5-Part Annual Health Check Up for Zoomers
- Pre-post: Genetics, Stress and Obesity (Sun, Oct 3)
- Part 1: Dementia and Alzheimers (Mon, Oct 4th)
- Part 2: Cancer (Tues, Oct 5th)
- Part 3: Diabetes (Wed, Oct 6th)
- Part 4: Hypertension, Heart Disease and Stroke (Thurs, Oct 7th)
- Part 5: Osteoporosis (Fri, Oct 8th)
Part 1: Dementia and Alzheimers
Some of the best ways to reduce your risk of getting Alzheimer’s are to exercise, drink tea and get your vitamin D.
Exercise
If you engage in moderate to heavy exercise, you can reduce your risk of developing any type of dementia by 40%, with the benefits of exercise lasting well into your 80s. The flip side is not so good. Those with the lowest levels of physical activity were 45% more likely to develop dementia.
To stay mentally alert and free of dementia, a combination of aerobic activity, strength training and flexibility exercises have been shown to have the best neuro-protective effect on brain and cognitive functions.
To get you started, try our “Core Exercises Workout For Home or Gym” post.
Vitamin D
Being deficient in vitamin D may put you at increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia later in life. Studies show that cognitive impairment is about 42 per cent higher in people who are deficient in vitamin D, and 39% higher in people who are severely deficient.
Factors that influence your ability to produce vitamin D include:
- Aging, where the skin becomes less efficient at producing vitamin D with age;
- Limited amount of sunlight – a reality for many people for much of the year; and
- Foods and diets containing inadequate levels of vitamin D.
So, what to do? Aside from eating foods high in Vitamin D (salmon, tuna, eggs, milk and cheese), you may want to talk your healthcare practitioner about vitamin D supplementation.
Tea
According to researchers from UCLA, a delicious cup of tea may also provide a boost to your cognitive health. Their findings showed that people who drank tea at a variety of levels showed 17 to 37% less cognitive decline than those who didn’t drink tea at all. Coffee, however, did not show any effect, pointing out that that the benefits of the tea where unlikely related to caffeine.
Although green tea has been found to contain compounds that have numerous health benefits, this study did not indicate which teas had the best prevention benefits.
Be sure to return to this blog tomorrow for Part 2 of our Annual Healthy Checkup for Zoomers on Cancer.
