Preventing Dementia
May 24th, 2009Dementia is like cancer. It’s one of those things that will never be cured. It doesn’t help either all the crap we’re putting into our environment.
It is not completely preventable either. We’re living too long. I had a Biologist friend of mine tell me that all men will eventually get prostate cancer if we live long enough. It’s just one of those things.
You can play the odds though. Here are a few tips at preventing dementia:
- Read a lot. Using your mind is your best weapon against dementia.
- Fish oil. Recent studies have shown that fish oil is not only good for heart but people who eat fish/fish oil have lower percentages of dementia.
- Use your fingers. I strongly suggest a musical instrument that uses your fingers a lot. One that you can do warm up exercises and scales too. Guitar, piano, violin, etc., all good instruments to learn to help prevent dementia.
- If you don’t play a musical instrument, do something else to use your fingers like knit, crochet, etc. You need to use your fingers.
- Have sex a lot. No studies have shown anything that I’m aware of, but I just wanted to say that.
- Don’t eat aluminum. We don’t know if aluminum is a cause of dementia or aluminum retention in the brain is a result. Either way, I don’t want to find out the hard way. Studies have shown that people with both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s have higher amounts of aluminum in their brains.
- Be physically active. Studies have shown that folks who are more physically active have less chances of getting dementia.
- Turn off the idiot box and live. They don’t call it an idiot box for no reason. I haven’t found the studies to prove it, but I’d be willing to bet that folks who watch more TV are more prone to get dementia than those who don’t.
So why am I writing this? You’re probably thinking that The Zombieslayer is just a Software guy and what does he know about dementia? I’ll tell you why, it’s been one of my biggest fears my whole life. My brain is everything to me. It’s my biggest strength, and I’d hate more than anything to lose it.
So yes, I’ve done my research. Best of luck to everyone. Unfortunately, luck is also involved and you can do everything right but still get dementia. But at least you can increase your chances of not getting it by following these tips.
unfortunately in my mom’s family there is a lot of alzheimers. she puts pretty much all of these ideas into practice but i know in the back of her mind she still has a tremendous fear. i try to do the same even though as an adoptee i have no idea what genetics i have been dealt.
sounds like a good list for life in general.
I am terrified of losing my grip on this reality (who knows, maybe this is only my present reality). Omega vitamins have definately entered my daily routine.
Good post. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s, and even though she doesn’t realize it, it’s no picnic for everyone around her, as my mom’s last post shows. The good thing is that if you have dementia or a mental illness that renders you unable to be rational, you probably will never know it. You’ll think everyone else is crazy for thinking you’re crazy. I used to be afraid of becoming schizophrenic because my other grandmother is, but then I started reminding myself that she doesn’t think she’s schizophrenic.
My grandmother had this and Alheimers when she passed away. The last time I saw her the only person she knew for some dang reason was Jeff with out calling him someone else..Funny huh???
Wow. Where to start.
I’m scared too. I’m a mathy, sciency type (is that illiterate enough to prove the point ;-?) . MY brain is my life, as well and dementia scares the bejeezers out of me.
But I have to say that without exception, everything that you have written is correlative, not causative. That is not to say that it is NOT causative, just that there is no actual science to back it up (’studies’ that you mention are demographic and do nothing more than raise hypothesis, but the media gets hold of them and vaunts them to the sky as ‘fact’.).
I am not a ’scientist’, I did my post graduate work at NIH (NIMH, NCI) as a bio-statistician. My job was to evaluate data, present statistical analysis of said data. BUT more importantly, I know what is and is not science. Back then (early 70’s) they still did science in these institutions. However, the social scientists and ’soft’ science morons came into being in the late 70’s early 80’s and ‘discovered’ demographics. Demographic scraping is NOT science, no matter how full of ‘facts’, numbers and ‘findings’. They can be incredibly accurate in what is reported and utterly wrong.
Be careful when you see something like the ‘aluminum’ in the brain is what causes Alzheimer’s silliness. There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that shows that to be the case. It is there, but the cause is not known. It may have to do with the amyloid plaque formations attracting a ubiquitous metal, not the other way around. We just don’t know.
But that leaves us where? Without hope. So we grasp at straws, and hope that we will not fall prey.
My Dad died at 95, clear minded and alert until his last 3 days. My Mother has been living with vascular dementia for 5 years, and is now 94. NOT ALZHEIMERS, which I constantly have to bludgeon into her healthcare morons. THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE. It is so common to call any sort of mental degradation (particularly vascular dementia) Alzheimer’s. But in fact, you can’t know it is Alzheimer’s without a brain biopsy, although now there is a lot more known about the symptoms collected before death and correlating them to brain autopsy findings.
No hope. At all. Except, maybe there is, ZS. I will direct you to a book that I would be interested in you reading, given this and your next post. It appears on the surface to be yet another ‘popular media’ diet book, but it is none of that. Here’s the name, go buy it. It is in softcover at Amazon for about $12.00 now.
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health
Author: Gary Taubes
Before you turn me off, ZS: You will appreciate Taubes background. His undergrad is physics (you know mathematicians who can DO stuff ;-> - but more importantly, physicists more than any other group of technically trained people KNOW WHAT SCIENCE IS.) He has a master’s in journalism and is a science writer. A excellent one. The book, GCBC, is a review of ALL science surrounding the lipid hypothesis that took over the FDA in the 70’s and is still (teapot help us) turning perfectly healthy people into fat sacks of unhealthy protoplasm.
It’s all right there. The actual science. Not the ‘correlative’ demographics.
Want the punchline? No. You have to read the book. You really do, ZS. Clear your mind and prepare to learn a whole new way of thinking about diet. As I said, I know science when I see it, and I can define it too. This book is a (scientific) review of the SCIENCE of diet. No cherry-picking. No (scientific) studies left out.
I have no financial connection with Taubes whatever, as a disclaimer. (But I will say that reading his book has, literally, changed my life.)
Waltzing out of the building…
I’ll go backwards this time.
Wallflower - That’s what I’m afraid of; all those tips are correlative and not causative.
OK, I’ll check it out next time I’m at Barnes and Noodle.
Tweety - Heh. Funny joke that we make about Alzheimer’s is you get to meet new people every day.
SME - Yeah. I’d hate to have it just because I don’t want to burden anyone else. You always have to have someone watch out for you, because you never know when you’re going to do something really stupid. I’m actually pretty scared about getting it, so I’m going to check out Wallflower’s recommendation.
Xmichra - Mine too. At the worst, they’re good for your heart at least.
Lime - Must be a weird feeling. I know I’m a carrier for Diabetes and a slew of other not so fun genetic diseases. Seeing family members lose their limbs and/or go blind is probably what turned me into a Health Nazi.