All things well

With a mother who has Alzheimers (and her mother before her) I know that I have a higher than average chance of developing the disease in later years. But genes are only a part (perhaps a small part) of the overall risk factors. Here are ten things anyone can do to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimers:

1. Physical exercise. This can cut your risk of developing the big A by 50% and is especially important if you are over 40. Vigorous walking for 20 minutes at least three times per week would be a good start. I do this by using a combination of public transport and walking to get to work. (Good for the environment too!). Two things are important – cardiovascular exercise, to ensure your brain gets a good steady blood supply, and the neural stimulation which movement provides. As a rule of thumb, if it is good for your heart, it’s good for your brain.

2. Use your brain. Think of you brain as a big muscle. What happens to muscle if you don’t exercise it? It goes flabby and feeble. The brain is just the same. The rule is: use it or lose it. For a long time it was thought that brain and nerve cells didn’t regenerate – that after your brain peaked at about age 20 it was downhill all the way. Now scientists know this isn’t true. But the key to switching on the brain’s ability to grow new neural pathways is to regularly do something which requires intense concentration and is something we haven’t done before. Learning a foreign language, for example, may be one of the best ways to give our brain a good work-out. See The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge MD

3. Meditate. Meditation is an effective way of dealing with stress. And stress is bad for the brain, leading to higher blood pressure, cholesterol and cortisol – all of which are linked with Alzheimer’s. There are many different ways to meditate, but the key elements are relaxing the mind, often by focusing on something else such as your breathing, the sensations of your body, relaxing music or a visual object.

4. Deal with your emotions. A study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York indicates that depression is a risk factor in Alzheimers. People with a history of depression showed more plaques and tangles in the hippocampus part of the brain and tended to decline more rapidly into dementia. As I have written previously, drugs are not the answer – unless you have very severe clinical depression. The Journey is one of the most effective ways we have found of changing negative emotional patterns, and if you live in Melbourne I can recommend my wife, Karen, who is a Journey Practitioner. People with lifetime histories of depression have found freedom through Journey work with Karen – in some cases in just one session!

5. Clean your teeth. You want to avoid having amalgam fillings which cause long-term exposure to trace amounts of mercury. Researchers from the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine found that even tiny amounts of mercury – less than found in many humans with fillings – caused rats to develop the same neurofibrillar tangles (damaged nerves) that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s. If you must get fillings, then try to find a holistic dentist who can offer mercury-free treatment.

6. Stop eating sea food. Unfortunately a lot of the world’s fish supply is now contaminated. I love a tuna sandwich, but I have stopped eating it after reading about the large amounts of mercury now found in tuna. The problem is that no living creature is able to metabolize mercury – once it gets into the body it stays there. So it gets absorbed first by plankton, then concentrated in the small crustaceans and fish that feed on the plankton. Then it gets even more concentrated in the fish that feed on these crustaceans and so on, up the food chain. By the time it gets into the larger predator fish such as tuna, shark, swordfish and cod, the concentrations are many millions of times higher than in the sea water.

Ok, so what about those lovely frozen shrimps and shellfish from the supermarket? The problem here is that they may come from the highly polluted rivers and estuaries of China and South-East Asia where unscrupulous factories regularly dump large amounts of industrial toxins into the the waters.
Fish is great ‘brain food’ because of the high levels of essential fatty acids (omega-3) that our bodies need for generating nerve cells. But if you are going to eat fish you need to choose either the smaller sea fish or get fresh-water fish that you know has come from unpolluted waters.

An alternative source of those healthy essential oils is sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, which have additional nutritional benefits as well.

7. Avoid Aspartame and MSG. These two food additives belong to a class called ‘excitotoxins’ which stimulate nerve cells to excessive firing, which leads to neural fatigue and sometimes kills the nerve cells. Both have been linked to a range of diseases including MS, brain cancer, lupus Parkinsons and Alzheimers. See Excitotoxins – The Taste That Kills by US neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock. Aspartame is a common artificial sweetener that is sometimes called NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful and Crystal Light. It is particularly common in diet sodas and any sweet processed foods that claim to be ‘low calory’.
MSG also appears in many disguises – most commonly as ‘hydrolysed vegetable protein’ or ‘natural flavouring’. In some form or another it is present in most processed savoury foods.

8. Avoid aluminium. Brains of people who died with A.D. show aluminium deposits in the brain plaques characteristic of the disease. As a result many people (ourselves included) choose to avoid cooking with aluminium pans. However cookware, unless it is cracked and worn, is unlikely to be the main source of aluminium entering the body. A study by the University of Toronto reported a 250% increase risk of Alzheimer’s in people who drank water from sources high in aluminium over a period of 10 years. Even in areas where the natural aluminium content of water is low, it is commonly added by the water companies as Alum crystals as part of the water treatment process. This is one of the many reasons why a high-quality water filter is a good investment.

Other sources of Aluminium include toothpaste (as white aluminium dioxide) and vaccines (along with mercury and other poisons). Rather than having a yearly influenza-jab, try eating more fresh fruit and vegetables.

9. Avoid fluoride. Not an easy one, given the presence of fluoride in toothpaste and other dental treatments, as well as the regular practice of dumping toxic fluoride waste into the water supplies as government policy to prevent dental decay.
As well as being highly toxic in its own right, fluoride helps absorption of heavy metals into the body.
In ‘Take Control of your Health‘ Elaine Hollingsworth writes:

Alzheimer’s Disease is epidemic in heavily-fluoridated Australia and New Zealand and in all other fluoridated communities. Decades ago the connection was discovered when doctors observed that when kidney dialysis was carried out with fluoridated water the patient, no matter the age, was quickly afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. In heavily fluoridated areas patients died during treatment because of fluoride, and hospitals soon learned that they had to use pure water for dialysis. Governments were made aware of this, yet continued dosing supplies.

10. Eat lots of curry. Alzheimer’s is almost unknown in India, and scientists think it might be because of the spice turmeric which is prevalent in Indian food. Turmeric is great for all sorts of things: it is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat the liver and gallbladder. It has anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties, is high in antioxidants, can lower cholesterol, fight bacteria and even help with cancer. The key chemical is curcumin which appears to work at multiple levels in preventing damage to the nerve cells. If you don’t like the hot spicy chilly peppers associated with curry, just cook with turmeric, garlic and ginger – all healthy and delicious.

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