Photo credit: Benjamin Brink, The Oregonian
So, according to a pilot study done in Seattle, vigorous aerobic exercise seems to slow the progress of Alzheimer's Disease. They don't know if it will prevent it, and it doesn't cure it, but it does seem to improve mental function in those on the road to brain fade. Abstract here.
Going outside once in a while also seem to have an affect on vision. Latest in that arena points out that myopia seems to develop less in children who go outside, and that this makes more difference than watching TV, reading, or video games when it comes to turning little Johnny into a squinter.
My physical therapist said something of the same thing to me, because I don't go out remotely as much as I used to since my back injury - She said that there is an ultraviolet light that we get some kind of energy- or vitamin - from. B-something or other. She said we draw it through our eyes, and the more direct contact with sunlight (no sunglasses or windows) the better it is.
ReplyDeleteSo I stand on the porch for several hours on sunny days now.
It saddens me that so often I have to practically kick my kid out of the house. "Go play! Ride your bike, go to the playground, run around the block, I don't care. Get outside!" But it's for his own health.
ReplyDeleteVitamin D is what light-skinned people create when they stand in the sunlight. It's got zip to do with your eyes, it's your skin being exposed to the light that matters.
ReplyDeleteAlso, cell phone radiation appears to help prevent alzheimers. Weird but apparently true. Google up cell phone radiation alzheimers, it was a big story recently.
I missed that cell phone story. Great -- no Alzheimer's but maybe brain cancer ... ?
ReplyDeleteDevil or the deep blue sea ...
Dying doesn't scare me. Alzheimers does. It doesn't appear to run in my family, possibly because no one ever lives long enough to get it, I suspect. I had one aunt live into her 80s without getting it, but everyone else on both sides of my family keeled over in their 70s.
ReplyDeleteMy paternal great-grandparents were peasant farmers in Ireland, and all lived past 100. Diet and exercise, baby.
If I thought Alzheimers was sneaking up on me, I'd get me one of the Alzheimers helmets, yes I would ....
Runs, alas, in my family. My father, his mother, her mother. On the other side, we don't know, there were some divorces and remarriages, and my grandmother on that side died of a heart-attack in her late seventies.
ReplyDeleteI'll do what I can, but the genetics are what they are.
Worse for our kids, since my wife's grandmother had it, and her mother died of cancer, so we don't know if she would have gone that way.
Start working those crossword puzzles and standing on your head now, kids ...