Are you concerned about the possibility you may eventually have Alzheimer’s Disease? Other dementias? Parkinson’s Disease? The incidence of these diseases is increasing in American populations due to our lifestyle behaviors. As with other degenerative diseases of cancers, heart disease and stroke, the most obvious risk factors are sedentary life habits, smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, poor diets that include too much animal products and not enough plants and fish, depression, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, poor hearing and vision, excessive alcohol intake, social isolation and brain injury.
Another risk that I did not include in that list as it is beyond an individual’s control is genetics. There are genes that predispose one to Alzheimer’s Disease and a person can have 1, 2, 3, or 4 of them. The more of them one inherits, the greater the risk, though I do not know if having all four means a certainty of Alzheimer’s. It may still be dependent on those lifestyle behaviors.
Your brain is subject to the same factors your body is, so whatever improves your overall body health will improve your brain. As we age, our bodies weaken and become less strong, less flexible, less resilient, less able to ward off diseases.
You don’t have to be a professional observer of individual health or society to recognize the results of those risk factors listed in the opening paragraph. Most of us can do a lot better but recognition of our problems is necessary.
So, where to go to protect our brains and prevent dementias of mind and body other than to correct our individual risk factors? Is there an additional way to protect and preserve and prevent? It turns out there are several that have been extensively studied and found effective. In revealing these nutritional factors, I do not want to minimize your efforts at improving exercise and diet and alcohol limitations, but simply to inform you of benefits achievable with minimum time and effort expenditure.
Here they are: 1. a potent multivitamin and mineral supplement, 2. magnesium L-threonate, 3. specific probiotics (gut microbiome), 4. anti-inflammatory herbs, 5. Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil), 6. vitamin D3. These can be easily researched by any one on the National Institute of Health website, Pubmed.gov. Simply type in the site’s search bar “Alzheimer’s disease” and “vitamins” or “probiotics” etc. I guarantee this will change your life!