Preventing Dementia and Cognitive Decline: Two Interesting Ideas: Part 2

The two ideas for preventing cognitive decline I will outline here involve a particular food, and a way of living.

The food is chocolate, specifically dark chocolate with at least 70% genuine cocoa.  Small amounts.  The flavonoids help break up brain plaques, according to an analysis of 14 small studies, reported in a reputable nutrition journal.  We all believe that one because it's what we want to be true!!  

The way of living that has also been shown to be a powerful preventer (unless, like my mother, grandmother and aunt, you have a strong genetic driver; thank god I'm adopted) is continuing to stress your brain by making it learn new things.  The reason I say stress is that stem cells in your hippocampus won't be stimulated to create new neurons if you give yourself challenges that are easily achieved.  So take classes at the local universities "senior college."  I teach at the OLLI associated with Southern Oregon University, and it's great fun to teach as well.  I take tough and complicated classes free online through Coursera.org, a consortium of major universities, including Princeton, Harvard, U of Copenhagen (origin of the universe and life, 12 weeks, incredible) and U Alberta (that amazing 3 course sequence on dinosaurs, OMG!), Caltech, MIT, Harvard - you get the picture.  Really fun.  Really mentally challenging, even more so than my OLLI, because I have tests during the video lessons and at the end of each week's work.  I don't HAVE to pass, that's why it's free, but I WANT to test myself.

Books clubs, if they are run by serious, challenging thinkers, can work the same way.  [Some are more opinions than "backing up conclusions with facts" types of groups, so they are social rather than brain-stimulating.  Both types have their value!]

Reading non-fiction is something that you can do on your own.  Do comprehensive, clearly-articulated "book reports" on your blog or Facebook page.  Hell of a lot more interesting for your readers than what you had for lunch or how bummed out and bored you are because it's raining, right?  If you don't have friends who appreciate that kind of post, Friend me, because *I* do!

Learning a language is a perennial good idea.  It might take you longer to get fluent than it would have when you were younger, but that's not a reason to never start, right?  If you travel, set yourself a goal of knowing 10 key phrases and have a vocabulary of at least 50 additional words before you leave.  I have found that basic conversation, even if you are stammering and mis-pronouncing, signals to others that you are making an effort to meet them on THEIR ground, and generates reciprocal kindness.  Which you need when you are traveling, amen.

Just being able to read signs is a confidence booster.  I remember being in Moscow when my host stopped to gas up the car and I tried reading the signs.  One interesting one was "motor masla."  Motor was a car but masla was butter.  Butter in your car?  Then my brain crunched on butter, kinda-like oil, and the answer was clear.  Or when driving in rural Quebec and saw signs for "Maiz" (or was it maz?).  God bless my large English vocabulary.  Maize is another name for corn.  Yeah!  I can read French!


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Preventing Dementia and Cognitive Decline, Part 1 More Sleep

The key to getting more sleep is to carefully train your brain to the 8 hours that you need.  If you are currently getting 5 or 6 – or less – then you need to plan your evening so that you are asleep 15 minutes earlier than usual. 

Think of your evening as your prep for a big presentation before a live audience.  You hone your speech.  You prepare notes on cards or pages.  You check the lighting and the sound.  You breathe deeply to reduce nervousness.  You hit the loo 10 minutes before show time.  Well, it’s the same thing with sleeping.  You need to prepare. 

1)      Make sure that you get at least 20 minutes of exercise/movement every day.  It helps “tune” your body to better health on all levels of metabolism and circadian rhythm, as it improves your brain, and especially memory, function.

2)      Make sure that you aren’t eating a heavy dinner less than 3 hours before bedtime.  When I worked in a corporate job, and stayed late at my desk, I had dinner in the office fridge, then came home and had a 100 calorie snack before bed.  That snack stabilized my blood sugar for sleep.  I still do the 100 calorie snack.

3)       Stop thinking about business, politics, doing Facebook, or anything else serious or potentially upsetting (no email!) for at least an hour before bed.

4)      Two hours before sleep time, use Dump the Garbage or a similar tool from Take Back Your Lost Heart or 101 Stress Busters.

5)      Sometime in the evening, HAVE FUN, something that engrosses you and genuinely brings joy – which passively watching TV doesn’t, usually.  101 Stress Busters has lots of ideas. 

6)      If you feel resistance to sleep time rather than joy, take a deep breath or five, and see if you can hear the “I don’t want to go to bed and you can’t make me!” voice.  The more it sounds like a 3-year old, the closer you are to Reality.  This is the part of you that will keep you awake until it gets some fun – and no amount of substitutes (alcohol, sweets, TV, you name it) will really satisfy.

7)      Develop an unvarying Go To Bed routine.  Unvarying is important.  You want your brain to get programmed to wind down as you go through the routine.  I cover this in the Kick Weight Loss to the Curb class and will cover it in my newsletter.

8)      If you have a spouse or partner who snores, insists on watching TV in bed (a VERY bad idea, because it associates the bed with TV, not sleeping, to his/her brain) or in any other way disrupts your sleep, sleep somewhere else.  If they want to sleep with you, then they have to SLEEP in the bedroom and do other things elsewhere.  For the last 3 years, hubby has had to get up at 3:30AM and of course, goes to bed much earlier than I.  So we have slept apart on commute days and together on non-commute days.  If your partner doesn’t love you enough to put your needs ahead of their desires, then you do what you need to do to take care of your health and safeguard your mental acuity. 

9)      If you find your sleep disrupted by trips to the bathroom, stop drinking in the evening.  I can’t drink anything after 4PM myself.  I gathered data for 6 months before I came to the latest I could absorb fluids before I had night-waking troubles.  For most people it’s 3 hours, not 6, so see what it is for your body.

Our bodies change and shift over time, usually gradually – elders have more trouble staying asleep because brains get poorer at releasing enough melatonin, and the over-55 set gets less exercise, for example.  If it’s relatively sudden, first check any changes in medications; have you started or stopped anything?  Then think: are you eating differently or taking/stopping a new supplement?  

Check with your doc or pharmacist (the latter are easier to get time with), to see if there is a known sleep disruption associated with the chemicals involved.  Supplements are less safe than prescribed drugs in the sense that there is no quality or purity control imposed by a government agency focused on our safety, but assuming the pills really are what the label says, the pharmacist can tell you what is known about effects of the supplement.  

And then there are hormones of menopause and perimenopause (starting anytime after age 43, on average), which are known to wreck sleep for a while.  Absent any of these known reasons, sudden sleep changes warrant a medical visit.

Kick Dieting to the Curb: Get and Stay at Your Healthy Weight – Forever!

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