Holy Toledo! My mom just turned 93 this past week. Craziness, I say. I wish she were "with it" more but we do still have her and that's a blessing. We, the family, took her out to dinner to a teppanyaki restaurant to celebrate. As always, she fills up on everything else and can never finish, or even start her actual dinner. Oh well, thank goodness for doggie bags. This is the kind of Japanese restaurant that grills the meal in front of you and it's really quite a show. From the onion volcano and choo-choo train to flipping food into your mouth.
At one point during the meal my sis, G., turned to her and stated that her own 2 kids loved going to these kinds of restaurants for their birthdays and my poor mom turns to me and says "you were spoiled, huh?" I replied that "No, she said her kids." and she says " Yes, your her kid." WHAT!?!? It took her awhile to remember that I was her kid.
This makes me very frightened about quality of life. My quality of life to be more specific, should I live that long. Is this my future? What can we do to prevent this in our future, or the future of those that end up caring for us, as we near the end of our time?
Apparently, there is research out there that does say that you can reduce the risk of developing dementia. Oh thank goodness, right? I say YES! The earlier you adopt some of these behaviors the better, but even if you start late in life, you can effect a change for the better.
In a report titled, How To Prevent Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia, in Medical News Today, July 2013 at www.medicalnewstoday.com states some of the research that shows some ways to begin to fight the possibility of dementia.
Many of these are what we always talk about, eat healthy, be active, think!
Control cholesterol and blood pressure. If you help your cardiovascular pathways you help your brain. These issues reduce the blood supply to the heart and will directly effect the amount of blood supply to the brain. Hello! I don't know about you but I never really thought about it that way. I always thought about it as thought-provoking things, rapid decision making things helping to stave off dementia, not actually the blood supply. Wow!
Physical Activity,
I've discussed the benefits of dancing against dementia before and more than once. Again, social dancing in seniors showed about a 65-76% decreased risk.
A study done in the States showed that even 12 months of physical activity improved spatial memory and reversed the hippocampus shrinkage within the brain. The hippocampus is very important to many of the memory formation types and spatial awareness.
ADL or activities of daily living, will also contribute as physical activity but you should if possible, get out and do something else physical. Walking, dancing, cycling, anything. Go do it. Basically, get off of the damn couch.
What you eat will also help with the prevention of the disease. You've heard it before folks. More fruits & veggies, legumes (beans) olive oil, less fatty red meats and oils. Ya-da-da! These foods can help reduce the crap that clogs up the arteries and lower blood flow.
One interesting thing I read was that seniors eating too much can increase their risk of dementia. Eating over 2100 calories/day in fact, in folks over 70, almost doubled their risk of cognitive impairment. Yikes!
It also stated that eating fish, baked or broiled, once a week helped to preserve the gray matter in the brain but diets high in trans fats proved to shrink the brain. More Omega-3 people.
Keep the brain active by reading, writing and other types of brain activity can also help with the prevention of dementia. Unfortunately for my mom, she does word puzzles but seemed to make up her own words!
A Canadian report showed that if you're bilingual you also have a much better chance of preventing dementia. You'd literally have to suffer twice as much brain damage before the symptoms of dementia began to appear.
Have you heard any of this before? YES! Of course you have. Not only from me but from almost everyone you know I'll bet. We all know the common sensibility of the message but for some reason, we just keep ignoring it. I've seen a future I don't want. I hope you take care of yourself so you don't go through what my family is going through. It's not pretty, fun, funny or even necessary in many degrees or ways.
Stay active, stay ahead of it.
I have to tell you that I got some kinda "bug" this past week. I think I've fought it off fairly well for some time but it finally got to me. I stayed home for these past couple of days. I want to get rid of it and didn't want to infect my co-workers, especially my buddy M. who's preggers. We need to be aware of those we work with too.
I stayed down most of the 1st day but began doing a bunch of cleaning the 2nd. Going through papers, organizing, tossing stuff out
I'm not sure if it's from having gone out furniture shopping with my sis again and AGAIN spending more than twice as much as she did when I wasn't even looking to buy anything. Lord help me when I am looking to spend. Oh well, I have a new tempur-pedic bed coming along with a new bed set to put it on next Friday. I got a new coconut bliss pillow on sale from the mattress place for 1/3 the actual cost for it. Yippeeeee! New house practically. The place is really starting to look fabulous.
I've also bought a pair of nightstands. My current ones are just awful and seriously need to go.
Poor Putney is still wearing his cone of shame but I did take it off today to wash it. Yuck. His sore is going down so nicely too. Smaller, drying up. Yuck! But the cone is working.
Well, off to get more organizing done now. Stay well and keep dancing!
At one point during the meal my sis, G., turned to her and stated that her own 2 kids loved going to these kinds of restaurants for their birthdays and my poor mom turns to me and says "you were spoiled, huh?" I replied that "No, she said her kids." and she says " Yes, your her kid." WHAT!?!? It took her awhile to remember that I was her kid.
This makes me very frightened about quality of life. My quality of life to be more specific, should I live that long. Is this my future? What can we do to prevent this in our future, or the future of those that end up caring for us, as we near the end of our time?
Apparently, there is research out there that does say that you can reduce the risk of developing dementia. Oh thank goodness, right? I say YES! The earlier you adopt some of these behaviors the better, but even if you start late in life, you can effect a change for the better.
In a report titled, How To Prevent Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia, in Medical News Today, July 2013 at www.medicalnewstoday.com states some of the research that shows some ways to begin to fight the possibility of dementia.
Many of these are what we always talk about, eat healthy, be active, think!
Control cholesterol and blood pressure. If you help your cardiovascular pathways you help your brain. These issues reduce the blood supply to the heart and will directly effect the amount of blood supply to the brain. Hello! I don't know about you but I never really thought about it that way. I always thought about it as thought-provoking things, rapid decision making things helping to stave off dementia, not actually the blood supply. Wow!
Physical Activity,
I've discussed the benefits of dancing against dementia before and more than once. Again, social dancing in seniors showed about a 65-76% decreased risk.
A study done in the States showed that even 12 months of physical activity improved spatial memory and reversed the hippocampus shrinkage within the brain. The hippocampus is very important to many of the memory formation types and spatial awareness.
ADL or activities of daily living, will also contribute as physical activity but you should if possible, get out and do something else physical. Walking, dancing, cycling, anything. Go do it. Basically, get off of the damn couch.
What you eat will also help with the prevention of the disease. You've heard it before folks. More fruits & veggies, legumes (beans) olive oil, less fatty red meats and oils. Ya-da-da! These foods can help reduce the crap that clogs up the arteries and lower blood flow.
One interesting thing I read was that seniors eating too much can increase their risk of dementia. Eating over 2100 calories/day in fact, in folks over 70, almost doubled their risk of cognitive impairment. Yikes!
It also stated that eating fish, baked or broiled, once a week helped to preserve the gray matter in the brain but diets high in trans fats proved to shrink the brain. More Omega-3 people.
Keep the brain active by reading, writing and other types of brain activity can also help with the prevention of dementia. Unfortunately for my mom, she does word puzzles but seemed to make up her own words!
A Canadian report showed that if you're bilingual you also have a much better chance of preventing dementia. You'd literally have to suffer twice as much brain damage before the symptoms of dementia began to appear.
Have you heard any of this before? YES! Of course you have. Not only from me but from almost everyone you know I'll bet. We all know the common sensibility of the message but for some reason, we just keep ignoring it. I've seen a future I don't want. I hope you take care of yourself so you don't go through what my family is going through. It's not pretty, fun, funny or even necessary in many degrees or ways.
Stay active, stay ahead of it.
I have to tell you that I got some kinda "bug" this past week. I think I've fought it off fairly well for some time but it finally got to me. I stayed home for these past couple of days. I want to get rid of it and didn't want to infect my co-workers, especially my buddy M. who's preggers. We need to be aware of those we work with too.
I stayed down most of the 1st day but began doing a bunch of cleaning the 2nd. Going through papers, organizing, tossing stuff out
I'm not sure if it's from having gone out furniture shopping with my sis again and AGAIN spending more than twice as much as she did when I wasn't even looking to buy anything. Lord help me when I am looking to spend. Oh well, I have a new tempur-pedic bed coming along with a new bed set to put it on next Friday. I got a new coconut bliss pillow on sale from the mattress place for 1/3 the actual cost for it. Yippeeeee! New house practically. The place is really starting to look fabulous.
I've also bought a pair of nightstands. My current ones are just awful and seriously need to go.
Poor Putney is still wearing his cone of shame but I did take it off today to wash it. Yuck. His sore is going down so nicely too. Smaller, drying up. Yuck! But the cone is working.
Well, off to get more organizing done now. Stay well and keep dancing!
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