Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease have touched many of us. My uncle has Alzheimer’s. He does not remember us. He calls all women “girl,” even my mother. Sometimes he thinks she is his mother. My mother has dementia. Sometimes she calls me several times a day to ask me the same question. I try to be patient and change the subject, only to be called again.
Mama used to travel on vacations with us. The last time we took her with us, it was not pleasant. She wanted to return home immediately after arrival and tried to bribe my children to drive her several hundred miles back home. We surmised that she was attached to her familiar surroundings. We made her stay. She had a good time. However, every day was a struggle to get her to enjoy herself.
If nuts can help stave off Alzheimer’s, what else is good for your mind. Here are some ways to boost your brain.
It is the ticking time-bomb that will affect 1.7 million of us in just 40 years. But can you stave off Alzheimer’s with a healthy diet. This week scientists said eating chicken, oily fish and nuts may help stop it developing. So what do the experts say about the other claimed methods of beating the disease.
A diet high in omega-3, found in fish and some oils, can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by 60 per cent, a study has claimed.
Even eating oily fish once a week can cut the risk of developing Alzheimer’s by a third, while eating fruit and vegetables every day reduces the chances of getting dementia in old age by almost 30 per cent.
Scientists in the US who looked at 65 health elderly people, whose average age was 76, found those who did so tended to lower amounts of a destructive protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease, than those who were less mentally active.
The researchers at the University of California’s Berkeley campus found they had less beta-amyloid, which are thought to cause Alzheimer’s when they accumulate in sufficient quantities to fold into tangles plaques.
US researchers linked to Harvard University found older women who ate lots of food high in saturated fats had worse memories than others.
By contrast, those who ate more monounsaturated fats – found in olive oil, sunflower oil, seeds, nuts and avocados – had better memories.
Dr Oliva Okereke, from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., which is affiliated to Harvard Medical School, said: “When looking at changes in cognitive function, what we found is that the total amount of fat intake did not really matter, but the type of fat did.”
An experimental form of gene therapy has given hope of a significant advance in the treatment of dementia.
The therapy, in which a nerve growth factor delayed the loss of brain cells, led to increased metabolic activity in the brain of Alzheimer’s sufferers and a reduction in the decline of cognitive functions.
Though the study was small, the subjects seemed to show indications of a reduction in the advancement of their disease, according to Prof Mark Tuszynski of the University of California, San Diego, the study’s principal investigator.
