LITTLE TWEAKS THAT CAN HAVE HUGE RESULTS
LOOK AFTER YOUR TEETH
FLoSSING — and brushing — your teeth twice daily removes food debris and bacteria build-up that can lead to gum disease.
If this is allowed to flourish, the barrier between the tooth and gum will erode and bacteria can enter the bloodstream. This can trigger inflammation, which is bad for brain health. The bacteria can also increase plaque in the arteries.
BASELINE TESTING
IT’S A good idea to check with your doctor before starting this programme, especially if you have any health issues such as diabetes, or you are on medication.
It might also be useful to get some baseline testing done with your doctor to see where you can reduce your risk from a metabolic standpoint, because blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood sugar and inflammation all factor into the risk for cognitive decline.
This plan can help you fight those numbers and bring them into a healthy range, and I encourage you to get tested again after you’ve gone through the programme. My guess is you’ll see improvements.
FEMALE MENTAL DECLINE
IT IS particularly important for you to heed my advice and start setting brainhealthy changes in motion if you are female. Although scientists aren’t clear exactly why, Alzheimer’s disease strikes a disproportionate number of women compared to men.
one theory is that physiology plays a part, with women who don’t have children being at greater risk than those who do.
research now indicates that pregnancy could be a protective factor. Pregnancy entails many biological events, from hormonal changes to immune-function shifts, that could ultimately lead to protection against developing dementia later in life.
We don’t have the answers yet, although hormone therapy continues to be discussed as a potential tool for treatment.
one possible contributing factor to the gender anomaly is that women tend to have better verbal abilities than men, which means they could be more adept at hiding early symptoms of dementia.
Studies show women score better on standard tests used to diagnose the early stages of dementia, even when brain scans suggest they are at the same stage of the disease as men. Problems could occur because these women are not diagnosed early enough.
This may be why women seem to decline more rapidly after being diagnosed — they are further along the disease’s trajectory than the earlier test indicated.