Health
Can we prevent Alzheimer’s disease?
As we all know, currently, Alzheimer’s disease has no cure, but researchers hope that one day we might be able to slow down, or even prevent this terrible disease.
Although nobody knows what can effectively prevent the disease, it is well known that a healthy lifestyle can maintain people’s health and general well being.
Although some factors cannot be changed (for example the process of aging or genetics), there are a few things we can all do to hope our risk of a dementia related disease (and generally any kind of disease) decreases.
Physical exercise and diet
Regular exercise increases oxygen and blood flow to the brain, which in turn benefits the brain cells.
Healthy eating (plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, olive oil) and decreasing the use of sugar and saturated fats in the day to day eating, could protect not only the heart from vascular diseases, but also the brain.
Social Interactions and increased intellectual activity
Through several case studies, researchers showed that especially when we age it is very important to maintain solid social connections and to keep your mind active, even by basic activities (volunteering, reading books, watching TV, going to lectures, card games), which keeps the brain active and the risk of brain cells to die decreases.
Untreated Chronic Diseases
Especially when we age, it is very important to keep under control any chronic disease one possesses (high blood pressure, diabetes, heart diseases) as these diseases could increase the cognitive decline and therefore the risk of Alzheimer’s.
In conclusion, although nobody can say exactly where the Alzheimer’s and other dementia related diseases come from and what are the best things to do to prevent them, we all have in our powers to lead a healthy lifestyle and to increase social connections, which in turn will help us deal with age related problems much easier.