Beyond Guarding Against Dementia

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When Age’s Brain-Changes Come Knocking

A woman guarding in a red dress.

This is Dr. Amy Friday. She’s a psychologist, specializing in geropsychology and neuropsychological assessments.

In other words, she helps people optimize their aging experience, particularly in the context of brain changes as we get older.

What does she want us to know?

First: be not afraid

Ominous first words, but the fact is, there’s a lot to find scary about the prospect of memory loss, dementia, and death.

However, as she points out:

  • Death will come for us all sooner or later, barring technology as yet unknown
  • Dementia can be avoided, or at least stalled, or at least worked around
  • Memory loss, as per the above, can be avoided/stalled/managed

We’ve written a little on these topics too:

Managing Your Mortality

…or if the death is not yours:

Bereavement & Managing Grief

As for avoiding dementia, the below-linked feature is about Alzheimer’s in particular (which accounts for more than half of all cases of dementia), but the advice goes for most of the other kinds too:

How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

And finally, about memory loss specifically:

How To Boost Your Memory Immediately (Without Supplements)

this one is especially about cementing into one’s brain the kinds of memories that people most fear losing with age. People don’t worry about forgetting their PIN codes; they worry about forgetting their cherished memories with loved ones. So, if that’s important to you, do consider checking out this one!

What is that about managing or working around the symptoms?

If we’re missing a limb, we (usually) get a prosthetic, and/or learn how to operate without that limb.

If we’re missing sight or hearing, partially or fully, there are disability aids for those kinds of things too (glasses are a disability aid! Something being very common does not make it not a disability; you literally have less of an ability—in this case, the ability to see), and/or we learn how to operate with our different (or missing) sense.

Dr. Friday makes the case for this being the same with memory loss, dementia, and other age-related symptoms (reduced focus, increased mental fatigue, etc):

❝We are all screwed up. Here’s my flavor … what’s yours? This is a favorite saying of mine, because we ARE all screwed up in one way or another, and when we acknowledge it we can feel closer in our screwed-up-edness.

We are all experiencing “normal aging,” so that tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon that starts in our thirties and slowly gets worse is REAL. But what if you’re having more problems than normal aging? Is it time to throw in the towel and hide? I’m hoping that there is a group of people who say HELL NO to that idea.

Let’s use lessons from research and clinical practice to help all of us work around our weaknesses, and capitalize on our strengths.  ❞

~ Dr. Amy Friday

Examples of this might include:

  • Writing down the things most important to you (a short list of information and/or statements that you feel define you and what matters most to you), so that you can read it later
  • Making sure you have support (partner, family, friends, etc) who are on the same page about this topic—and thus will actually support you and advocate for you, instead of arguing about what is in your best interest without consulting you.
  • Labelling stuff around the house, so that you get less confused about what is what and where it is
  • Having a named go-to advocate that you can call / ask to be called, if you are in trouble somewhere and need help that you can rely on
  • Getting a specialized, simpler bank account; hiring an accountant if relevant and practicable.

The thing is, we all want to keep control. Sometimes we can do that! Sometimes we can’t, and if we’re going to lose some aspect of control, it’ll generally go a lot better if we do it on our own terms, so that we ourselves can look out for future-us in our planning.

Want to know more?

You might enjoy her blog, which includes also links to her many videos on the topic, including such items as:

For the rest, see:

This Beautiful Brain | The Science Of Brain Health

Enjoy!

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  • Beyond Balancing The Books – by George Marino, CPA, CFP

    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 hear a lot about the importance of mindfulness, yet how can Zen-like non-attachment to the material world go well with actually surviving (let alone thriving) in a Capitalist society?

    Books that try to connect the two often end up botching it badly to the level of early 2000s motivational posters.

    So, what does this book do differently? Mostly it’s because rather than a motivational speech with exhortations to operate on a higher plain and manifest your destiny and all that, it gives practical, down-to-earth advice and offers small simple things you can do or change to mindfully engage with the world of business rather than operating on auto-pilot.

    Basically: how to cut out the stress without cutting out your performance.

    All in all, we think both your health and your productivity will thank you for it!

    Take Your Business (and Brain) “Beyond Balancing The Books” Today

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  • A Planet of Viruses – by Carl Zimmer

    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 reviewed numerous books on the immune system before, and this one’s mostly not about that.

    Instead, this one focuses on the viruses themselves, and the part they play in our world, for good and for ill. Popular awareness tends to focus on the ill, of course.

    But, there’s a lot that viruses do for us too, including:

    • Weak/harmless viruses that keep our immune systems on their toes and ready
    • Bacteriophage viruses that kill and consume pathogens that, left unchecked, would do the same to us
    • Endogenous retroviruses that have become symbiotic with the human organism, without which our species would quickly go extinct

    He also talks about biological warfare, and how we cannot bury our heads in the sand by avoiding research on those grounds, because someone will always do it anyway, so (as the motto of the immune system itself might say), best to be prepared.

    The author is a science journalist, by the way, and has no PhD, but does have a flock of Fellowships and assorted scientific awards and honors, so he appears to be doing good work so far as the scientific community is concerned.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to know more about viruses than “they’re very small and can cause harm”, then this book will open a whole new world.

    Click here to check out A Planet of Viruses, and upgrade your knowledge!

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  • Increase Your Muscle Mass Boost By 26% (No Extra Effort, No Supplements)

    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.

    You’ve probably seen this technology advertised, but the trick is in how it’s used (which is not how most people use it).

    It’s about neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), also called electrical muscle stimulation (EMS); in other words, those squid-like electrode kits that promise “six-pack abs without exercise”, by stimulating the muscles for you—using the exact same tech as for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), for pain relief.

    Do they work for pain relief? Yes, for many people in any case. But that’s beyond the scope of today’s article.

    Do they work for building muscles as advertised? No. The limiting factor is that they can’t fully exert the muscles in the same way actual exercise can, because of the limitations to how much electrical current can safely be applied.

    However…

    The cyborgization of your regular workout

    A meta-analysis of 13 studies compared two [meta-]groups of exercisers:

    • Group 1 doing conventional resistance training
    • Group 2 doing the same resistance training, plus NMES at the same time (specifically: NMES of the same muscles being used in the workout)

    The analysis had two output variables: strength and muscle mass

    What they found: group 2 enjoyed more than 31% greater strength gains, and 26% greater muscle mass gains, from the same training over the same period of time.

    Of course, one of the biggest challenges to strength gain and muscle mass gain is hitting a plateau, so it’s worth noting that when they looked at training periods ranging from 2 weeks to 16 weeks, longer durations yielded better results—it is, it seems, the gift that keeps on giving.

    You can find the paper here (which also explains how they analysed data from 13 different studies to get one coherent set of results):

    The additive effect of neuromuscular electrical stimulation and resistance training on muscle mass and strength

    How it works and why it matters

    While the paper itself does not go into how it works, a reasonable hypothesis is that it works by “confusing” the muscles—because they are receiving mixed signals (one set from your brain, one set from the electrodes), with fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers both working at the same time.

    Another way to “confuse” the muscles is by High Intensity [Interval] Resistance Training (HIRT)—which is basically High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), but for resistance training specifically.

    See: How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body) and HIIT, But Make It HIRT

    Now, we want to confuse our muscles, not our readers, so if that’s all too much to juggle at once, just pick one and go with it. But today’s article is about the RT+NEMS combination, so perhaps you’ll pick that.

    Why it matters: as we get older, sarcopenia (the loss of muscle mass) becomes more of an issue, and even if we’re not inclined to a career in bodybuilding, we do still need to at least maintain a healthy muscle mass because:

    • Strong muscles improve our stability and make us less likely to fall
    • Strong muscles force the body to build strong bones to hold them on, which means lower risk of fractures or worse
    • Muscle mass itself improves the body’s basal metabolic rate, which means systemic benefits to the whole body (including against metabolic diseases especially)

    See also: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

    Want to try it?

    If you don’t already have a NMES/EMS/TENS kit lying around the house, here’s an example product on Amazon—remember to use it simultaneously with your regular resistance training workout, on the same muscles at the same time, to get the benefit we talked about! 😎

    Enjoy!

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Related Posts

  • Menopause, & When Not To Let Your Guard Down
  • Wasting Your Vitamins?

    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.

    Are you flushing away your vitamins?

    Most likely…but you don’t have to.

    We all know what a wasteful expense supplements can sometimes be, but you can optimise your intake to get more bang for your buck!

    Top Tips for Getting Your Money’s Worth:

    1. Liquids are better than tablets—the body can’t absorb nutrients from tablets anywhere as easily as it can from liquids, with some saying as low as a 50% absorption rate for tablets, so if your supplement can come in drinkable form, take it that way!
    2. Capsules are better than tablets—capsules, depending on the kind, contain either a powder (true capsules) or a liquid (softgels). Once the capsule/softgel is broken down in the stomach, it releases its contents, which will now be absorbed as though you took it as a drink.
    3. Stay hydrated—on that note, your body can only make use of nutrients that it can easily transport, and if you’re dehydrated, the process is sluggish! Having a big glass of water with your supplements will go a long way to helping your body get them where they’re needed.
    4. Take with black pepper—studies disagree on exactly how much black pepper improves absorption of nutrients. Some say it improves it by 50%, others say as much as 7x better. The truth is probably that it varies from one nutrient to the next, but what is (almost) universally accepted is that black pepper helps you absorb many nutrients you take orally.
    5. Take with a meal—bonus if you seasoned it with black pepper! But also: many nutrients are best absorbed alongside food, and many are specifically fat-soluble (so you want to take a little fat around the same time for maximum absorption)
    6. Consider split doses—a lot of nutrients are best absorbed when spread out a bit. Why? Your body can often only absorb so much at once, and what it couldn’t absorb can, depending on the nutrient, pass right through you. So better to space out the doses—breakfast and dinner make for great times to take them.
    7. Consider cycling—no, not the two-wheeled kind, though feel free to do that too! What cycling means when it comes to supplements is to understand that your body can build a tolerance to some supplements, so you’ll get gradually less effect for the same dose. Combat this by scheduling a break—five days on, two days off is a common schedule—allowing your body to optimise itself in the process!
    8. Check Medications—and, as is always safe, make sure you check whether any medications you take can interrupt your supplement absorption!

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  • Antihistamines’ Generation Gap

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    Are You Ready For Allergy Season?

    For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, fall will be upon us soon, and we have a few weeks to be ready for it. A common seasonal ailment is of course seasonal allergies—it’s not serious for most of us, but it can be very annoying, and can disrupt a lot of our normal activities.

    Suddenly, a thing that notionally does us no real harm, is making driving dangerous, cooking take three times as long, sex laughable if not off-the-table (so to speak), and the lightest tasks exhausting.

    So, what to do about it?

    Antihistamines: first generation

    Ye olde antihistamines such as diphenhydramine and chlorpheniramine are probably not what to do about it.

    They are small molecules that cross the blood-brain barrier and affect histamine receptors in the central nervous system. This will generally get the job done, but there’s a fair bit of neurological friendly-fire going on, and while they will produce drowsiness, the sleep will usually be of poor quality. They also tax the liver rather.

    If you are using them and not experiencing unwanted side effects, then don’t let us stop you, but do be aware of the risks.

    See also: Long-term use of diphenhydramine ← this is the active ingredient in Benadryl in the US and Canada, but safety regulations in many other countries mean that Benadryl has different, safer active ingredients elsewhere.

    Antihistamines: later generations

    We’re going to aggregate 2nd gen, 3rd gen, and 4th gen antihistamines here, because otherwise we’ll be writing a history article and we don’t have room for that. But suffice it to say, later generations of antihistamines do not come with the same problems.

    Instead of going in all-guns-blazing to the CNS like first-gens, they are more specific in their receptor-targetting, resulting in negligible collateral damage:

    CSACI position statement: Newer generation H1-antihistamines are safer than first-generation H1-antihistamines and should be the first-line antihistamines for the treatment of allergic rhinitis and urticaria

    Special shout-out to cetirizine and loratadine, which are the drugs behind half the brand names you’ll see on pharmacy shelves around most of the world these days (including many in the US and Canada).

    Note that these two are very often discussed in the same sentence, sit next to each other on the shelf, and often have identical price and near-identical packaging. Their effectiveness (usually: moderate) and side effects (usually: low) are similar and comparable, but they are genuinely different drugs that just happen to do more or less the same thing.

    This is relevant because if one of them isn’t working for you (and/or is creating an unwanted side effect), you might want to try the other one.

    Another honorable mention goes to fexofenadine, for which pretty much all the same as the above goes, though it gets talked about less (and when it does get mentioned, it’s usually by its most popular brand name, Allegra).

    Finally, one that’s a little different and also deserving of a special mention is azelastine. It was recently (ish, 2021) moved from being prescription-only to being non-prescription (OTC), and it’s a nasal spray.

    It can cause drowsiness, but it’s considered safe and effective for most people. Its main benefit is not really the difference in drug, so much as the difference in the route of administration (nasal rather than oral). Because the drug is in liquid spray form, it can be absorbed through the mucus lining of the nose and get straight to work on blocking the symptoms—in contrast, oral antihistamines usually have to go into your stomach and take their chances there (we say “usually”, because there are some sublingual antihistamines that dissolve under the tongue, but they are less common.)

    Better than antihistamines?

    Writer’s note: at this point, I was given to wonder: “wait, what was I squirting up my nose last time anyway?”—because, dear readers, at the time I got it I just bought one of every different drug on the shelf, desperate to find something that worked. What worked for me, like magic, when nothing else had, was beclometasone dipropionate, which a) smelled delightfully of flowers, which might just be the brand I got, b) needs replacing now because I got it in March 2023 and it expired July 2024, and c) is not an antihistamine at all.

    But, that brings us to the final chapter for today: systemic corticosteroids

    They’re not ok for everyone (check with your doctor if unsure), and definitely should not be taken if immunocompromised and/or currently suffering from an infection (including colds, flu, COVID, etc) unless your doctor tells you otherwise (and even then, honestly, double-check).

    But! They can work like magic when other things don’t. Unlike antihistamines, which only block the symptoms, systemic corticosteroids tackle the underlying inflammation, which can stop the whole thing in its tracks.

    Here’s how they measure up against antihistamines:

    ❝The results of this systematic review, together with data on safety and cost effectiveness, support the use of intranasal corticosteroids over oral antihistamines as first line treatment for allergic rhinitis.❞

    ~ Dr. Robert Puy et al.

    Read in full: Intranasal corticosteroids versus oral H1 receptor antagonists in allergic rhinitis: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

    Take care!

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  • 10 Ways To Self-Soothe That Don’t Involve Food Or Drink

    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.

    If one is accustomed to comfort-eating or drowning one’s sorrows, what are the alternatives that can actually work? Holistic nutritionist Selin Bilgin has a list:

    Self-Care That’s Not Self-Sabotage

    You might want to make a note of these 10 things, so they can be a sort of “menu” for you when you need them:

    • Give your introversion or extroversion what it needs (e.g. alone time to decompress, or social activities)
    • Treat your senses: often we don’t actually need food/drink so much as culinary entertainment. So, we can sate this sensory mood in other ways, for example pleasant candles, flowers, and so forth.
    • Bathe/shower nicely: it’s cliché but some personal pampering can go a long way
    • Beautify yourself: it’s also cliché, but a makeover evening has its place
    • Move! Go for a walk, do some yoga, whatever suits you, but move your body.
    • Make movie nights luxurious: instead of making it about food/drink, focus on creating an enjoyable atmosphere
    • Physically release tension: at 10almonds we recommend progressive relaxation for this!
    • Create something: whether it’s art, craft, baking, or something else, creativity feels good
    • Tackle things you’ve been procrastinating: this one doesn’t seem like self-soothing from the front end, but from the back end (i.e., having done it), it makes a big difference!
    • Journal: expressing your thoughts and feelings can help a lot—really.

    For more on each of these, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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