How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

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Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

Alzheimer’s is just one cause of dementia, but it’s a very notable one, not least of all because it’s

  • a) the most common cause of dementia, and
  • b) a measurably terminal disease.

For that reason we’re focusing on Alzheimer’s today, although most of the advice will go for avoiding dementia in general.

First, some things not everyone knows about Alzheimer’s:

  • Alzheimer’s is a terminal disease.
  • People who get a diagnosis at age 60 are typically given 4–8 years to live.
    • Some soldier on for as many as 20, but those are rare outliers.
  • Alzheimer’s begins 20 years or more before other symptoms start to develop.
    • This makes this information very relevant for younger people approaching 40, for example.
  • Alzheimer’s accounts for 60–80% of dementia, and affects around 6% of people over 60.
    • By the age of 65, that figure is 10%. By the age of 70, however, the percentage is still about the same—this is because of the mortality rate preventing the accumulation of Alzheimer’s patients over time.

Want to know more? Read: 2023 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts And Figures Special Report ← this is a very comprehensive downloadablereference, by the way, including a lot of information about diagnosis, treatmentpathways, and earlyinterventions.

Speaking of diagnosis…

Know what the symptoms are… and aren’t!

Forgetting your car keys can be frustrating. Forgetting them frequently can be worrying.

But: there’s a difference between forgetting your car keys, and forgetting what car keys are used for. The latter is the kind of memory loss that’s more of a red flag for Alzheimer’s.

Similarly: forgetting someone’s name can be embarrassing. Forgetting someone’s name, asking them, forgetting asking them, asking them again, forgetting again (lather rinse repeat) is more of a red flag for Alzheimer’s.

There are other symptoms too, some of them less commonly known:

❝Difficulty remembering recent conversations, names or events; apathy; and depression are often early symptoms. Communication problems, confusion, poor judgment and behavioral changes may occur next. Difficulty walking, speaking, and swallowing are common in the late stages of the disease❞

~ Alzheimer’s Association

If you or a loved one are experiencing worrying symptoms: when it comes to diagnosis and intervention, sooner is a lot better than later, so do talk to your doctor.

As for reducing your risk? First, the obvious stuff:

The usual 5 things that go for almost everything:

How much do lifestyle changes alone make a difference?

They make a big difference. This 2022 population-based cohort study (so: huge sample size) looked at people who had 4–5 of the healthy lifestyle factors being studied, vs people who had 0–1 of them. They found:

❝A healthy lifestyle was associated with a longer life expectancy among men and women, and they lived a larger proportion of their remaining years without Alzheimer’s dementia.❞

The numbers of years involved by the way ranged between 3 and 20 years, in terms of life expectancy and years without or with Alzheimer’s, with the average increase of healthy life years being approximately the same as the average increase in years. This is important, because:

A lot of people think “well if I’m going to go senile, I might as well [unhealthy choice that shortens lifespan]”, but they misunderstand a critical factor:

The unhealthy choices will reduce their healthy life years, and simply bring the unhealthy ones (and subsequent death) sooner. If you’re going to spend your last few years in ill-health, it’s better to do so at 90 than 50.

The other thing you may already know… And a thing about it that not everyone considers:

Keeping cognitively active is important. This much is broadly known by the general public, and to clinicians, this was the fourth “healthy factor” in the list of five (instead of the sleep that we put there, because we were listing the 5 things that go for most preventable health issues).

Everyone leaps to mention sudoku at this point, so if that’s your thing, great, enjoy it! (This writer personally enjoys chess, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; if it yours though, you can come join her on Chess.com and we’ll keep sharp together)

But the more parts of your mental faculties you keep active, the better. Remember, brainpower (as with many things in health and life) is a matter of “use it or lose it” and this is on a “per skill” basis!

What this means: doing sudoku (a number-based puzzle game) or chess (great as it may be) won’t help as much for keeping your language skills intact, for example. Given that language skills are one of the most impactful and key faculties to get lost to Alzheimer’s disease, neglecting such would be quite an oversight!

Some good ways to keep your language skills tip-top:

  • Read—but read something challenging, if possible. It doesn’t have to be Thomas Scanlon’s What We Owe To Each Other, but it should be more challenging than a tabloid, for example. In fact, on the topic of examples:
    • This newsletter is written to be easy to read, while not shying away from complex ideas or hard science. Our mission is literally to “make [well-sourced, science-based] health and productivity crazy simple”.
    • But the academic papers that we link? Those aren’t written to be easy to read. Go read them, or at least the abstracts (in academia, an abstract is essentially an up-front summary, and is usually the first thing you’ll see when you click a link to a study or such). Challenge yourself!
  • Write—compared to reading/listening, producing language is a (related, but) somewhat separate skill. Just ask any foreign language learner which is more challenging: reading or writing!
    • Journaling is great, but writing for others is better (as then you’ll be forced to think more about it)
  • Learn a foreign language—in this case, what matters it that you’re practicing and learning, so in the scale of easy to hard, or doesn’t matter if it’s Esperanto or Arabic. Duolingo is a great free resource that we recommend for this, and they have a wide range of extensive courses these days.

Now for the least obvious things…

Social contact is important.

Especially in older age, it’s easy to find oneself with fewer remaining friends and family, and getting out and about can be harder for everyone. Whatever our personal inclinations (some people being more introverted or less social than others), we are fundamentally a social species, and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have built us around the idea that we will live our lives alongside others of our kind. And when we don’t, we don’t do as well.

See for example: Associations of Social Isolation and Loneliness With Later Dementia

If you can’t get out and about easily:

  • Online socialising is still socializing.
  • Online community is still community.
  • Online conversations between friends are still conversations between friends.

If you don’t have much (or anyone) in the category of friends and family, join Facebook groups related to your interests, for example.

Berries are surprisingly good

^This may read like a headline from 200,000 BCE, but it’s relevant here!

Particularly recommended are:

  • blueberries
  • blackberries
  • raspberries
  • strawberries
  • cranberries

We know that many of these berries seem to have a shelf-life of something like 30 minutes from time of purchase, but… Frozen and dried are perfectly good nutritionally, and in many cases, even better nutritionally than fresh.

Read: Effect of berry-based supplements and foods on cognitive function: a systematic review

Turmeric’s health benefits appear to include protecting against Alzheimer’s

Again, this is about risk reduction, and turmeric (also called curcumin, which is not the same as cumin) significantly reduces the build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain. Amyloid plaques are part of the progression of Alzheimer’s.

See for yourself: Protective Effects of Indian Spice Curcumin Against Amyloid Beta in Alzheimer’s Disease

If you don’t like it as a spice (and even if you do, you probably don’t want to put it in your food every day), you can easily get it as a supplement in capsule form.

Lower your homocysteine levels

Lower our what now? Homocysteine is an amino acid used for making certain proteins, and it’s a risk factor for Alzheimer’s.

Foods high in folate (and possible other B-vitamins) seem to lower homocysteine levels. Top choices include:

  • Leafy greens
  • Cruciferous vegetables
  • Tomatoes

Get plenty of lutein

We did a main feature about specifically this a little while ago, so we’ll not repeat our work here, but lutein is found in, well, the same things we just listed above, and lower levels of lutein are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not a proven causative factor—we don’t know entirely what causes Alzheimer’s, just a lot of factors that have a high enough correlation that it’d be remiss to ignore them.

Catch up on our previous article: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It

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  • Curing Hiccups And Headaches At Home With Actual Science

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Quick fixes for bodily annoyances

    Do you ever find yourself desperately trying to cure hiccups, and advice on the Internet is like “breathe in through your ears while drinking vinegar upside-down through your nose”?

    If so, you’re not alone. So, today we’re going to look at some science-based approaches to dealing with common bodily annoyances.

    Hiccups

    Unfortunately, most popular advices simply don’t work, and the only near-guaranteed way to cure these is with anti-convulsive medications whose side-effects may be worse than the hiccups.

    However, before you head to the pharmacy, there is one breathing exercise that has a very simple scientific underpinning: 4:4 breathing. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s just:

    1. Breathe slowly in through your nose to a count of four
    2. Hold your breath for a count of four
    3. Breathe slowly out through your nose to a count of four
    4. Hold your breath for a count of four

    …and repeat. The slower the better. At first, your hiccups will interrupt this, but just “keep calm and carry on”.

    The reason this can work is that breathing is an autonomic function (e.g., it happens without us thinking about it) that, unlike most other autonomic functions, we can all control directly. By taking control of one, others will tend to fall into line with it.

    For example, it is normal that your heart rate will tend to slow or quicken as your breathing slows or quickens, respectively.

    Your hiccups? Autonomic function. Actually a very, very old evolutionary left-over trait, that’s only useful for protecting lungs while breathing underwater. In other words, it’s the bodily function thinks you’re a fish (or a tadpole-like amphibious creature) in the process of developing lungs. Unfortunately, because hiccuping doesn’t harm our chances of passing on our genes, it never got naturally de-selected so we still have it.

    Anyway, the bottom line is: take control of your breathing in the aspects you can directly control, and the aspects you can’t directly control will fall into line. You may need to give it some minutes, don’t give up too quickly.

    Headaches

    If you ever get a headache and you don’t have painkillers or perhaps they’re not helping or you have another reason for not wanting to take them, there’s “one quick trick” that can cure most headaches in seconds.

    First, the limitation: this will only cure headaches that have been caused by increased localized blood pressure in the forehead. However, that’s more than half of most common headaches.

    Next, how it works…

    We’re mentioning this first, because understanding how it works will give you more confidence in using it.

    Your body has a wonderful homeostatic system, which is the system by which your body maintains its “Goldilocks zones” of not too hot or cold, not to acidine or alkaline, not too hydrated or dehydrated, blood pressure not too high or too low, etc. Sometimes, however, it can get confused, and needs a nudge back to where it should be.

    One of the ways it maintains blood pressure is biofeedback from receptors in blood vessel walls, called baroreceptors. They are what it sounds like; they measure blood pressure internally.

    In certain places, there are clusters of baroreceptors in one place. And if we press on that one place, the body will think “Oh no! Super high blood pressure in this bit!” and reduce the blood pressure immediately.

    This is called the baroreflex, and that’s what you need to cure a hypertensive headache.

    So, what to do:

    With your thumb, carefully feel the upper inside corner of your eye socket. So, at the top, and about ¼ of the way out from the bridge of your nose. You should feel a groove. No, not like the Emperor’s New, but, an actual groove in your eye socket. That’s the supraorbital notch (or foramen), and it allows the supraorbital artery, veins, and nerve to run through.

    Press it firmly (you can do both sides at once, assuming you have two thumbs) for about three seconds, and then massage it gently. Repeat as necessary, but it shouldn’t take more than about three goes to have cured the headache.

    As a bonus, this is a great party trick for curing other people’s headaches, when the need arises!

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  • Master Your Core – by Dr. Bohdanna Zazulak

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    In the category of “washboard abs”, this one isn’t particularly interested in how much or how little fat you have. What it’s more interested in is a strong, resilient, and stable core. Including your abs yes, but also glutes, hips, and back.

    Nor is the focus on superhuman feats of strength, though certainly one could use these exercises to work towards that. Rather, here we see importance placed on functional performance, mobility, and stability.

    Lest mobility and stability seem at odds with each other, understand:

    • By mobility we mean the range of movement we are able to accomplish.
    • By stability, we mean that any movement we make is intentional, and not because we lost our balance.

    Functional performance, meanwhile, is a function of those two things, plus strength.

    How does the book deliver on this?

    There are exercises to do. Exercises of the athletic kind you might expect, and also exercises including breathing exercises, which gets quite a bit of attention too. Not just “do abdominal breathing”, but quite an in-depth examination of such. There are also habits to form, and lifestyle tweaks to make.

    Of course, you don’t have to do all the things she suggests. The more you do, the better results you are likely to get, but if you adopt even some of the practices she recommends, you’re likely to see some benefits. And, perhaps most importantly, reduce age-related loss of mobility, stability, and strength.

    Bottom line: a great all-rounder book of core strength, mobility, and stability.

    Click here to check out Master Your Core and enjoy the more robust health that comes with it!

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  • Blood, urine and other bodily fluids: how your leftover pathology samples can be used for medical research

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    A doctor’s visit often ends with you leaving with a pathology request form in hand. The request form soon has you filling a sample pot, having blood drawn, or perhaps even a tissue biopsy taken.

    After that, your sample goes to a clinical pathology lab to be analysed, in whichever manner the doctor requested. All this is done with the goal of getting to the bottom of the health issue you’re experiencing.

    But after all the tests are done, what happens with the leftover sample? In most cases, leftover samples go in the waste bin, destined for incineration. Sometimes though, they may be used again for other purposes, including research.

    Kaboompics.com/Pexels

    Who can use my leftover samples?

    The samples we’re talking about here cover the range of samples clinical labs receive in the normal course of their testing work. These include blood and its various components (including plasma and serum), urine, faeces, joint and spinal fluids, swabs (such as from the nose or a wound), and tissue samples from biopsies, among others.

    Clinical pathology labs often use leftover samples to practise or check their testing methods and help ensure test accuracy. This type of use is a vital part of the quality assurance processes labs need to perform, and is not considered research.

    Leftover samples can also be used by researchers from a range of agencies such as universities, research institutes or private companies.

    They may use leftover samples for research activities such as trying out new ideas or conducting small-scale studies (more on this later). Companies that develop new or improved medical diagnostic tests can also use leftover samples to assess the efficacy of their test, generating data needed for regulatory approval.

    What about informed consent?

    If you’ve ever participated in a medical research project such as a clinical trial, you may be familiar with the concept of informed consent. In this process, you have the opportunity to learn about the study and what your participation involves, before you decide whether or not to participate.

    So you may be surprised to learn using leftover samples for research purposes without your consent is permitted in most parts of Australia, and elsewhere. However, it’s only allowed under certain conditions.

    In Australia, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) offers guidance around the use of leftover pathology samples.

    One of the conditions for using leftover samples without consent for research is that they were received and retained by an accredited pathology service. This helps ensure the samples were collected safely and properly, for a legitimate clinical reason, and that no additional burdens or risk of harm to the person who provided the sample will be created with their further use.

    Another condition is anonymity: the leftover samples must be deidentified, and not easily able to be reidentified. This means they can only be used in research if the identity of the donor is not needed.

    Two women working in a lab.
    Leftover pathology samples are sometimes used in medical research. hedgehog94/Shutterstock

    The decision to allow a particular research project to use leftover pathology samples is made by an independent human research ethics committee which includes consumers and independent experts. The committee evaluates the project and weighs up the risks and potential benefits before permitting an exemption to the need for informed consent.

    Similar frameworks exist in the United States, the United Kingdom, India and elsewhere.

    What research might be done on my leftover samples?

    You might wonder how useful leftover samples are, particularly when they’re not linked to a person and their medical history. But these samples can still be a valuable resource, particularly for early-stage “discovery” research.

    Research using leftover samples has helped our understanding of antibiotic resistance in a bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, Helicobacter pylori. It has helped us understand how malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum, damage red blood cells.

    Leftover samples are also helping researchers identify better, less invasive ways to detect chronic diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis. And they’re allowing scientists to assess the prevalence of a variant in haemoglobin that can interfere with widely used diagnostic blood tests.

    All of this can be done without your permission. The kinds of tests researchers do on leftover samples will not harm the person they were taken from in any way. However, using what would otherwise be discarded allows researchers to test a new method or treatment and avoid burdening people with providing fresh samples specifically for the research.

    When considering questions of ethics, it could be argued not using these samples to derive maximum benefit is in fact unethical, because their potential is wasted. Using leftover samples also minimises the cost of preliminary studies, which are often funded by taxpayers.

    A man getting a blood test.
    The use of leftover pathology samples in research has been subject to some debate. Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

    Inconsistencies in policy

    Despite NHMRC guidance, certain states and territories have their own legislation and guidelines which differ in important ways. For instance, in New South Wales, only pathology services may use leftover specimens for certain types of internal work. In all other cases consent must be obtained.

    Ethical standards and their application in research are not static, and they evolve over time. As medical research continues to advance, so too will the frameworks that govern the use of leftover samples. Nonetheless, developing a nationally consistent approach on this issue would be ideal.

    Striking a balance between ensuring ethical integrity and fostering scientific discovery is essential. With ongoing dialogue and oversight, leftover pathology samples will continue to play a crucial role in driving innovation and advances in health care, while respecting the privacy and rights of individuals.

    Christine Carson, Senior Research Fellow, School of Medicine, The University of Western Australia and Nikolajs Zeps, Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life – by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve talked about mindful eating before at 10almonds, so here’s a book about it. You may wonder how much there is to say!

    As it happens, there’s quite a bit. The authors, a Buddhist monk (Hanh) and a Harvard nutritionist (Dr. Cheung) explore the role of mindful eating in our life.

    There is an expectation that we the reader want to lose weight. If we don’t, those parts of the book will be a “miss” for us, but still contain plenty of other value.

    Most of the same advices can be applied equally to other aspects of health, in any case. A lot of that comes from the book’s Buddhist principles, including the notion that:

    1. We are experiencing suffering
    2. Suffering has a cause
    3. What has a cause can have an end
    4. The way to this end is mindfulness

    As such, the process itself is also mindfulness all the way through:

    1. To be mindful of our suffering (and not let it become background noise to be ignored)
    2. To be mindful of the cause of our suffering (rather than dismissing it as just how things are)
    3. To be mindful of how to address that, and thus end the suffering (rather than despairing in inaction)
    4. To engage mindfully in the process of doing so (and thus not fall into the trap of thinking “job done”)

    And, as for Dr. Cheung? She also has input throughout, with practical advice about the more scientific side of rethinking one’s diet.

    Bottom line: this is an atypical book, and/but perhaps an important one. Certainly, at the very least it may be one to try if more conventional approaches have failed!

    Click here to check out “Savor” on Amazon today, and get mindful!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Fluoride Toothpaste vs Non-Fluoride Toothpaste – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing fluoride toothpaste to non-fluoride toothpaste, we picked the fluoride.

    Why?

    Fluoride is indeed toxic; that’s why it’s in toothpaste (to kill things; namely, bacteria whose waste products would harm our teeth). However, we are much bigger than those bacteria.

    Given the amount of fluoride in toothpaste (usually under 1mg per strip of toothpaste to cover a toothbrush head), the amount that people swallow unintentionally (about 1/20th of that, so about 0.1mg daily if brushing teeth twice daily), and the toxicity level of fluoride (32–64mg/kg), then even if we take the most dangerous ends of all those numbers (and an average body size), to suffer ill effects from fluoride due to brushing your teeth, would require that you brush your teeth more than 23,000 times per day.

    Alternatively, if you were to ravenously eat the toothpaste instead of spitting it out, you’d only need to brush your teeth a little over 1,000 times per day.

    All the same, please don’t eat toothpaste; that’s not the message here.

    However! In head-to-head tests, fluoride toothpaste has almost always beaten non-fluoride toothpaste.

    Almost? Yes, almost: hydroxyapatite performed equally in one study, but that’s not usually an option on as many supermarket shelves.

    We found some on Amazon, though, which is the one we used for today’s head-to-head. Here it is:

    Boka Fluoride-Free Toothpaste

    However, before you rush to buy it, do be aware that the toxicity of hydroxyapatite appears to be about twice that of fluoride:

    Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety Opinion On Hydroxyapatite (Nano)

    …which is still very safe (you’d need to brush your teeth, and eat all the toothpaste, about 500 times per day, to get to toxic levels, if we run with the same numbers we discussed before. Again, please do not do that, though).

    But, since the science so far suggests it’s about twice as toxic as fluoride, then regardless of that still being very safe, the fluoride is obviously (by the same metric) twice as safe, hence picking the fluoride.

    Want more options?

    Check out our previous main feature:

    Less Common Oral Hygiene Options

    (the above article also links back to our discussion of different toothpastes and mouthwashes, by the way)

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • The High-Protein, High-Fiber Superfood Salad You’ll Want To Enjoy Daily

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This salad from Nisha Vora at Rainbow Plant Life has 30g protein and takes minutes to prepare, while being tasty enough to look forward to eating each day:

    Easy preparation

    Prepare the toppings first; you can do a week’s in advance at once:

    • Roasted chickpeas:
      • Drain, rinse, and dry two cans of chickpeas.
      • Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper.
      • Roast at 425°F for 30–35 minutes.
    • Roasted walnuts:
      • Chop and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper.
      • Roast at 350°F for 12 minutes after chickpeas finish.

    As for the salad base:

    • Kale:
      • Remove tough stems, slice thinly.
      • Wash and massage with lemon juice and salt to soften.
    • Cabbage:
      • Slice thinly with a knife or mandolin.
      • Store in a sealed bag in the fridge for up to a week.

    Red wine vinaigrette dressing:

    • Key ingredients: red wine vinegar, lemon juice, red pepper flakes, garlic, olive oil.
    • Can be stored in the fridge for up to 10 days.

    Putting it all together:

    1. Toss kale and cabbage with vinaigrette by hand.
    2. Add roasted chickpeas and walnuts for crunch.
    3. Include a protein source like tofu (store-bought curry tofu recommended).
    4. Mix in fresh vegetables like grated carrots, sliced bell peppers, or beets.
    5. Add extras like sauerkraut, avocado, pickled onions, and such.
    6. Top with fresh herbs (she recommends parsley, basil, or dill).

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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