to start. Next episode, we're going into the nervous system. Because movement starts the correction. The nervous system is where it gets completed. That's it for today. Bye for now. That's it for this reset.

[00:20:55] Thank you for spending this time with me. If today's episode gave you something to think about, I'd love to have you subscribe so you never miss what's next. And remember to grab your free gift, your midlife superpower, five simple power moves to feel like yourself again. The address for this is, or link is, anagelesslife.com

[00:21:24] forward slash super power. Thanks again. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.