2 easy steps for upping the odds
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Here’s the 1-2 punch that can fight dementia
I’ve lived through the horror of having a loved one diagnosed with dementia.
It’s an awful disease and it can make your family member or friend go from a healthy, independent individual to an adult who can’t take care of themselves.
I don’t wish dementia on anyone!
It robs you of your personality and makes you a husk of the person you once were.
Personally, after living through the decline of my family member, I think that the threat of dementia and Alzheimer’s is one of the worst parts of aging.
But even if you have a family history of the disease, that doesn’t make it inevitable that you’ll get it.
In a study published in Neurology, researchers looked at 1900 people and how often they participated in cognitively stimulating activities.
They followed this group for nearly seven years, with a yearly follow-up visit each year.
As part of a longitudinal cohort study, 1,903 older persons without dementia at enrollment reported their frequency of participation in cognitively stimulating activities. They had annual clinical evaluations to diagnose dementia and AD, and the deceased underwent neuropathologic examination. In analyses, we assessed the relation of baseline cognitive activity to age at diagnosis of incident AD dementia and to postmortem markers of AD and other dementias.
What the researchers found was that you could push back the onset of dementia by 5 years by engaging in cognitively challenging activities.
During a mean of 6.8 years of follow-up, 457 individuals were diagnosed with incident AD at a mean age of 88.6 (SD 6.4, range 64.1–106.5) years. In an extended accelerated failure time model, higher level of baseline cognitive activity (mean 3.2, SD 0.7) was associated with older age at AD dementia onset (estimate 0.026; 95% confidence interval 0.013–0.039). Low cognitive activity (score 2.1, 10th percentile) was associated with a mean onset age of 88.6 years compared to a mean onset age of 93.6 years associated with high cognitive activity (score 4.0, 90th percentile).
Five years may sound like a small amount, but being cognitively active could mean that you get dementia at 93, instead of 88.
This is a big deal!
It can keep you independent for longer than if you didn’t keep your mind engaged and active.
The cognitively engaging activities don’t have to be crazy demanding either.
The scientists measured things like reading, writing letters, and playing puzzle and card games.
Doing things you enjoy can help you too.
Another thing that can help to keep your brain active is eating plenty of ripe fruit, because it contains compounds called flavonols which are good for the brain.
In Cox proportional hazards models, dietary intakes of flavonols were inversely associated with incident Alzheimer dementia in models adjusted for age, sex, education, APOE ɛ4, and participation in cognitive and physical activities.
The big takeaway from these two studies is that it’s pretty easy to lower your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
- You need to keep your brain engaged, because it really is a case of use it or lose it.
- Ripe fruit provides flavonols that can protect your brain from Alziehmer’s
There has been a lot of attention lately to genetics and how much they influence your health — including your risk for dementia.
But these two studies show that you CAN have influence over whether or not you get these diseases.
And that is very good news!
—-Important Message—-
Beware the killer lipid lurking in the U.S. food supply — hurts the brain and leads to Alzheimer’s
Nearly 100 years ago, manufacturing companies started contaminating food with a toxic killer chemical…
And now today, it’s in almost every single food item we eat.
It’s in fast food, organic food, so-called “healthy” foods — every single food at the grocery store is full of this toxic chemical.
And it’s doing terrible things to men’s bodies…
Unfortunately, there’s almost no way to avoid eating this killer chemical nowadays. It’s in too much of the food supply.
But I’ve finally discovered a way to safely destroy this killer lipid once it enters our bodies…
…BEFORE it gets in the bloodstream and wreaks havoc in our cells and organs.
———-
