Non Medical Treatments Of Alzheimers

Physical activity, good nutrition, mental and social interaction are important for keeping Alzheimer's patients as functional as possible. Research conducted over the past decade has indicated that a healthy lifestyle and regular physical and mental activity may help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Let’s have a quick look this week at what that means.

Healthy lifestyle
Although researchers do not yet understand many of the cellular processes that lead to Alzheimer’s, it appears that a healthy lifestyle can at least help delay its onset.
For example:

- Healthy diet may be able to control various Alzheimer’s risk factors such as high cholesterol levels and diabetes.
- Exercise may help manage cardiovascular risk factors, increase blood flow to the brain and stimulate nerve cell growth and survival.
- In general, what is good for the heart is also good for the mind.

Mental and Social Activity
A number of studies have reported that mental and social activities, such as reading, dancing, doing crosswords, painting, playing music, and singing in a choir could delay the onset of dementia. It has been proposed that such activities increase brain activity, stimulate establishment of new connections between nerve cells and may even result in the production of new nerve cells.
Over the years of mental stimulation a brain can build many connections between nerve cells. When such an active brain becomes affected by Alzheimer's disease some of these connections are disrupted, but the brain may be able to re-route the flow of information to intact connections and compensate for the death of other nerve cells. Because of this, active brains that have many connections between nerve cells, tend to remain free of the symptoms of dementia for longer. In contrast, a flow of information in an inactive brain, that has few connections between nerve cells, is easily disrupted at the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Exercise
An exercise program incorporating low-intensity calisthenics also improve the memory in elderly people with mild cognitive impairment.
In a Japanese study the calisthenics, called Furfuri-Guppa, were combined with singing. After one year in the exercise intervention program, 70 of participants showed a significant improvement in memory.

So in short, keep fit, use your head and eat the right food with lots of friends and you will delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.


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