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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  • I’ve been diagnosed with cancer. How do I tell my children?

    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.

    With around one in 50 adults diagnosed with cancer each year, many people are faced with the difficult task of sharing the news of their diagnosis with their loved ones. Parents with cancer may be most worried about telling their children.

    It’s best to give children factual and age-appropriate information, so children don’t create their own explanations or blame themselves. Over time, supportive family relationships and open communication help children adjust to their parent’s diagnosis and treatment.

    It’s natural to feel you don’t have the skills or knowledge to talk with your children about cancer. But preparing for the conversation can improve your confidence.

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    Preparing for the conversation

    Choose a suitable time and location in a place where your children feel comfortable. Turn off distractions such as screens and phones.

    For teenagers, who can find face-to-face conversations confronting, think about talking while you are going for a walk.

    Consider if you will tell all children at once or separately. Will you be the only adult present, or will having another adult close to your child be helpful? Another adult might give your children a person they can talk to later, especially to answer questions they might be worried about asking you.

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    Finally, plan what to do after the conversation, like doing an activity with them that they enjoy. Older children and teenagers might want some time alone to digest the news, but you can suggest things you know they like to do to relax.

    Also consider what you might need to support yourself.

    Preparing the words

    Parents might be worried about the best words or language to use to make sure the explanations are at a level their child understands. Make a plan for what you will say and take notes to stay on track.

    The toughest part is likely to be saying to your children that you have cancer. It can help to practise saying those words out aloud.

    Ask family and friends for their feedback on what you want to say. Make use of guides by the Cancer Council, which provide age-appropriate wording for explaining medical terms like “cancer”, “chemotherapy” and “tumour”.

    Having the conversation

    Being open, honest and factual is important. Consider the balance between being too vague, and providing too much information. The amount and type of information you give will be based on their age and previous experiences with illness.

    Remember, if things don’t go as planned, you can always try again later.

    Start by telling your children the news in a few short sentences, describing what you know about the diagnosis in language suitable for their age. Generally, this information will include the name of the cancer, the area of the body affected and what will be involved in treatment.

    Let them know what to expect in the coming weeks and months. Balance hope with reality. For example:

    The doctors will do everything they can to help me get well. But, it is going to be a long road and the treatments will make me quite sick.

    Check what your child knows about cancer. Young children may not know much about cancer, while primary school-aged children are starting to understand that it is a serious illness. Young children may worry about becoming unwell themselves, or other loved ones becoming sick.

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    Older children and teenagers may have experiences with cancer through other family members, friends at school or social media.

    This process allows you to correct any misconceptions and provides opportunities for them to ask questions. Regardless of their level of knowledge, it is important to reassure them that the cancer is not their fault.

    Ask them if there is anything they want to know or say. Talk to them about what will stay the same as well as what may change. For example:

    You can still do gymnastics, but sometimes Kate’s mum will have to pick you up if I am having treatment.

    If you can’t answer their questions, be OK with saying “I’m not sure”, or “I will try to find out”.

    Finally, tell children you love them and offer them comfort.

    How might they respond?

    Be prepared for a range of different responses. Some might be distressed and cry, others might be angry, and some might not seem upset at all. This might be due to shock, or a sign they need time to process the news. It also might mean they are trying to be brave because they don’t want to upset you.

    Children’s reactions will change over time as they come to terms with the news and process the information. They might seem like they are happy and coping well, then be teary and clingy, or angry and irritable.

    Older children and teenagers may ask if they can tell their friends and family about what is happening. It may be useful to come together as a family to discuss how to inform friends and family.

    What’s next?

    Consider the conversation the first of many ongoing discussions. Let children know they can talk to you and ask questions.

    Resources might also help; for example, The Cancer Council’s app for children and teenagers and Redkite’s library of free books for families affected by cancer.

    If you or other adults involved in the children’s lives are concerned about how they are coping, speak to your GP or treating specialist about options for psychological support.

    Cassy Dittman, Senior Lecturer/Head of Course (Undergraduate Psychology), Research Fellow, Manna Institute, CQUniversity Australia; Govind Krishnamoorthy, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Wellbeing, Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of Southern Queensland, and Marg Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education; Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of New England

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

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  • Hungry? How To Beat Cravings

    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.

    The Science of Hunger, And How To Sate It

    This is Dr. David Ludwig. That’s not a typo; he’s a doctor both ways—MD and PhD.

    Henceforth we’ll just say “Dr. Ludwig”, though! He’s a professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center.

    His research focuses on the effects of diet on hormones, metabolism, and body weight, and he’s one of the foremost experts when it comes to carbohydrates, glycemic load, and obesity.

    Why are we putting on weight? What are we getting wrong?

    Contrary to popular belief, Dr. Ludwig says, weight gain is not caused by a lack of exercise. In fact, people tend to overestimate how many calories are burned by exercise.

    A spoonful of sugar may make the medicine go down, but it also contains 60 calories, and that’d take about 1,500 steps for the average person to burn off. Let’s put this another way:

    If you walk 10,000 steps per day, that will burn off 400 calories. Still think you can exercise away that ice cream sundae or plate of fries?

    Wait, this is interesting and all, but what does this have to do with hunger?

    Why we get hungry

    Two important things:

    • All that exercise makes us hungry, because the more we exercise, the more the body speeds up our metabolism accordingly.
    • Empty calories don’t just add weight themselves, they also make us hungrier

    What are empty calories, and why do they make us hungrier?

    Empty calories are calories that are relatively devoid of other nutrition. This especially means simple sugars (especially refined sugar), white flour and white flour products (quick-release starches), and processed seed oils (e.g. canola, sunflower, and friends).

    They zip straight into our bloodstream, and our body sends out an army of insulin to deal with the blood sugar spike. And… that backfires.

    Imagine a person whose house is a terrible mess, and they have a date coming over in half an hour.

    They’re going to zoom around tidying, but they’re going to stuff things out of sight as quickly and easily as possible, rather than, say, sit down and Marie Kondo the place.

    But superficially, they got the job done really quickly!

    Insulin does similarly when overwhelmed by a blood sugar spike like that.

    So, it stores everything as fat as quickly as possible, and whew, the pancreas needs a break now after all that exertion, and the blood is nice and free from blood sugars.

    Wait, the blood is what now?

    The body notices the low blood sugar levels, and it also knows you just stored fat so you must be preparing for starvation, and now the low blood sugar levels indicate starvation is upon us. Quick, we must find food if we want to survive! So it sends a hunger signal to make sure you don’t let the body starve.

    You make a quick snack, and the cycle repeats.

    Dr. Ludwig’s solution:

    First, we need to break out of that cycle, and that includes calming down our insulin response (and thus rebuilding our insulin sensitivity, as our bodies will have become desensitized, after the equivalent of an air-raid siren every 40 minutes or so).

    How to do that?

    First, cut out the really bad things that we mentioned above.

    Next: cut healthy carbs too—we’re talking unprocessed grains here, legumes as well, and also starchy vegetables (root vegetables etc). Don’t worry, this will be just for a short while.

    The trick here is that we are resensitizing our bodies to insulin.

    Keep this up for even just a week, and then gradually reintroduce the healthier carbs. Unprocessed grains are better than root vegetables, as are legumes.

    You’re not going to reintroduce the sugars, white flour, canola oil, etc. You don’t have to be a puritan, and if you go to a restaurant you won’t undo all your work if you have a small portion of fries. But it’s not going to be a part of your general diet.

    Other tips from Dr. Ludwig:

    • Get plenty of high-quality protein—it’s good for you and suppresses your appetite
    • Shop for success—make sure you keep your kitchen stocked with healthy easy snack food
    • Nuts, cacao nibs, and healthy seeds will be your best friends and allies here
    • Make things easy—buy pre-chopped vegetables, for example, so when you’re hungry, you don’t have to wait longer (and work more) to eat something healthy
    • Do what you can to reduce stress, and also eat mindfully (that means paying attention to each mouthful, rather than wolfing something down while multitasking)

    If you’d like to know more about Dr. Ludwig and his work, you can check out his website for coaching, recipes, meal plans, his blog, and other resources!

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  • Who Will Take Care of Me When I’m Old? – by Joy Loverde

    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.

    Regular readers of 10almonds will know we’ve written before about how isolation kills (in numerous ways), and this book tackles that in much greater length and depth than we ever have room for here.

    Specifically, she talks about preparing for medical and related (financial, living will in case of dementia, housing, etc) considerations down the line, with checklists and worksheets and such to make it easy, and help you make sure it actually gets done.

    She also talks about creating a support network, from scratch if necessary (“foraging a family”), so that even if you will now be prepared to handle things alone, you’ll become a lot less likely to need to do so.

    Unlike many books of this genre, she also covers managing your mortality; that “just shoot me” is not a plan, and what lessons can be learned from the dying to make our own last years the best they can be.

    The style is upbeat and positive in outlook; less “prepare for doom” and more “get ready to do things right”, and it’s worth mentioning that the format is particularly helpful, outlining objectives towards the beginning of each chapter, and additional resources at the end of each chapter.

    Over on Amazon, most of the reviews that contain any criticism are some manner of “I’m in my 70s and wish I had read this sooner”. Still, better late than never.

    Bottom line: if you do not have an overabundance of support network around you, then this is an important book to read and to put into action.

    Click here to check out Who Will Take Care Of Me When I’m Old, and safeguard your own health & happiness for years to come!

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    This is not the most cheery book we’ve reviewed, but it is an important one. From its first chapter, with “a tale of two deaths”, one that went as well as can be reasonably expected, and the other one not so much, it presents a lot of choices.

    The book is not prescriptive in its advice regarding how to deal with these choices, but rather, investigative. It’s thought-provoking, and asks questions—tacitly and overtly.

    While the subtitle says “for families and caregivers”, it’s as much worth when it comes to managing one’s own mortality, too, by the way.

    As for the scope of the book, it covers everything from terminal diagnosis, through the last part of life, to the death itself, to all that goes on shortly afterwards.

    Stylewise, it’s… We’d call it “easy-reading” for style, but obviously the content is very heavy, so you might want to read it a bit at a time anyway, depending on how sensitive to such topics you are.

    Bottom line: this book is not exactly a fun read, but it’s a very worthwhile one, and a good way to avoid regrets later.

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  • The Kindness Method – by Shahroo Izadi

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    Shahroo Izadi here covers everything from alcohol addiction to procrastination to weight loss. It’s a catch-all handbook for changing your habits—in general, and/or in whatever area of your life you most feel you want or need to.

    She herself went from yo-yo dieting to a stable healthy lifestyle, and wants to share with us how she did it. So she took what worked for her, organized and dilstilled it, and named it “the kindness method”, which…

    • promotes positivity not in a “head in the sand” sense but rather: you have strengths, let’s find them and use them
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    • plans support in advance—you’re going to be your own greatest ally here

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    • being kind to yourself rather than setting yourself up to fail, and “judging a fish by how well it can climb a tree”
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  • How Not to Diet – by Dr. Michael Greger

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    We’ve talked before about Dr. Greger’s famous “How Not To Die” book, and we love it and recommend it… But… It is, primarily, a large, dry textbook. Full of incredibly good science and information about what is statistically most likely to kill us and how to avoid that… but it’s not the most accessible.

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    By focussing on this one problem, rather than the many (admittedly important) mortality risks, the reading is a lot easier and lighter. And, because it’s still Dr. Greger advocating for the same diet, you’ll still get to reduce all those all-cause mortality risks. You won’t be reading about them in this book; it will now just be a happy side effect.

    While in “How Not To Die”, Dr. Greger looked at what was killing people and then tackled those problems, here he’s taken the same approach to just one problem… Obesity.

    So, he looks at what is causing people to be overweight, and methodically tackles those problems.

    We’ll not list them all here—there are many, and this is a book review, not a book summary. But suffice it to say, the work is comprehensive.

    Bottom line: this book methodically and clinically (lots of science!) looks at what makes us overweight… And tackles those problems one by one, giving us a diet optimized for good health and weight loss. If you’d like to shed a few pounds in a healthy, sustainable way (that just happens to significantly reduce mortality risk from other causes too) then this is a great book for you!

    Click here to check out “How Not To Diet” on Amazon and get healthy for life!

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