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Defy Dementia Episode 18: Well-Being for Brain Health

This episode of Defy Dementia explores how well-being, including positive emotions, life satisfaction and social connectedness, impacts brain health and reduces dementia risk. Family physician Dr. Agnes Chinelo shares her personal journey of balancing caregiving and self-care to improve her mental health. Then, Dr. Emily Willroth (Washington University, St. Louis) shares the latest research linking well-being to cognitive function as we age. Lastly, Dr. Martin Picard (Columbia University) explains the fascinating role of mitochondria—our cells' energy powerhouses—in connecting well-being with preserved brain function. Don’t miss this episode for strategies to improve your well-being and protect your brain health.

Episode 18: Transcript

Key Messages

Well-being is a combination of several factors, including positive emotions, a sense of purpose, and social connectedness.
Well-being is deeply connected to brain function, even at the level of our brain cells.
Well-being is associated with improved brain health and reduced dementia risk.

Key Actions

Practice mindfulness and meditation to deal with stress and build resilience.
Reflect on positive elements in your life and write them down. Practice gratitude.
Maintain and deepen your social relationships. They’re key to brain health.
To give your brain cells more energy, exercise and eat a nutritious diet full of many different fruits and vegetables and low in added sugar.

Resources

Supporting the well-being of an Aging Global Population: Associations between Well-being and Dementia – from World Happiness Report
Low psychological wellbeing may raise risk of dementia, study suggests – from The Guardian International
How does our mental wellbeing affect our brain health? – from Alzheimer’s Research UK

Learn more about our guests

Dr. Agnes Chinelo, MBBS, MRCGP, CCFP, has been a family physician for more than two decades, much of the time in the United Kingdom. Dr. Chinelo was born in Lagos, Nigeria and she earned her medical degree from the University of Ibadan. She is now practicing and living in Sackville, N.S. Dr. Chinelo has developed a mindful approach to managing her own well-being over a busy and sometimes harrowing life, as a mother of three, a caregiver and a doctor. She was a Physician Liaison with the Alzheimer Society of Canada on a project that created more inclusive dementia guidelines for the Black community. She is also an advocate for health empowerment and education through her YouTube channel, Talk with Doctor Agnes, and her blog. She has been a keynote speaker and a guest speaker at various conferences, workshops and seminars in the community. Dr. Chinelo has authored a book, “Michael’s Memories,” sharing her experiences of her father's dementia from her perspective as a daughter/caregiver and a medical doctor. The book is due to be published in March 2025.

Dr. Emily Willroth is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also Director of the WELLlab. Her current research examines how different components of well-being (e.g., emotion, life satisfaction, sense of purpose) vary and change across time, both in the short-term from moment to moment and in the long term across the adult lifespan. She applies insights from this research to examine links between well-being and important health outcomes in middle and older adulthood, such as chronic illness, mortality and dementia risk. Emily received her doctoral degree at the University of California, Berkeley, her master’s degree at the College of William and Mary, and her bachelor’s degree at the University of Missouri.

Dr. Martin Picard directs the Mitochondrial Psychobiology Group at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in neuroimmunology, and doctoral degree in mitochondrial biology of aging at McGill University. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2015. The Mitochondrial Psychobiology Group investigates organelle-to-organism communication linking the human experience with molecular and energetic processes inside mitochondria. With their collaborators, Dr. Picard's team combines clinical, cellular and computational approaches to understand how energetic processes and perturbations within mitochondria interact with key brain-body processes that shape aging biology and sustain human health. Dr. Picard’s translational research program has contributed to defining the diversity of mitochondria across the brain and body, and to longitudinally examining the link between stress, energy expenditure and the rate of aging at the cellular level.