Living in another country is good for your brain

I’m traveling over the holidays (this time to the Baltics), which made me think about how healthy all of these new experiences are for me as I age. That’s the reason for this week’s topic.

They say that as we get older it’s important to stay cognitively healthy. As we age our brains shrink in volume, particularly in the frontal cortex. Memory also declines.

According to this report, it’s been widely found that the volume of the brain and/or its weight declines with age at a rate of around 5% per decade after age 40 with the actual rate of decline possibly increasing with age particularly over age 70.

Genetics, neurotransmitters, hormones, and experience all have a part to play in brain aging. One of the biggest ways to keep your brain vibrant (in addition to diet and exercise) is to actively stimulate it. There may be no better way to do this than traveling or moving to another country.

New challenges to the brain

The biggest challenges most of us face when leaving familiar borders include:

• Learning a new language
• Learning how to navigate on unfamiliar roads with unfamiliar signs
• Figuring out equivalent product brands to those we are used to
• Trying new and strange-to-us foods and flavors
• Navigating public transportation that may be unfamiliar, such as subways and trams
• Meeting new people and establishing new relationships

Some are a bigger hurdles than others (such as learning a whole new language), but all of these require focused attention and learning new skills, two key methods to maintaining brain health.

Moving to another country stimulates creativity and is a great way to enhance brain plasticity. Most of us get comfortable in our current surroundings and lifestyles. We spend more time than we realize on autopilot. Sometimes literally. Have you ever driven home then realized as you arrived that you didn’t remember the actual drive?

Moving abroad turns that autopilot off. Almost everything is new, so our brain has to be constantly active to process and deal with it. This same “autopilot off” experience happens when we travel, but as soon as we return home that same old/same old mode returns. Moving means the brain remains active and stimulated. There’s no same old to fall back on.

Living abroad literally makes your brain grow

The human brain wants to be stimulated and to engage in the novel and complex. When we fall into a malaise of old habits and repeating patterns, our brain loses some of its vibrance. It’s no different than being a couch potato and letting our muscles decline.

It’s even worse with age, because in addition to the normal brain changes we experience, we tend to be less active, which can exacerbate the decline. This can be a big problem for some people post-retirement, where the day-to-day stimulation of work is gone. Too many retired people spend a large portion of each day staring at the boob tube.

Living abroad stimulates your brain and encourages the growth of new connections within cerebral matter. The key concept is the link between new experiences and the generation of dendrites within the brain. Dendrites are branch-like extensions that grow from brain neurons. They facilitate the transmission of information between different regions of the brain. The more functioning dendrites in your brain, the better it performs. This aids in maintaining cognitive functions such as memory and attention.

Dr. Paul Nussbaum, an American clinical neuropsychologist and an adjunct associate professor in Neurological Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, wrote about this in his white paper (PDF), published in the Journal of the American Society on Aging. Dr. Nussbaum points out that when you travel to a new location [or live abroad], your brain is forced to make sense of new stimuli. This is what triggers the production of new dendrites. In Nussbaum’s words, your brain “literally begins to look like a jungle.”

I know from personal experience that this is true. I am more alert and vibrant living in Spain. Every day there’s something new for me to learn or figure out how to do. Even something as simple as asking (in Spanish) where the equivalent of corn starch is in the grocery store takes effort. Back in Texas, I could just pop into the store, head straight for the correct aisle, and be at the register checking out in only a couple of minutes.

You will actually find yourself

Living abroad isn’t just good for the brain’s memory and cognitive abilities. It’s also good for our mind. For who we are. Remember those heady days of youth when we claimed we wanted to “find our true self” by going off on an adventure? That’s not as farfetched as our parents probably thought it was.

There’s no great mystery to why this is. We are all a product of our own personalities coupled with our environment. That old “nature vs nurture” conundrum. We end up not really knowing who we are. We become what our environment pushes us to become. According to this Harvard Business Review report, moving to another country can have a profound impact on your sense of self. Self-concept clarity has been linked to a host of benefits, such as psychological well-being, the ability to cope with stress, and job performance.

When we leave behind almost everything and everyone we’ve known, perhaps for our whole lives up to that point, we are freed from the bonds of conformity. We don’t have to like the same things or act in a similar manner in order to be accepted and fit in. We can, probably for the first time, lose the shackles and become who we truly believe we are. On top of that, the more unfamiliar experiences we encounter, the more we are free to let go of past expectations and standards of behavior.

I am definitely a textbook example of the Harvard study’s conclusions. I was raised in Texas. Girls (at least of my generation) were raised to “fit in” and not make waves. We get along. We go along. Our true sense of self is slowly beaten down (sometimes literally) until we are perfect modern equivalents of Proper Southern Belles (aka Stepford women). Moving to Spain let me give up that cookie-cutter mentality. I feel more alive and real than I ever have before.

Living abroad makes you a more well-rounded, kind person

Mark Twain said it best.

The same is true for living abroad.

Multiple studies have shown that most humans have an innate distrust of foreigners (i.e., those who sound or look different). It’s human nature to fear the unknown. Fear of strangers or foreigners is an evolutionary process that goes back to our cave-dwelling days: those who stayed away from people they didn’t know would have been less likely to get attacked and so less likely to die. This gave them a higher chance of reproducing and passing their gene of mistrust on to their children.

I’ve personally known people who “hated” gays or blacks or Muslims… until they met someone in the applicable category and really got to know them. Then the fear and distrust dissolved. My own mother claimed to hate gays until a gay couple moved next door. Joe and David had been together 40+ years (marriage wasn’t legal at that time). Mom became a surrogate mother to them and often helped them with everything from baking secrets to sitting beside Joe in the hospital after David had a stroke.

The best way to break free of prejudice and fear of others is to be among them. And the best way to do that is to go where they are. When we decided to move to Spain we purposely chose an area that is still authentically Spanish. We told our realtor not to even bother showing us any homes in the gated urbanización communities built specifically for expats. I love that my day to day life involves interacting with Spaniards, buying and using local products, eating local foods, etc. There’s no same old/same old near me to fall back on, even if I wanted to.

I’ll close with some words from others that might inspire you to take that giant step of moving to another country. Although most of these quotes are about travel, they are even more applicable when living abroad. Don’t let fear of the unknown or feeling that you are “too old” hold you back. Moving might just be the spark that revitalizes your life, revives your brain, and restores your soul.

“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.” ~Ernest Hemingway

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” ~ Saint Augustine

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all” ~Helen Keller

“Making a big life change is pretty scary. But know what’s even scarier? Regret.” ~Zig Ziglar

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do” ~H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it’s lethal.” ~Paul Coelho

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~Andre Gide

“And suddenly you just know… it’s time to start something new and trust the magic of new beginnings.” ~Meister Ekhart