How to Fight Senile Dementia
As we get to middle age the moments occur more frequently. We walk into a room and forget why. We forget the name of a neighbor although she has lived next door for years. We laugh these off as senior moments, but they could be the first signs of senile dementia. We know that the brain starts to physically shrink beginning at the age of thirty. As the population grays the problem will only get worst. Fully half of the eighty year olds in the country have some form of cognitive impairment that could be Alzheimer's disease. Is there anything we can do to fight it? Read on to learn more.
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Instructions
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Exercise the brain. Scientists have known for a long time that people with advanced degrees have less of a likelihood of contracting Alzheimer's disease compared to those with just a high school education. There is some speculation that there is no cause and effect relationship here. More educated people may have other environmental factors that are the real reason for the correlation such as better diets or less stress. In recent years there is increasing evidence that by building more complex neural pathways the brain will degrade less. Dakim Inc. has developed a cognitive fitness program that goes into nursing homes and senior centers designed to exercise memory by tapping into images, math, and reasoning. It uses a simple touch screen. Nintendo now offers a portable video game called Brain Age that does the same.
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Exercise the body. Anybody who works out appreciates the mind clearing benefits of exercise. The brain is an organ. Simply increasing oxygen flow to it can increase mental capacity.
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Eat a nutrient dense low calorie diet. The second part of good cardio vascular health is to eat a healthy diet. The single biggest killer in both men and women in the industrial world is cardiovascular disease which manifests itself as heart trouble and stroke. The biggest cause is the narrowing of critical arteries by a build up of plaque where cholesterol is a major component. If the blood vessels in your brain narrow, less oxygen and fewer nutrients get through. Stroke can actually kill your cells as the blood is cut off to part of your brain.
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Limit your alcohol. The effects of long term heavy alcohol consumption are similar to senile dementia. A single glass of wine or alcohol for a woman or two for a man each day can actually promote heart health by easing circulation, but more than that starts to corrode your neurons. Who of us has ever done better on a test the morning of a hangover?
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Take fish oil, either as a supplement or in fish like wild salmon or tuna. DHA, one of the oils in cold, deep water fish, has recently been found to increase a brain protein called LR11 which seems to erode the toxic plaques that contribute to Alzheimer's disease. In autopsies, Alzheimer's patients have lower than normal levels of LR11.
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As a last resort take prescription medication. Despite a major push by pharmaceutical companies, there really is not an effective anti-Alzheimer's disease medicine on the market yet. Namenda and Aricept are both heavily prescribed, but at this point the best that a doctor can expect is that this medication slows mental decline rather than reverses it.
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Tips & Warnings
If you feel that senile dementia is closing in on you, ask your doctor if you can get a Positron Emission Tomography , PET, scan to look at brain activity. It could give advance notice of your pending deterioration and give you enough time to get your affairs in order.
