Health Tips from a Mother of Three

Alzheimer's Disease Prevention: The Present And The Future

Alzheimer's disease is a form of dementia that affects millions of people every year. It can be a devastating diagnosis for not only the people who have the condition but also for their friends and family. As such, if you are looking for a way to prevent Alzheimer's disease in yourself and in those you love, there are certain steps that you can take during your younger years to do just that. While Alzheimer's and dementia prevention are not 100 percent guaranteed, they can help. Get to know current prevention techniques as well as directions prevention research is going in the near future.

Never Stop Learning New Skills

Perhaps the most well-known symptom of Alzheimer's disease is cognitive decline. The person begins to lose their memory and their ability to do and perform certain tasks, and that process continues progressively. One of the ways to combat that issue is to keep learning new skills and concepts for your entire adult life.

Taking adult education classes, whether it is in archery or a foreign language or anything else new to you, will help to continue to build neural pathways in your brain. This will ensure that your mind is more active and flexible which can help to delay cognitive decline and may even delay the development of Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. The more new things you learn and the more active you keep your mind, the better your brain fitness which can help stave off Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

Yoga and Meditation

Learning new skills is not the only way to prevent the cognitive decline that precedes dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Yoga and meditation can also help. In fact, these practices can sometimes be more effective than games and puzzles that just work the mind.

Yoga is a form of exercise that combines physical movement and focused breathing and concentration to work both the body and mind together. This contributes to better retention of special reasoning and memory as well as verbal memory. Meditation without the physical exercises and movement also helps to prevent cognitive decline.

The Future: Early Infection Treatments To Prevent Alzheimer's

Recent research on Alzheimer's disease and dementia development has shown that there may be a link between viral infections that affect the brain and the later occurrence of dementia. This is because the body has a natural reaction to viral infections in the brain and nervous system in which it makes a substance known as amyloid.

Amyloid is a substance that helps your brain fight off viruses. However, its presence in the brain can also be one of the contributing causes of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. This can lead to future treatments to prevent Alzheimer's such as through vaccinations to certain viruses and can potentially even lead to treatments for the condition once it has developed.

Now that you know a few of the ways that you can better prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease, you can be sure that you and the people you care about are doing everything possible to prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease in the future.


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