If you would like to submit a question or make a comment, please email Dr. Taylor at thebrain@arlenetaylor.org.
I’m glad you recognize you were “born with a good brain.” I regret it apparently hasn’t kept up with the latest brain-function research. I suggest a computer metaphor. Picture you were born with brain hardware and some software. As you grow and develop, the software is regularly updated (just like it is in the real computerized world). As your brain hardware ages, however, studies have shown how critically important it is to include exercise on a daily basis. Physical exercise―because it is one of the most important things you can do to keep your brain healthy. And mental exercise―because it is associated with not only retaining your “marbles,” so to speak, but also with potentially slowing the onset of symptoms of aging. The current recommendation is a minimum of 30 minutes of challenging mental exercise on a daily basis, plus reading aloud for 10 minutes a day.
All things being equal, those who are aiming higher typically get farther. That’s what Club 122 Longevity is all about.It was named in honor of Jeanne Calment, a French woman who was born 21 February 1875 and died 4 August 1997—a lifespan of 122 years, 164 days. Her life demonstrates the old adage, You’ll get farther if you aim higher. That’s the reason I purpose to live the “stuff” I talk about. I may not make it to 122 years, 164 days. But I believe I’ll get farther if I aim higher.
From a brain-function perspective, being overweight is less about how you ‘look’ and far more about how your brain functions, how healthy you’d like to be, and how long you want to live. Being overweight or obese is linked to about 50 diseases or medical conditions including dementia. As I write in Longevity Lifestyle Matters:
Obesity is linked with more than 50 diseases—50!—including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some forms of cancer, and dementia. According to the American Diabetes Association, a person is diagnosed with diabetes every 20 seconds in the USA, most with type 2 diabetes. If people continue to gain weight and remain inactive, estimates are that within 30-40 years 1 in 3 Americans will have some form of diabetes, a terrifying statistic for patients as well as healthcare professionals and health systems.
If your mindset is that you can do nothing about your weight, your brain will do nothing about it. I repeat: It may be hard pill to swallow but unless you have been struck with an extremely rare condition, in the words of Stephen Richards: We are exactly what our history made us to be. You cannot change the past; you can alter your future. Current wisdom says that 70 percent of how long and how well you live is in your hands.Life is composed of a myriad of miniscule decisions. Every single day you make choices to do this or that; that or this. The outcome of those tiny decisions eventually funnels into what happens to you. So if you don’t like what you see now, take ownership of your habitual thoughts and behaviors and get busy altering them, now. Look at your thoughts today because they influence how you will look and feel in the future.
There’s an old saying: Every pathology has an ecology. In other words, behaviors that result in negative or undesirable outcomes do not occur in a vacuum. Yes, you may have cellular memory for unhealthy eating habits. Nevertheless, you are also capable of creating and maintaining a Longevity Lifestyle that will result in a healthier future.
You are where you are today because of the choices you made in the past. Likewise, in the future you will be where you are because of the choices you made today, tomorrow, and the next day. Habits are simply choices you make on a regular basis. Often they are the result of self-medication—doing something to make yourself feel better in the moment with little or no thought about the future. All human beings self-medicate—but the way in which they do this can differ dramatically. Positive self-medication results in positive outcomes; negative self-medication in negative outcomes. You can self-medicate directly (e.g., food and drink, drugs, and medications). You can also self-medicate indirectly by what you think, watch, and the activities you choose (e.g., exercise, sex, risk-taking, strong emotions, playing electronic games). Addictive behaviors are simply self-medicating choices that have run away with themselves.
In general, current studies indicate that obesity is associated with hyperactivation of the Brain Reward System for high-calorie (HC) versus low-calorie (LC) food cues, which encourages unhealthy food selection and overeating. The Brain Reward System is triggered by seeing, smelling, thinking about, and picturing or imagining the HC food. You can do something about this: you can retrain your brain by changing your mindset, your self-talk, and (in effect) rewiring your brain to trigger your Brain Reward System by seeing, smelling, thinking about, and picturing low-calorie foods—and by choosing them. It is, after all, your choice. If you are struggling, get some professional help.
It’s fairly simply, “dear Watson,” although not always fast and easy.Obesity begins insidiously with a few more calories ingested than are expended (often from mismanaging portion sizes, selecting refined and processed foods, and failing to get enough physical activity). Go for vegetables, seeds and legumes, high-fiber healthier carbs, and pure water as your beverage of choice. Keep moving. Concentrate on what you can do and do it consistently and stop dwelling on what you can’t do. Think long-term rather than short-term. Millions of people are doing it. So can you—but it all starts in the brain. Yours.
To use a common metaphor, many people go through life flying by the seat of their pants rather than having a plan. Sometimes they get it right and are successful. Other times they are unsuccessful. Either way, they may have difficulty figuring out what they did to achieve a successful outcome or failed to do that contributed to a negative outcome. Studies related to maximizing brain function, to slowing down the impact of aging on the brain, and to keeping your brain in good working condition for as long of possible have provided a great deal of information on how to accomplish this.
Following a plan that incorporates many of these steps constitutes taking care of your brain “by design.” For example, studies of centenarians have shown that 16 health habits and lifestyle factors strongly predict who will live to be 100 years old and still be able to live independently (and about half of the centenarians can). Michael E. Howard, PhD discusses those 16 factors in his book entitled How to Live to 100: 16 Lifestyle Characteristics of the Oldest and Healthiest People in the World. You may want to think about these factors, especially around the holiday season, and implement as many of them as possible.
From my perspective, that is both an unfortunate situation and an unhelpful point of view. You might ask him if he is familiar with the law of atrophy: Use it or lose it. As you may know, any brain-mind faculty or skill that is unexercised on a regular basis soon begins to fade. In the case of hearing that can be trigger a deleterious loop. As his hearing deteriorates, he likely will feel increasingly isolated. In addition, his brain will be receiving less challenging stimulation. Over time, brain-mind skills can consequently begin to also deteriorate. Dementia can progress quite rapidly when the brain does not “hear” and stay stimulated. I doubt he would consciously choose dementia. My position is: do whatever you can to retard the onset of dementia. It impacts your level of health, potential longevity, and all your relationships.
You know I do (smile). Puzzling to me is how people persist in believing that diet sodas will help them lose or maintain an optimum weight—even in the face of research that contradicts that supposition—and continue to drink them. On average, you can figure that a 12-ounce can of regular soda contains sugar to equal 150 calories—a hefty hunk if you’re wanting to maintain optimum weight levels. So you don’t want the extra sugar found in regular sodas and other soft drink. I agree. Since sugar does tend to increase your weight, some move to diet sodas that contain no sugar.
Problem: Diet drinks typically contain artificial sweetener or you probably wouldn’t be able to stand the taste. In general, when your taste buds sense sweetness they notify your brain that something sweet is coming—and sweet tastes typically contain calories. The brain releases insulin to digest those calories, which triggers a biochemical cascade (as Steven Susskind MD puts it) that promotes a sense of feeling full.
Artificial sweeteners still notify the brain—but the diet-soda sweet isn’t followed up with the promised calories. Gradually the brain learns to ignore sweet tastes as a predictor of calories-to-come. Instead, the brain wants more and more food. Those who use diet sodas tend to eat more calories later in the day or the following day (if they don’t outright binge on sweets or simple carbs) than they would if they didn’t drink diet sodas.
In a study published in Physiology and Behavior, researchers followed healthy adults who either drank at least one diet soda daily or avoided drinking diet soda altogether. After measuring brain scan activity, researchers found that regularly drinking diet sodas inhibits activation in a key area of the brain that helps to regulate food intake. The more diet soda participants drank, the less their sweet sensors worked properly. The brain’s ability to let them know they were full stopped working properly. A long-term study from the University of Texas found that diet soda drinkers’ waists expanded five times more than those who did not drink diet sodas.
For this reason a Longevity Lifestyle recommends drinking water as your beverage of choice and avoiding all sodas, regular or diet.
I have not seen any research on this specific question so this is my brain’s opinion. It would partly depend on your definitions for the words “disciplined” and “free spirit.” The brain and body function more efficiently in balance and that is typically more likely to be achieved with some regularity for sleeping and eating and exercising. Living a Longevity Lifestyle also means that you make time for play and relaxation, you are able to be flexible (e.g., you’re traveling and need to find alternative ways to do your physical activities and exercises, you are in a location where available food choices differ from what you are accustomed to at home). An extremely rigid schedule and lifestyle might not build in components such as humor, relaxation, spontaneity, and having fun in life—and the brain is much more likely to continue doing something when it enjoys the activity. On the other hand, a completely free-spirited lifestyle might fail to build in components that would help to keep the brain and body in balance (e.g., regular meals with good quality foods and appropriate nutrition, physical and mental exercise, plenty of water as one’s beverage of choice, gratitude and spirituality—the spirit in which you live life, sufficient sleep for your brain).
Living a long time with good mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health generally requires the creation of a longevity lifestyle that probably falls somewhere between the extremes of rigidity and free-wheelin
Your question reflects many that I receive. Yes, alcohol use is widespread across the planet and historically has been viewed as relatively harmless in moderation. More recently there’s been an emerging trend to play up alcohol’s supposed benefits to the heart and to the brain and ignore or play down links with cancer. I know of no research to suggest that the active principle in wine, alcohol, helps the brain relax.
I am familiar with a study involving a dozen researchers and led by Anya Topiwala, clinical lecturer in old age psychiatry. Published in the British Medical Journal just a few months ago, the title is: “Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study.” (BMJ 2017;357:j2353) The objectives were to investigate whether moderate alcohol consumption has a favorable or adverse association or no association with brain structure and function. It was a longitudinal observational cohort study with weekly alcohol intake and cognitive performance measured repeatedly over 30 years (1985-2015). Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed at study endpoint (2012-15). Structural brain measures included hippocampal atrophy, grey matter density, and white matter microstructure.
The study reported that higher alcohol consumption over the 30-year follow-up was associated with increased odds of hippocampal atrophy in a dose dependent fashion. As you may know, the hippocampus is analogous to a computer’s search engine. Study participants who consumed over 30 units a week of alcohol were at the highest risk compared with abstainers. However, even those drinking moderately (14-21 units/week) had three times the odds of right sided hippocampal atrophy. There was no protective effect of light drinking (1 to less than 7 units/week) over abstinence. Higher alcohol use was also associated with differences in corpus callosum microstructure and faster decline in lexical fluency.
Study conclusions include:
The researchers posit that these study results support the recent reduction in alcohol guidance in the United Kingdom and call into question the current limits recommended in the United States. You may like to read a recent article in PsyBlog discussing this study and its potential implications. [http://www.spring.org.uk/2017/06/very-popular-drink-linked-to-brain-damage.php?omhide=true]
A study by the National Institute of Health for the USA reported that: “Early retirement has a significant negative impact on the cognitive ability of people in their early 60s that is both quantitatively important and causal.” There is a trend in some countries for people to retire even earlier than age 60. In other countries, there is a trend for individuals to work well past age 65 if their current job allows for that and, if not, individuals may find other employment at least part time. Challenging mental stimulation is very important to retain brain function. Those who retire from jobs that are mentally challenging and do not obtain replacement mental stimulation may be at higher risk. Remember to factor in the understanding that every brain is different, and every person has a different health profile. Starting as early in life as possible to create and live a longevity lifestyle is likely the best option.
Obtaining appropriate physical activity and exercise is an important component of a longevity lifestyle—in balance. Dieting or routine calorie restriction is not, although appropriate quality nutrition and portion control are. A plethora of studies have shown that while aerobic exercise can be helpful in maintaining one’s weight within an appropriate range, it doesn’t seem to help all that much over time in dropping pounds. Returning to an optimum weight requires a balanced and comprehensive approach of key elements. As one writer put it, although aerobic training does burn calories, it is nowhere near as effective for weight loss as simply eating fewer calories. It takes a solid 30 minutes of running on a treadmill to burn 300 calories, but takes you less than 30 seconds to eat a 300-calorie chocolate bar.
You probably know individuals who “over-exercise” in order to, as they put it, “Eat whatever I want.” They can often sustain this for a while but not in the long term. One woman stopped her high level of gym and jazzercise exercise over the holiday season and gained 50 pounds in 4 months—because she kept eating “whatever she wanted” in the same amounts she had while exercising two hours a day. Slow and steady with components present and in balance appears to be the best bet for overall success in the long term.
Change what? That extra pounds are not bad for your health?
You cannot change that extra weight and yo-yo weight changes are hard on the body. The body works best in balance as compared to a weight roller-coaster. An over-weight body is no help to your health much less your brain. Carrying around extra pounds can increase your risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular problems, a number of chronic diseases including cancer, and even dementia.
Change what? The pattern of yo-yo weight gain and loss?
Now, that is something you can alter.
I agree with a recent quote by Dr. Daniel Amen: “Most weight problems occur between the ears…in your brain.” Pretty much everything starts and ends in the brain. This includes altering your behavioral patterns.
I suggest you explore what is different for you around the holidays, what beliefs you have absorbed about eating during these seasons, and expectations of yourself or others that may be impacting your behaviors.
There are some articles on my website that you may find helpful. Here are two:
Escape the Diet Trap (Weight Management section)
Holiday Frazzled? Choose to Live Defrazzled! (Stress section)
More than simply a positive mood, happiness is a recognized state of well-being that encompasses living a good life—that is, living a life with a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction. You reflect the people you hang out with. So, select a small group of “happy” people and spend time with them.
A growing body of research also suggests that happiness can improve your physical health. Feelings of positivity and contentment seem to benefit cardiovascular health, the immune system, inflammation levels, and blood pressure, among other things. Happiness has even been linked to a longer lifespan—providing more years to continue striving for fulfillment.
Researchers found that different types of happiness have surprisingly different effects on the human genome. People who have high levels of what is called eudaimonic well-being—the kind of happiness that comes from having a deep sense of purpose—showed very favorable gene-expression profiles in their immune cells. They had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes.
People who have relatively high levels of what is called hedonic well-being (as in hedonist)—the kind of happiness that comes from self-gratification—show just the opposite. Their genes had adverse profiles involving high inflammation and low antiviral and antibody expression.
Thirty minutes a day of challenging mental exercise is one of the proven strategies for retarding the onset of aging symptoms. While not muscles, neurons (brain cells) respond to challenges much as do muscle cells. Use it or lose it, as the saying goes.
Research in three countries suggests that for each year of education beyond basic college, the risk of Alzheimer’s decreases by twenty percent. The theory is that, even if whatever causes Alzheimer’s attacks one’s brain, its neuron trees will be so leafed out (so to speak) that the onset of incapacitating symptoms can be delayed. It’s certainly worth a shot!
Recently and seemingly all at once, several sources are issuing recommendations similar to the nutritional components outlined in Longevity Lifestyle Matters. The MIND diet is said to have been developed by researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Reportedly it combines elements of two other popular nutrition plans designed to benefit heart health: the Mediterranean diet and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet. The acronym MIND stands for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay. The goal is to help people reduce the risk of developing dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease. The MIND diet does contains some nutritional recommendations similar to Longevity Lifestyle Matters. For example:
It also recommends restricting one’s intake of:
I certainly have no problem with these recommendations. Just remember that a Longevity Lifestyle is not a diet. It is a way to live for the rest of your life and includes components far more encompassing than just nutrition.
More than 300 years ago Francois Couperin (the French composer) declared that by the age of 6 or 7, children should begin studying instruments. He was perhaps ahead of his time! Research has shown that the study of music can be advantageous to the human brain.
Music lessons and accompanying practice can stimulate the growth of dendrites on neurons (thinking cells) at almost any age. Increasing the number and length of dendrites can help to age-proof your brain. And about your age—I heard a brain researcher say that there is a growth spurt potential in the human brain between the ages of 50 and 60. Taking music lessons could help stimulate your brain and help set you up for a healthier retirement.
You are giving your children a real brain gift by providing them with the opportunity to study music. Why not give yourself the same gift?
You are free to drink anything and any type of water you choose. It’s your brain and your body. The “fancy” waters are likely better than not drinking water at all, but they are often expensive and may contain either sugar or artificial sweeteners—substances I prefer to avoid. You do realize that “boring” is just a state of mind. In essence, you have told your brain that plain water (or alkaline water or hydrogen water) is boring. If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. Your brain can only do what it thinks it can do and you have programmed it to think that plain water is boring. You are able to reprogram your brain if you choose to do so. I tell my brain: Arlene, you drink enough water to have at least one or two pale urines per day. You like the taste and you like the energy water gives you.
The results of a study led by Dr. Bernhard Ross and colleagues were published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience (24 May 2017, 3613-16; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523). The researchers found that playing a musical instrument can help protect against cognitive decline, a goal of healthy aging. Learning to play, versus just listening, was found to change the brain’s “wiring.” You’ve heard no doubt about brain plasticity; the ability for the brain to change its software, if you will. The sound-making actions led to immediate “plastic” changes in the brain after just one learning session. That’s more reinforcement for the value to the brain of learning to play an instrument. Of course, the earlier in life the better, assuming you would like to become exceedingly competent. Nevertheless, unless you are comatose, my brain’s opinion is “better late than never.” Some individuals began taking music lessons in their eighties, which is helping to keep their brains sharp. The report is that they’re having the time of their life! Eighty is the new sixty, you know.
Regular challenging stimulation to the brain is linked with helping it stay healthier for longer. There are many ways to stimulate your brain. Typical TV programs and movies at not included because they involve “passive mental picturing,” processing what another brain actively created. Reading, watching educational programs, playing music, and so on, can provide “active mental stimulation” to the brain. This helps to keep the neurons stretched out so that the space between them (the synapse) is narrower and information can cross more easily.
What is different about reading aloud? Reading aloud activates multiple brain-body areas and is considered challenging mental stimulation. The occipital lobes visually process the words on the page and convert them into mental pictures that you can ‘see’ in your mind’s eye. The temporal lobes process the sounds as you say them aloud, which provides additional stimulation to the brain. So do the actions of your tongue, mouth, and teeth as they form the words. Your larynx (voice box) gives those words sound. The lungs help you breathe more deeply to power these movements. Reading aloud is very stimulating to the brain and therefore is classed as an anti-aging strategy.
Well, that is an interesting and complex question. There are many aspects to reading, and, yes, 10 minutes reading aloud every day is recommended for challenging mental stimulation and an anti-aging strategy. When you read aloud you must first recognize the words (one aspect of reading); you must also remember how to articulate them (another aspect of reading); then you must use your tongue and teeth and vocal chords to say them aloud (yet another aspect of reading). All of this challenges the brain.
Naturally understanding the words cognitively is yet another aspect of reading and that is desirable – however, that is only one aspect. No one knows for sure what a brain with dementia picks up from hearing someone read aloud. Anecdotally, however, reading aloud to groups of people with dementia has been found to stimulate memories and imagination. Katie Clark who runs Reader groups with dementia patients, has written an anthology entitled A Little, Aloud that reportedly contains stories and poems that have proved most popular, together with anecdotes about the people who have enjoyed them. Clark has been quoted as saying that poetry seems to work better than prose with dementia patients.
In an article entitled “5 Engaging Activities for Dementia Patients,”Kendall Van Blarcom includes reading aloud: “Reading aloud is something you can do for dementia patients. Listening to someone read often sparks memory recall and encourages imagination. Sometimes it even sparks discussion. Shorter works, such as poems or short stories, work better. They don’t tax attention spans and compress significant meaning into much fewer words.” (https://kvanb.com/activities-for-dementia-patients/)
Apparently, having patients with dementia read aloud has resulted in some memory recall. According to the Alzheimer’s Reading Room, when they began creating short stories for Alzheimer’s patients to read aloud they “were surprised by the journey that this simple exercise created.” As the individuals read the stories aloud they started telling the staff stories from their own lives.
(http://www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/2016/06/alzheimer-care-stories-and-memory.html)
If you mean will you become more like yourself as you grow older, the short answer is, in all likelihood—yes. Every thought you think and every experience you experience changes the very structure of your brain. Therefore, since no one ever thinks the same thoughts or has identical experiences, you actually become more different from others and more like yourself as you grow older.
If you mean will you inevitably become less flexible as you age, the short answer is not necessarily. Neurological research has shown that the human brain has a great deal of plasticity—an ability to change its physical structure (anatomy) and functional organization (physiology) as a result of input from the environment. Wikipedia lists learning, memory, and recovery from brain damage as the most widely recognized forms of brain plasticity.
As the brain ages and has less available energy, many people fall back on learned habits and routines that take little thought to activate and accomplish. On the other hand, whether or not you decide to become set in your ways also has a great deal to do with personal choice and with the way in which your brain’s energy advantage is structured. Those who have their energy advantage in the lower left lobes of the cerebrum tend to avoid change because it would require revamping existing software patterns or creating new ones. It takes less energy to avoid doing either. Whether that is good for you or will help you age gracefully is another thing. That’s a personal brain journey.
Trees that have a great deal of flexibility and can bend with the wind are much less likely to be seriously damaged during a storm. Often those that aren’t are either damaged severely or uprooted and demolished outright. In a similar way, humans who have honed their ability to be flexible, to change with the times, and to roll with the current situation may not only experience less stress to their brain but also may avoid digging in their heels (metaphorically) to the point of becoming almost immobile—i.e., set in their ways.
Here’s the bottom line: become now the person you want to be then. If you want to be a continually curious seeker of emerging research, open to differing ways of doing things, stimulated by the ideas and perceptions of others, and creative in your approach to problem solving and graceful aging, make sure that is what you are doing now.
I would like to be able to tell you honestly that “this can’t be true.” Unfortunately, it is true—according to a research letter published online June 22 in JAMA Internal Medicine. The letter reported that approximately 40% of men and 30% of women in the USA are overweight; 35% of men and 37% of women are obese. Lin Yang, PhD, and Graham A. Colditz, MD, DrPH, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, examined data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey gathered between 2007 and 2012. The data reviewed involved 15,208 men and women age 25 and older.
Conclusions? Researchers estimate that more than 36 million men and nearly 29 million women in the United States are currently overweight. About 32 million men and 36 million women are obese. More Americans are overweight and obese today compared with federal survey data gathered between 1988 and 1994. Today, about 75% of men and about 67% of women are either overweight or obese, according to the study.
So in answer to your questions, according to Dr. Yang, the answer is (unfortunately) yes. He reported: “This generation of Americans is the first that will have a shorter life expectancy than the previous generation, and obesity is one of the biggest contributors to this shortened life expectancy because it is driving a lot of chronic health conditions.”
The only thing I know of to do is to become a committee of one and adopt a Longevity Lifestyle for yourself. It matters! Being overweight or obese is hard on your brain—to say nothing of your body and heart—and can negatively impact your longevity.
Yang L Colditz GA. JAMA Internal Med. 2015; doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.2405.
I think you just answered your own question. Rudyard Kipling once said: If history was told in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. To paraphrase in my own words, I tell stories about health and brain function because the information is easier to remember—and if you remember it you might just implement it.
Not that I know of. Taste buds may replace themselves as often as every 10-14 days; it doesn’t take long to retrain them. Water is considered your most important nutrient. The lack of water can kill faster than the lack of any other nutrient. When I drink water I tell myself, “Arlene, you drink life’s most important nutrient. You enjoy the taste of pure, clean water. You feel good.” It’s your choice what you choose to tell your brain and how you choose to program your taste buds. Remember that water requires no digestion, generates electrical energy in the brain, helps keep blood and lymph fluid at desired level of concentration to reduce the risk of clotting, allows digestive juices to better do their work, and provides water for many different chemical reactions and the production of hormones and neurotransmitters. Dehydration is not part of a longevity lifestyle.
Reduce what, the beans or the undesirable side effects? (Smile) Beans and other legumes such as lentils can offer some pretty desirable quality nutrition to one’s meals such as plant-based protein and fiber. This is what I do.
Bring a pan of water to boil and then add the dried peas or lentils or beans and boil them for two-three minutes only. Turn off the heat and let them sit for one hour. Drain and rinse well, then start over again with fresh water and cook until desired softness is achieved. I’ve found it’s worth thinking ahead to do that bit of extra work. Someone told me the other day that doing this can reduce the undesirable side effects by something like eighty percent—I’m looking for that in writing.
Some have asked if they could do the first part in the evening and then rinse in the morning and finish the cooking—to save time. I haven’t personally tried doing this the night before, yet, but plan to do so in the near future. Just be sure to start with plenty of water as the beans really do plump up!
