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At a recent supper with five old college friends I was a little surprised to find that all of us had at least one elderly parent struggling with some degree of dementia or Alzheimer's-- five of us have parents in nursing homes and one has a father who is cared for in his own home by round-the-clock nursing care. It would seem if one lives long enough, one develops Alzheimer's or dementia, if you were to go by our anecdotal evidence.
My favourite health e-writer is Dr. Ben Kim, a chiropractor/fasting clinician who lives in Barrie, Ontario with his wife and child. In a recent e-letter, he talks about the ways we can actually prevent the dreaded Alzheimer's disease. He writes that although we don't know the exact cause of Alzheimer's, there is every indication that food and lifestyle choices are strongly linked to its development. (For an interesting discussion on the connection to the human form of mad cow disease, the prion Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, read The Mad Cowboy by Howard F. Lyman.)
Dr. Kim discusses six lifestyle changes we can make to dramatically cut down on the risk of getting Alzheimer's:
(1) A Raw Vegan Diet : just by drinking as little as three or more raw (freshly-made) fruit and veggie juices in a week people lower their risk by 76%! As everyone knows from my sort of stuck-record-approach, there is nothing quite as healthy as a fresh fruit and/or greens smoothie . When you drink home-made smoothies, you get all the freshest vitamins and minerals, flavours, AND the fibre (that is sloughed off when you use a juicer). For extra antioxidants and zip I add about an ounce of the most bioavailable, highest antioxidant elixir on the market today (revised 2008): Vivix
(2) Get enough of the Omega-3 fatty acids (in balance with other nutrients). For those of us who have read The China Study and are vegan , that means eating things like:
- soaked and ground seeds such as hemp or flax
- soaked walnuts (i.e., soaked in pure water overnight)
- sea vegetables (preferably sun-dried and from BC)
- purslane (shocking-- this is the garden weed portulaca)
- traditionally-prepared coconut oil or fresh baby coconut
The Journal of Neuroscience talks about a study that shows diets high in omega-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA, radically slowed the progress of Alzheimer's in mice. Building and keeping up a healthy nervous system is key to preventing the breakdown of that system that occurs with Alzheimer's.
(3) Aim for a healthy weight for your height
The 58th annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (April 2006) highlighted a presentation that showed that individuals who are overweight in their forties are at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's in their later years. (yikes-- that would include me: I'm happy to report, though, that my switch to a (mostly raw) vegan life-style is resulting in amazing weight loss and energy-- I'm playing catch-up, of course, since I'm well into my 50s and heading toward 60).
4. Keep up the Mental Stimulation
Dr. Kim writes simply: "The cells that make up your brain are similar to those that make up your muscles; they need to be exercised to stay healthy and strong." This is the excuse I use for playing a lot of Literati on Yahoo! It is also the way I encourage myself when I feel tired or frustrated with the amount of reading I have set up for myself towards gaining my coaching certification. Find a hobby that keeps you in peak mental fitness: join Toastmaster's, re-read some of your old science text books (even if the science is now outdated, haha), get your children to explain HTML coding to you and design your own websites, listen to the CBC's Eleanor Wachtel interview authors when you drive, argue and debate with someone who likes to argue and debate (provided that they make sense, of course)-- find something that keeps your brain from jelling over. I see this as one of the chief failures of nursing homes... the infirm elderly are not exposed to opportunities to continue to learn and stimulate their brains.
(5) Stay away from Aluminum
Dr. Kim's research indicates that the National Institutes of Health recommend that we avoid exposure to high levels of aluminum since there is concern among various scientists that aluminum compounds are a significant component in the neurological damage that shows up as Alzheimer's disease. It is pretty nigh impossible, as Dr. K. points out, to avoid all contaminants in the environment that contain aluminum but we can reduce our risk considerably by avoiding some of the worst culprits :
- Processed cheeses and cornbread (another good reason to be 'raw' vegan )
- Antacids and buffered aspirin
- Aluminum cookware, especially when cooking either alkaline foods (eg., green vegetables) or acidic foods (like tomatoes) in them (hey--yet another advantage to eating food raw)
- Antiperspirants (try pure Geranium Essential Oil instead)
6. Get the mercury out of your life
Mainstream medicine and science are still holding back on acknowledging a link between mercury and Alzheimer's risk, but a study in a 2001 edition of The Neuro-Report states that inhalation of mercury vapor can cause the same sort of brain damage that is found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. What are some common sources of mercury?:
- dental amalgam fillings (thankfully there are now dentists who avoid mercury in their practices, and there are opportunities for people to avoid mercury and, indeed, all unnecessary dental reconstruction )
- Thimerosal, a preservative in many vaccines (you will want to do your own research on this)
- Seafood (especially larger fish-- like tuna-- and shellfish)(another advantage to raw veganism !)
- broken compact fluorescent light bulbs... hey, I didn't know about this and we have them throughout our house (although, as our son pointed out, they are not 'broken').
To read other excellent articles by Dr. Ben Kim, or to subscribe to his newsletter, go to drbenkim.com
Additionally, there are some fine articles about the energy therapy EFT that will help with keeping your mind sharp (you can easily learn to do this technique, just scroll to the bottom of the page when you have read the article):
EFT and the "mental" game of golf