With the startling numbers of new cases being diagnosed daily, more and more of us become anxious when we can’t remember a name or place.
The cost to families and to society will grow to such a level that I worry about the quality of care in the future.
What do we do as individuals and as members of this country?
The easiest answer would be to find a cure or a way to stop the progression of the illness – but we don’t invest enough in dollars to do the research necessary.
This leaves us with trying to prevent the illness from reaching us or at least to delay it till we are much older.
Most of the research is pointing to a few actions we all can take to stave off this ravishing disease.
1) Eat a heart healthy diet – include nuts, olive oil and lots of fruit and veggies every day. Reduce or eliminate red meats and increase your intake of fish high in Omega 3.
2) Exercise at least 3 days a week for 45 minutes. The more aerobic the better – but just getting out and walking will improve your health and could stave off more than just Alzheimer’s.
3) Sleep well – getting at least 6 good hours of sleep each night.
4) Manage stress – meditate when anxious. Just focus on your breathing. Breathe in slowly for a count of 7 and exhale at the same pace – do this 7 times.
5) Do brain fitness activities – many can be done on the internet or a computer program. Take classes, learn new information – exercising the brain helps make it more elastic and produce more new cells in the hippocampus – the area of the brain that memory is generated from.
Of course check with your physician to see that he or she agrees with these changes being good for your health. We are all different and some of us have been given a gene pool that we can’t, at this time, control or amend…but, just maybe, we can buy ourselves a few more healthy years by following some good sense and easy guidelines.