ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE AND ITS PREVENTION

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most physically and emotionally burden-some diseases, for both sufferers and caregivers. Unlike stroke, which can kill instantly and without any warning, Alzheimer’s involves a slower, more subtle decline over months or years. Instead of cholesterol-filled plaques in your arteries, plaques made of a substance called amyloid develop in the brain tissue itself, associated with the loss of memory and, eventually, loss of life. I won’t be going in detail of what exactly happens in Alzheimer’s disease. The main question is how do we prevent it? If it’s in a person’s genes, is it necessary that he will surely be affected by Alzheimer’s?
The dietary concept may be surprising, because most of the popular day treats Alzheimer’s as a genetic disease. They say that it’s your genes rather than your lifestyle choices, that determine whether or not you’ll succumb. However, when you examine the distribution of Alzheimer’s disease around the world, that argument begins to crumble.

PREVENTING ALZHEIMER’S WITH PLANT FOODS

Alzheimer’s manifests as a disease of the elderly, but like heart disease and most cancers, it’s a disease that may take decades to develop. Dietary decisions you make now may directly influence your health much later in life, including the health of your brain.Based on thousands of autopsies, pathologists seemed to detect the first silent stages of Alzheimer’s disease- what appear like tangles in the brain- in half of people at the age of fifty and even 10 percent of those in their twenties. The good news is that Alzheimer’s like heart disease and stroke- can be prevented. It was found that higher saturated fat intake, eg- processed foods, was associated with a significantly worse trajectory of cognition and memory. Also, whole plant foods contain thousands of compounds with antioxidant properties, some of which can traverse the blood-brain barrier and may provide neuro protective effects by defending against free radicals that is protecting the rusting of your brain.

BERRIES

It is found that women who consumed at least one serving of blueberries and two servings of strawberries each week had slower rates of cognitive decline- by as much as two and a half years - compared with those who didn’t eat berries. Why not eat berries everyday when they are so useful to us?!

VEGETABLE AND FRUIT JUICES

Even just drinking fruit and vegetable juices may be beneficial. Those people who drink fresh vegetable and fruit juices have a low chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

TREATING ALZHEIMER’S WITH SAFFRON

Some remarkable benefits have been reported in anecdotal case studies with the spice turmeric, the best data we have on spice based interventions for Alzheimer’s is for saffron. A spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, saffron was found in a double-blind trial to help diminish the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. In a study, Alzheimer’s patients with mild to moderate dementia who took saffron capsules displayed significantly better cognitive function on average than a group of patients who took a placebo.
There is no proven way to halt Alzheimer’s but if you do know someone suffering with this disease, then regularly cooking him or her saffron-spiced paella may help!

CAN COGNITIVE DECLINE HALT WITH EXERCISE?

There’s a good news for people on the verge of losing their mental faculties. In 2010 study published in the ARCHIVES OF NEUROLOGY, researchers took people with mild cognitive impairment- those who are starting to forget things, for example, repeating themselves- and had them engage in aerobic exercise for 45 minutes a day, four days a week, for six months. The control group was instructed to only stretch for same period of time. Memory tests were performed before and after the study. Researchers found that in the control (stretching) group, cognitive function continued to decline, while the exercising group not only didn’t get worse, they got better.
AEROBIC EXERCISE CAN HELP IMPROVE CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW, IMPROVE MEMORY PERFORMANCE, AND HELP PRESERVE BRAIN TISSUE.

Thanks readers for reading such a long post! I hope you’ll start applying this soon in your life if you have not applied it yet! My next post will be about another MAJOR BRAIN DISEASE I.E. STROKE AND ITS PREVENTION!