And then this morning one of the articles on my homepage focused on dementia. I realized it as a topic I’d never covered on the blog, and I don’t recall it being addressed in any of my off-grid medical texts. (I can’t check that right now because Aaron, wisely, is still sleeping at this early hour. One hour later—Armageddon Medicine has a couple mentions. There is nothing in any of the other off-grid resources.)
Referenced in that article was a report published in The Lancet asserting that 40% of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by modifying behavior to reduce the risk factors. Most are just good habits we know about and should already be practicing. A couple were surprising and easily implemented.
1. Reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption. Neuroscientist Richard Restak advises his patients to quit drinking alcohol by age 70 at the latest because people usually have fewer brain neurons than when they were younger. Why risk them? He notes, “Alcohol is a very, very weak neurotoxin – it’s not good for nerve cells.”
2. Quit smoking. Also reduce exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke and other sources of air pollution, especially later in life.
3. Prevent head injuries in mid-life. (This point was to encourage government support for safety regulations for those engaged in high-risk occupations.)
4. Protect ears from high noise levels.
5. Use hearing aids to compensate for hearing loss that begins in mid-life. When people can’t hear well, it becomes harder to engage in conversations that keep the brain active.
6. Similarly, address vision problems promptly as well. Reading, especially complex fiction novels, helps keep the brain sharp. One of the early signs of dementia is that the patient loses interest in reading because of the difficulty in keeping track of the characters.
7. Provide primary and secondary education to all children.
8. Maintain systolic blood pressure of 130 mm Hg or less from around age 40 years.
9. Lead an active life into mid and possibly later life.
10. Reduce obesity and diabetes.
11. Take a short afternoon nap.
Of course, there is no guarantee that these measures will prevent the onset of dementia. Restak compares these measures to driving a car: “You can’t guarantee you won’t get in an accident but by wearing your seatbelt and checking your speed and keeping the car maintained, you can lessen your chances.”
Other measures to adopt:
12. Maintain sufficient vitamin D levels.
Herbs and other substances shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and dementia:
Garlic (aged garlic extract) (dementia)
Prayer (dementia)
Laughter (dementia)
Coconut oil (Alzheimer’s)
Lavender essential oil (Alzheimer’s)
Milk thistle (Alzheimer’s)
Gingko biloba[1]
Risk factors for developing dementia:
Type AB blood
References:
Links to related posts:
Vitamin D Deficiency and Rickets
Blood Type and Disease Susceptibility
The Medicinal Uses of Lavender
The Medicinal Uses of Milk Thistle
The Medicinal Uses of Rosemary
[1] Cynthia Koelker, Armageddon Medicine, 2012, 75.
Great post. This is a really overlooked area. Prevention is so much better than the cure. Dementia is a really awful post-SHTF disease to try and prepare for or manage. Mild and moderate conceivably. But severe dementia, and I think it is close to unmanageable. BCE
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