The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by the hosts and guests may or may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Miami University.

[Music]

James Loy:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by the host and guests may or may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Miami University.

James Loy:

This is Reframe, the podcast from the College of Education, Health, and Society on the campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

James Loy:

There's a lot of reasons why many of us may dislike or even fear the aging process, and is it any wonder? As we get older, many of us may face a decline in mobility, increased risk of health conditions, and for some, even the onset of memory loss or dementia. And while we can't stop the aging process, at least not yet, anyway, it turns out we can start to slow and control the process doing things like Sudoku puzzles and gym workouts, for example, probably jump to mind. One, of course, exercises the brain while the other works out the body.

James Loy:

But what if we could simultaneously combine the benefits of both, and how powerful would the results be if we could? This is one of the key questions that concerns Adam Ortman. Adam Ortman is part of a new startup project called Activate Brain and Body, which focuses on brain centric workouts that not only increase physical health, they can also create new neural pathways that protect against and minimize some types of dementia.

James Loy:

Adam is also a graduate of Miami University, and this fall he's returning to campus to help conduct a new study, along with the Department of Kinesiology, Nutrition, and Health, which will look at how building cognitive reserve can minimize the physical effects of aging.

James Loy:

And recently, Adam ran two professional trainers through what he calls the cognitive circuit. And afterwards, they discuss the experience on an episode of the Pound This podcast. And, we wanted to play a short clip from that episode because it really does provide an interesting glimpse into just what might be possible after we've mastered the ability to combine cognitive and physical exercise.

James Loy:

So, here now is the health and wellness coach and Pound This podcast host, Amanda Valentine, speaking with Adam Ortman about his work with Activate Brain and Body, and about how all of us can start to build better brains and better bodies right now.

Amanda Valentine:

I am Amanda Valentine. Two returning guests joining me today. One, Josh Garrett, from Cincy 360 Fitness. Hi, Josh.

Josh Garrett:

Hi, Amanda.

Amanda Valentine:

And Adam Ortman, who has not been on since episode 62, multiple years ago. It's about time you came back.

Adam Ortman:

It's been a while. I didn't realize it was episode 62. It's great, 700 episodes later.

Amanda Valentine:

I know, right? Last time you came on, we talked about you, you worked at Anytime Fitness.

Adam Ortman:

I did.

Amanda Valentine:

In Dayton, Ohio.

Adam Ortman:

Yep.

Amanda Valentine:

And now, tell me the process from, I guess what's happened since 2018. Let's just go ahead and leave out COVID.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah.

Amanda Valentine:

And let's just talk about the gym, from where you were there to what you're working on now.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah. Our next chapter has begun. We've moved on from Anytime Fitness at the end of August, which is very exciting. It's a new chapter in our journey, and we're with Activate Brain and Body, where we want to help individuals build a more resilient brain through physical exercise, stress management, and nutrition.

Amanda Valentine:

Oh, yeah, that's awesome. Now, we're going to have to unpack all of that.

Adam Ortman:

Oh, we will absolutely unpack all of that.

Amanda Valentine:

Because, I mean, you asked about, you coming on the podcast again and stuff like that. I'm like, okay, this sounds so interesting of putting the brain element into physical activity, which there has to be some level of brain activity, obviously when you're doing the motions, you're doing the exercise, you're not trying to hurt yourself. You're getting that mind, body connection, all of that. But then, what are you talking about as far as using your brain with exercise?

Adam Ortman:

Yeah. Exercise is the number one thing you can do for your brain health. Proven research shows it. Individuals, and this was me back in the day, Sudoku, crosswords, brain puzzle games. There's nothing wrong with that towards brain health. But, all of us are aging and none of us can ever defeat or go away from that. And as we age, our brain health does decline. What we want to do is work on the preventive track to allow individuals to work on their brain health. What we do is we combine fitness with technology to help wage the war on future cognitive decline.

Adam Ortman:

For instance, running on a treadmill or walking on a treadmill. When you do that over and over, it becomes very easy in the sense that you're not thinking about it as far as a cognitively stimulating task, right? You turn the treadmill on, you turn it on three miles an hour, and you're moving, you're walking. You're not really thinking about it. Most of us might be watching Netflix or an episode of TV when we're on that treadmill.

Adam Ortman:

Whereas, if you go walk in a new trail, let's say here in Cincinnati, that you've never walked on before, you have to navigate the roots, the stones. Is it muddy? You're using your brain while your heart rate is elevated. And research shows that's where the highest chance of improved brain health can happen when it comes to physical activity.

Amanda Valentine:

Josh, you've been a trainer for a long time. Have you used any of these sorts of things to bring in the new sort of cognitive brain into your workouts?

Josh Garrett:

No. What we just did upstairs, the visual system, and I'm like, what do you call that?

Adam Ortman:

Yes. That right there, that was a SmartFit pods. SmartFit's the company that makes the SmartFit board. But, that would be in our workout, part of the cognitive circuit, that would just be the brain piece, right?

Josh Garrett:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

They're going through the physical activity, but then when you add that display, the brain piece, and your heart rate's elevated, you're moving, you're learning new exercises, and now you have to solve a math problem, or do a memory, or go through the alphabet. It's a lot more challenging than most people think.

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah. So, what we did is, I'll tell you in my way of describing this, and then you can give me the correct way.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah. For sure.

Amanda Valentine:

It's like you had these pods. If somebody has ever been to an event where there's a standup thing where with an iPad on it-

Adam Ortman:

Yep.

Amanda Valentine:

... that you would sign up to win a prize pack or something. That's my experience with it. There's three of these things and they have colors on them, but they have letters, or numbers, or smiley faces, or shapes. And what we in particular did here, right before we started recording this podcast, is you set it up to have the alphabet in these three different pods, and then you would start by touching it. So, you're running in between the three. And then it would give you a number like, hey, we're going to go three letters into the alphabet and you have to think, okay, what's three letters away from A. And then, all the different letters would pop up and you have to go tap it.

Amanda Valentine:

And so, that's already just hard.

Adam Ortman:

The alphabet.

Amanda Valentine:

That is not something I'm good at.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah.

Amanda Valentine:

That's not something I think about, is the number associated, or just counting the alphabet. And then to make it harder, the second way around, is then you had to dribble of basketball. And you're dribbling a basketball, you're running in between these three different things, and you're trying to count the numbers between the alphabet, and trying to figure it all out. And yeah, when you are done, your heart rate's up, because you are just kind of running the little relays in between here, while you're also trying to think and count letters in the alphabet and then look for them at the same time. It's really interesting. So, I got to know what's your first experience with something like that? Did you try this somewhere, and you're like, oh hell yeah, we're opening a gym and doing this?

Adam Ortman:

Well, I wish it was that simple. No, it normally doesn't work that way. A lot of research behind it. Activate Brain and Body has been in the research phase for at nine years now. There's a team of eight of us working together, in particular a chief science officer. She's a clinical psychologist and she does all the research and science behind it.

Adam Ortman:

My job here is to connect the research piece and the science piece into an exercise component to make sure it makes sense and it flows well. The key there is data. What took us so long to really finalize and make the decision to move forward is, one, is this helpful and impactful to individuals. Can we make a difference in the lives of the community?

Adam Ortman:

And all eight of our founders and owners are all impacted some way personally with Alzheimer's, whether it be grandparents, parents going through it. Both of my grandparents had Alzheimer's and I lived through that, and it was challenging at the time being younger and feeling kind of hopeless. All of us have a personal connection on wanting and needing to make an impact within the community. So, it's number one behind our passion.

Adam Ortman:

Then number two, is our product and service data driven? Is there science and research behind it? And those SmartFit pods, what makes them unique, they actually track data. I can show improvement into a member when he or she goes through it day one, versus when she goes through it day 60, 90, 120, or a year later to show was there improvement or not. And the whole goal is over time, we can actually monitor and show improvements on memory processing speed. Is your life getting easier in those areas? We want to be able to show it, not just, hey, this is a great workout. We work the brain. Cool.

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

That's not what we're about. One of our core values is all science and research based.

Amanda Valentine:

I think that's awesome because it's, yeah, you can track body fat and things like that, or weight and inches and all of these other things. But it's like, oh, you can actually track that your memory is getting stronger, and that you're using your brain more by showing up to the gym is pretty wild.

Adam Ortman:

Yep.

Amanda Valentine:

The science shows, though, that it has to be something new, that you train your brain to work your brain, to get the benefits out of everything. That's why you have the alphabet and the colors and all of these things. It needs to be something novel and new. You brought up the example of you're doing a different trail. But it's like after you already did the trail once or a couple times, you already have that muscle memory there. So that's not growing the brain in these ways, and like kind of always constantly being tossed around.

Adam Ortman:

Correct. And now I think one of the most powerful examples is, walking on a treadmill, most of us know how to do that and do it very easily. We go, I did that this morning. Wasn't the most stimulant thing. I only had a certain amount of time. Went on the treadmill, turned it on four, five, six miles an hour, and I walked and ran, and I did that. Didn't do anything with my brain necessarily that was new.

Adam Ortman:

Now, is it great for your health? For sure. Is it great for your brain? For sure. But if you could do something better, let's do that. And so, walking or running on a trail, that's new. I don't know where the rocks are. I don't know where the next turn is. I don't know what kind of roots and trees are going to be there. That's when it's really exciting. And then same thing goes for Sudoku crossword puzzles. Those are great to do. We should never not do them, but if you could do it better, meaning the brain health component, let's elevate the heart rate a little bit. Let's do a brain component with your heart rate elevated. And that's where that BDNF gets released.

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah. Explain that to me then, the scientific correlation between having your heart rate up with doing these brain stimulations and what kind of magic creates out of that.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah. BDNF is brain derived neurotropic factor. It's a protein in the brain that gets released particularly through physical cardio exercise, but even resistance training gets released through the muscle. In simple human terms to understand, it's like Miracle Grow for the brain. There's a big myth out there that we have X number of brain cells and once those brain cells are gone, they're gone. That's a myth. That's not true. You absolutely can build new brain cells, and build a bigger neural network with more brain cells and connect them. The challenge is that novel piece.

Adam Ortman:

When we talk about BDNF, when you get your heart rate about 65, 75%. Now, it can be a little bit higher and a little bit lower, but that's the optimal range. When you get your heart rate up there, that's when BDNF is really getting released and it's like that Miracle Grow. It's sending signals, hey, new brain cells, new brain cells. I want to grow. I want to build new neuroplasticity, is the fancy term. Build new networks and make it new, more flexible.

Adam Ortman:

The challenge is, if we don't do something novel or new at that time, when the heart rate's up and that BDNF is getting released, you're less likely to allow those new neural networks to stick around. For instance, walking on a treadmill, BDNF is getting released, but because there's nothing challenging about that brain wise, they're less likely to connect and stick around to form these new networks. Whereas, when you're doing, let's say a trail, that BDNF is getting released, and now you're telling it to go somewhere and to start to link up. And that's where the science shows that they're more likely to stick. If we already work out, we might as well work on a way that's also working our brain.

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

And I think that's important. Whether you know someone with dementia, Alzheimer's, or you don't, I think we're all aging. We can't fight that. We're all going that way. If we can do something and control something about that, at least for me, at least I would want to be-

Josh Garrett:

At least give ourselves a fighting chance.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah.

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

I want to do something about it. And so, that's kind of a mission of ours is to empower those individuals to know that there is something that they can do about that aging process and cognitive decline.

Amanda Valentine:

I do want to bring up a question, though. You're talking about being on a treadmill. What about the people that like read on the treadmill? Is that doing anything?

Adam Ortman:

We've talked about this a little bit. I would challenge what type of, one, I think if they're doing that, the treadmill is probably very-

Amanda Valentine:

Slow?

Adam Ortman:

Well, not speed, but yeah, it's probably slower, but it's not demanding a lot on their brain component.

Amanda Valentine:

Gotcha.

Adam Ortman:

Their focus isn't necessarily dual tasking. Dual tasking is when your brain and body is working at the same time. Meaning you have to give your brain a piece of this working memory along with your body. For instance, when we were doing that alphabet skipped letter, you were moving laterally forward, back, running sometimes or dribbling a ball, that's the physical component. But at the same time, your brain was working with probably as much, if not more, of the output needed. Which letter's next? How many numbers is going to pop up and, and backwards alphabet. And then, oh, I still need to dribble the ball. Where's the ball in space?

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

There's a high demand for the brain component and the physical component. Whereas, if someone's walking on a treadmill, the book's not moving necessarily. The treadmill's probably not moving all that fast. So, the output needed on both the physical and cognitive piece, probably isn't super challenging.

Amanda Valentine:

With all of the science showing how much this can improve brain health and everything else, how come you don't see this happening anywhere? I've never had any sort of workout like this. Josh, have you ever done any sort of exercise training like that?

Josh Garrett:

No. Yeah.

Amanda Valentine:

That's wild. Obviously you're-

Adam Ortman:

Hence, the reason-

Amanda Valentine:

... an innovator in this space.

Adam Ortman:

Right. Hence, the reason we're coming.

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

I think it's interesting. When you look at a lot of these, looking at the technology piece of it, a lot of it's made for, or at least designed for the youth or rehab facilities. When we talk to a lot of the technologies, the SmartFits, the extra games, a lot of the tools right now are geared towards kids and movement, and being more active, and more of the gamify.

Josh Garrett:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

Is the term that they use. They want to make exercise fun. A lot of video games out there. So, how do we make it more fun? Yes, 100%, our workouts are going to be fun. They're going to be designed no matter what your age or physical activity is, it's going to be very fun and you'll want to stick around for sure.

Adam Ortman:

But, that's where the science and research comes in. And I think the missing link is how to operationalize it and putting it in a way where it makes sense to the consumer or to the individuals. Because all of these are very flashy toys and they can be really exciting for a month or two. But, if it's not showing change, if it's not designed with the exercise and the science piece exactly the right way, there's not going to be results. And if there's not results, no one's going to stick around.

Amanda Valentine:

Is there an optimal amount of time that you're going to exercise in an optimal amount of sessions per week?

Adam Ortman:

Yeah. What we found, we did a six month, I guess, trial at our previous studio. And then, we're doing a 12-week study at Miami University, which is really exciting. That's going to start in November when we're taking that and doing a research study with them. But what we found and what data is showing, two times a week those 60-minute sessions for at least eight weeks. Twice a week for at least eight weeks, the individuals in our trial program sought improvements both physically and with cognition. And when I say cognition, memory, visual/spatial, which is your ability to see things in space and recall that, and then executive function, which is decision making abilities. So, when they came at least two times a week for at least eight weeks consistently, they saw improvements across those.

Amanda Valentine:

That's awesome.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah, it's pretty fun.

Amanda Valentine:

And that's for any age group then?

Adam Ortman:

Correct.

Amanda Valentine:

Okay.

Adam Ortman:

Yeah, and a lot of people, when we were talking about this, they think, oh, I either have to have some type of forgetfulness or dementia, or know that. It's like, no, it's for any single individual that wants to improve their brain health. Now specifically, if you notice that, man, I'm forgetting my keys. Or, certain important dates like birthdays or anniversaries. Yeah, that might be the time to really get started. But, it's never too early to start taking action towards it.

Amanda Valentine:

So, out of all of this research and everything that you've been doing, what would you say is the most interesting thing that you learned in the process?

Adam Ortman:

I don't know if this has to do exactly with research, but personally I think it's the feeling of going back to when my grandparents had it. I lived with my grandpa as he was going through it, and he would call me different names every day. He thought we were living on a farm, and we were in a house in a suburb. Some days he was irritable. Some days my mom was frustrated. Feeling like I had no control over it and I couldn't do anything to help, and I think my mom felt that same way. Knowing that now there's things that we can do, and I can help guide somebody in that direction and hopefully inspire someone to do something and take action, I think that's the most interesting thing that I learned, is that there is hope there is something we can do.

Adam Ortman:

And if you know somebody, or personally you're starting to forget your keys or important dates, take action. There is something you can do, versus I felt like at least with my grandpa, it was, it's coming. It's happening. I hope this is peaceful for him.

Amanda Valentine:

Yeah.

Adam Ortman:

It's kind of the feeling that we got, because there wasn't anything that we could do. So, I think that's the most interesting thing that I've learned through this research is, there is something we can do and it's backed by research and science. So now, it's just inspiring and helping others take action.

James Loy:

Adam Ortman is a graduate of Miami University's Department of Kinesiology, Nutrition, and Health. And to learn more about his work with Activate Brain and Body, visit activatebrainandbody.com. And, to hear more of the over 700 Pound This podcast episodes that Amanda Valentine has hosted as part of her mission to provide motivation for a healthy lifestyle, visit poundthis.com. And this is the Reframe podcast. Thank you so much for listening.