My beloved great aunt, bohemian, aviatrix & poet, lived to the advanced age of 98 and though bedridden and suffering cruel osteoporosis in her last few years, her mind remained as sharp as a whip. Right to the end she could hold a philosophic or literary conversation that was both funny & erudite and maintained a lively correspondence with friends & fellow writers all over the world. She could dish the dirt delightfully on figures high & low over a period of some 80 years, from her days as a young woman at a Leipzig finishing school in the 1890's right up to the present day in her house in Wales in the 1980's, where she dwelt independently, tended by some wonderful ladies who called in daily. No question of a Home, Alzheimer's or senile dementia for her! But her short term memory was shot. On visiting my aunt with a new companion, herself a woman of some character (& now life partner), and after being quizzed by her with good natured spite they got on famously. Nevertheless, throughout the conversation my aunt kept asking, "And what was your name again, my dear......".
All this is just a roundabout way to say that you can live to a ripe old age and still keep an active and alert mind. There may be minor deterioration, but not the slow horror of death from dementia. There are many things you can do to slow down the inevitable deterioration in cognitive function that comes with age, as well as preventing senile dementia & Alzheimer's, which are incurable. In fact we can all keep our marbles more or less to the day we die if we look after ourselves.
You know who I mean......
I guess we've all got stuck sometime searching for a name or a word we know very well but can't quite retrieve from the memory bank? And if it happens a bit more than it did, wonder if it might not be an early indication of something more serious in years to come? The medicos say reassuringly that if you forget your car keys a lot - that's kind of to be expected, but once you forget what they're for....... then you've got a problem. Well thanks a lot doctor, that's a big help! By that time I KNOW (maybe) I've got a BIG problem & not one these guys can do a whole lot about. I don't want it to come to that, thank you very much. What I'd like to know is how to stop that ever happening & how to keep what I've got. And while we're on the subject, what about getting more brainpower out of the grey matter - not less! Ah! Now we're talking......
Well first off, the medicos are more or less right, so far as it goes (& it never does go very far). A degree of age-related memory & cognitive impairment is to be expected as we rock on. It doesn't mean that we are going to get Alzheimer's. The question is how soon will you start losing it & what can you do to delay it? Questions the medical fraternity are none too forthcoming about. I don't know about you, but being told it's normal to become a doddering old fool at some stage doesn't do it for me. I want to do something about it before that happens.
Until very recently it was said that we had a finite number of brain cells & they did not get replaced at all. Modern research shows that is not entirely true, but for now you might as well take that as the way it is. From our 20's onward all our cells die faster than they are replaced and that, simply put, is why we age. In other words, our brain will age faster than all our other organs. Unlike other cells our brain cells are exquisitely sensitive to the absence of essential nutrients & will die by the billion if deprived. Brain cells are also extremely vulnerable to all the toxins that come their way & will die off in similar huge numbers when exposed. For your brain to function effectively, messages have to be relayed from one nerve cell to the next and this is done by special chemicals called neurotransmitters. Memory, comprehension, learning, mood states & all the other higher mental processes are dependent on the main essential brain chemicals, acetylcholine, dopamine and seratonin. Another critical component of brain function is the cell membrane. Cell membranes govern and protect your brain cells allowing your mitochondria to produce energy. After a while they become impaired & nothing does this faster than the same free-radicals that cause cellular aging throughout the rest of your body.
How to kill your brain cells.....
The fastest ways to kill off your brain cells are to smoke cigarettes, drink too much & do drugs. Next would be eating a lousy diet, closely followed by not exercising. Perhaps some of you, who have done all or some of the above routinely at some stage of your lives, have noticed the difference when you clean up the act? You tend to feel a lot better, don't you? I know I did. Those of you who haven't tried it yet might give it a go & notice the difference. What have you got to lose, but your mind?
Next, if you don't exercise your brain by turning your short term memory into long term memory (i.e, learning something new) your brain cells will start to atrophy and shrink. Long hours watching TV or otherwise numbing out will do it nicely.
Stress is probably the single most destructive & insidious chemical force in people's lives. You don't have to be a wife-beating alcoholic couch-potato, pigging out on burgers to be stressed. Some very nice people I know, even in 'Paradise Bali', are more than a little stressed I've noticed. Stress causes high levels of the hormone cortisol, which can cause tissue damage, confusion & even dementia. Not to mention being depressed. The effect on the hippocampus & thereby the memory function can be just awful.
Broadly speaking what's bad or good for the heart is good or bad for the brain. High blood pressure, high cholesterol & elevated levels of homocysteine can clog the arteries & lead to a stroke. Think of a stroke like a heart attack in the brain, only with some even nastier after effects - that is if you're still around not to know about it. Keeping the arteries open supplies the brain with the nutrients & oxygen it needs to prevent strokes.
Wot'cher gonna do?
Okay, enough of the horror and the clean living already. What can I do now to put off the evil day when I lose it, I hear some of you ask? Or better yet, what can I do to actually increase my brain function? Actually, there's a lot you can do.
First, get a good multi I say unto ye, again & again. One that combines all the necessary vitamins, minerals, amino acids & antioxidants your body needs in therapeutic, not derisory dosages. It should contain a good complex of the Vitamin B's so essential for the brain (especially B12), plus the antioxidants Vitamins A, C & E.
Hormones are required to facilitate brain cell energy, maintain proper levels of Acetylcholine & protect brain cell membrane function. Supplementation with neuro-hormones helps restore youthful synchronisation within an aging brain.
Pregnenolone (50 -150mg p/day) and DHEA (25- 50mg p/day) improve brain cell activity and enhance memory. Melatonin (500mcg - 3mg at bedtime), is a naturally occurring hormone produced in the brain's pineal gland & also enhances cognitive function. Caution: anyone with hormonally fed cancers should not take DHEA or Pregnenolone without first seeking professional advise.
Other vital nutritional needs for the brain are:
Choline or lecithin, and/or phospahtidylcholine taken in sufficiently large doses early in the day. Phosphatidylserine (100 - 300mg p/day), is arguably the cream of the brain nutrients & was shown in recent research to renew brain memory by a staggering 14 years. Alpha-Lipoic-Acid (300mg p/day), is described as the master antioxidant. This nutrient plays a vital role in protecting cell membranes and shielding the mitochondria from the dangerous effects of free radicals. ALA also chelates & binds to the heavy metals so dangerous to brain cell health, & renders them harmless. Acetyl-L-Carnitine (1000mg upward p/day), is a biologically active amino acid involved in the transport of fatty acids into the cell's mitochondria. It is used extensively to treat both heart and neurological disease. It has been shown to protect brain cells against degeneration, and to improve mood, memory & cognition. It also increases lean body mass & converts body fat into energy. An all-round amazingly good thing, I'd say. Co-Enzyme Q10 (100 - 200mg p/day), another master antiox is major for both brain & heart function. It is incorporated into the mitochondria creating energy & is critical in brain cell metabolism. The herb Ginkgo Biloba (120 -240mg p/day) protects against free radicals and has been shown to improve memory in thousands of studies. Vinpocetine (15mg p/day), an extract from the periwinkle plant, has been used to treat cerebro-vascular disorders & to prevent the cognitive effects of brain-aging.
The above are all natural nutrients & are not going to do you any harm at all, but remember the DHEA & pregnenolone caveat. It is also necessary to inform your doctor of what supplements you are taking when being put on any medication.
If all of the above begins to make your brain reel don't worry, that's natural & not incipient dementia. The good news is there are a number of excellent formulations available that combine the above ingredients effectively for you. There are of course a whole lot more that don't - so don't get stiffed out there.
For those who are really getting into tweaking their brain power & want to play, we could of course graduate to a number of the interesting pharmacological cognitive enhancing & anti-aging agents like Hydergine, Deprenyl, Piracetam & a good few others I could mention, but on which I shall not dwell here.
Now, if you're a highly motivated & a very dedicated person with lots of time on your hands who'd like to save your money you can meditate a lot and spend many hours doing Qi Gong, perhaps even some etheric healing thrown in, and very possibly get some of the same result. Me, though I enjoy exercising & love to meditate (and am quite partial to a bit of etheric intervention), I can't say I want to do it more than a couple of hours a day, so when it comes to me brain cells I like to cover all the angles, know what I mean?
As I think I said to what's 'is name whenever it was,,,,,,,.. pass the Ginkgo!
" Age-related loss of short term memory is normal the doctors say. It doesn't mean I'm going to get Alzheimer's - but it might. Being told that it's normal to become a doddering old fool is normal doesn't do it for me. I want to do something about it before that happens".
