heard the stories about the pain people experience with those diseases. I saw it
firsthand with my grandmother, who had dementia in her nineties. She was
always a strict and old-fashioned grandmother, but when her mind changed, she
became combative, angry, and frustrated, and when she spoke, the words were
intelligible but the phrases didn’t make sense. She had a paranoid fear that
people were talking about her. We were doing that, yes, but not in the mean way
she imagined—we were just commiserating about how we hated watching her
slip away. Absolutely, it was sad to see someone I loved not even know what she
didn’t know.
But here’s the thing: Alzheimer’s, dementia, or memory-related problems are
not necessarily inescapable. You can prevent some of these issues, slow their
progression, and, in some cases, even reverse them.
Exercise has been shown to be the most effective brain defender. According to
a review of sixteen studies, people who are physically active on a regular basis
reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s by 45 percent. What’s regular? It’s not
complicated: 150 minutes a week of moderately intense aerobic exercise,
meaning that you’re working hard enough for your heart to beat fast, but not so
hard that you’re too breathless to talk. This simple prescription helps to promote
new networks of small blood vessels, which allow more glucose and nutrients to
reach more brain regions.
And then there are brain exercises, another key to lowering your risk of
cognitive decline. Exercising your noggin helps to keep it plastic and strong.
(Plastic, by the way, is the word scientists use to describe the brain’s ability to
continually learn and develop.) It’s the old “use it or lose it” mantra—you want
to continually challenge your brain to help it perform well. “Using it” is what
builds the hard wires and connections that fend off neurological deterioration.
A final tactic centres around food: feeding your brain the nutrients it needs to
optimally function. But before we get into the food specifics, let’s peek inside
that machine so you know what you’re tinkering with every time you eat and
drink.
Your Brain’s Inner Workings
The best way to think about the brain is to visualize a cell phone network. Your
brain’s nerve cells, called neurons, are like individual callers. They send and
receive messages to and from each other. When this information goes from one
neuron to another, you’ve had a successful call, and that neuron stores away the
information. This is how memory is built: neurons talking to each other,