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There has been a lot of research to determine how Alzheimer’s disease can be prevented or delayed. Even if some drugs are being tested out, there is no way to tell how effective they will be until some years have passed.
A new research points out that it is important to have healthy lifestyle and exercise regularly in order to protect your brain.
A healthy lifestyle does not only refer to a good diet but also to good stress management, exercising your memory by reading and working on your cognitive functions and sleeping at least 7 hours every night.
According to Dr. Richard Lipton with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, these changes in people’s lifestyle have proved more effective than the other studies involving new drugs. Dr. Lipton has done a lot of research into healthy ageing.
The research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference a few days ago recommends people to take five simple steps to ensure they have a better lifestyle and, consequently, a better quality of life.
The first on the list would be sleep. Lack of sleep has been linked to the decline of cognitive functions even in people who don’t suffer from Alzheimer’s. It was also proved that insomnias and sleep deprivation can lead to an early development of the disease. Thus, it is advisable for these patients to address their doctor as soon as they detect such problems, as many of them are easy to fix.
Moreover, it is important that you steer clear of stress and depression, which have both been linked to higher chances of having Alzheimer’s. A team of Harvard researchers also proved that loneliness can lead to cognitive decline, in a study that involved more than 8,000 elderly people over 10 years. How we choose to deal with stress can also greatly influence our brain.
Another thing we can do is to exercise our brain. A study conducted by Swedish researchers proved that those who did well at school or chose jobs that involved working with numbers or doing research had a much lower risk of suffering from dementia. Even if you are not a teacher, doctor or researcher, there are still a few things you can do, such as learning new languages, doing crossword puzzles or various quizzes in order to strengthen the connections between nerve cells.
One of the most important things on the list for a healthy mind and body is to exercise, no matter how old we are. A study that involved 3,200 young people for about 25 years revealed that the ones who were the most sedentary had the most considerable decline in cognitive functions. It is important to exercise every day for 30 minutes to prevent various diseases, Alzheimer’s included.
Last but not least, it is important that we have a healthy diet every day. A lot of fruit, vegetables, raw nuts and seeds, legumes and fish should not be missing from our meals. However, we should do our best to exclude processed foods and sugar in excess.
Image Source: alltimefit
