Sing, play the piano or another instrument. Look at that spinning ballerina that I posted yesterday and use both sides of the brain. Even though they are connected there is a distinct difference in the thought patterns and the spinning ballerina gives you a feedback mechanism into how to exercise that.
As we get older we become more aware of the stupid things we earlier did with our bodies since it causes us more pain once the testosterone is gone and we have less animal energy to mask it. But feeling the body more is another feedback mechanism that can be used well in certain types of body work like Feldenkrais "Awareness Through Movement" techniques that are built around the nervous system. The work of F.M. Alexander and Ilana Rubenfeld works with posture and the joints where synovial sacks are more delicate now. Both of those methods are careful about that. It's much better than physical trainers because hard activity will simply break down an older body. You could also look into the work of Elsa Gindler, Elaine Summers and Carolla Speeds which is another holistic way of dealing with more sensitive bodies. There are chemicals that help with brain health. Some, like Aricept are rough and reprogram the way the body and the brain reacts together. In many people painful spasms and "snakes in the legs" accompany that reprogramming. Today there are less intrusive chemical helps than that. Because of the severe lead poison that I had as a child in the mining fields, I've always had many of the issues you both describe. I've learned through the years to develop strategies for dealing with minor memory blanks but the big blanks which constitute whole missing pieces are harder. The new book on Mickey Mantle speaks of him having the same issues throughout his life and that the frustration was a part of his addictions. Mickey grew up a few miles from where I did and we both played baseball in chemical dumps declared safe by private enterprise only to discover later what that had done to us. One thing that I can say, having tried most of those drugs is that my doctors have given me back memory that I never had. Sometimes there is the hint of what a normal life would have been like and at that time it becomes an exercise in mental health not to be bitter. Even with that "never knowing" when a neuron would hit a hole in the brain caused by chemical pollution, I still sang whole song cycles in 13 foreign languages from memory in New York City Halls. Today I do four different jobs and will continue as long as it is built on the pleasure principle and not the punishment fear. My point is not to brag but to encourage. My mother had TIA mini-strokes. She was an accountant who had a mind like a steel trap. After the strokes started she developed ways around the damage through the power of her will to live and her native intelligence. She went from being a digital person to an analogue. Talking to her was a delight but definitely a journey into alternate universes. My father died much younger with his mind intact from practice on the violin and the piano and educational and historical research. But the perpetual fast food and terrible fatty foods in his home town gave him the heart disease that killed him. He neither drank alcohol or smoked but food was his entertainment in an environment that had the philosophical underpinnings of Milton Friedman. It killed him on the operating table at 76. good luck, REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 8:44 AM To: 'Keith Hudson'; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Avoiding Alzheimer's Thanks for your candid and honest posting. I too have the same issues. And it is not by accident that the saying "having a senior's moment" was invented. As all parts of the body wind down so too it appears does the brain. Connections become more sporadic, less predictable. Keeping mentally active seems good for the brain. Keeping physically active seems good for muscles and cardio, etc. We do what we can. No guarantees. We are presiding over what we hope is the graceful degradation of our bodies. Arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 4:11 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Avoiding Alzheimer's At 17:51 04/01/2011 -0800, Mike Gurstein wrote: Lots and lots of interesting/valuable stuff in this article. M Referring once again to the suberb article that Mike posted (below) I've changed the thread because this might provoke a separate discussion. What interested me is towards the end where Alan Deutschman is writing about what neuroscience has to say about keeping one's brain active in old age -- to avoid the 50:50 chance of going senile by the age of 85. He then writes: <<<< "Everyone needs a new project instead of always being in a bin," Merzenich says >>>> The evidence suggests that highly intelligent people tend to avoid Alzheimer's. More correctly, according to one school of neuroscience, everybody develops the same sort of blockages, but that highly intelligent people, with a denser neuronal network are able to tap into more side-routes around them. Why I'm particularly interested in this is that, at 75 years old, I'm often finding difficulty in recalling words. These are words which another part of my brain tells me I know -- somewhere in my brain! Usually I just let go, and then the word comes to me a few minutes or an hour or two later. But sometimes, usually with names I ought to be familiar with, I sometimes have to go onto the Internet to track it down. I couldn't think of "Clinton" the other day! One of my scientific heroes is Freeman Dyson and yet, when I try to recall it, the name "Wayland" comes into my head and won't go away. I then have to trawl through my bookshelves. (The only Wayland I know is Wayland Young, a politician who died in 2009. I once used to know him but he wasn't a scientist and he had no relationship with Freeman Dyson. In my case, therefore, my rotting brain is not only developing blockages, but developing spurious new connections!) I'm not too worried about developing Alzheimer's. My loss of recall has been developing slowly for about 10-15 years so there's unlikely to be any rapid onset (I hope!). But I wonder sometimes whether I'd be in the wrong camp when 85. I take heart, however, that Harry and Ed on this list, having already reached this august age, are as lucid as ever in their postings. Or perhaps I've become more impresssionable and they're not so clever after all! My new anti-Alzheimer's project? I've recently taken to doing the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword again. This is of about medium difficulty and not so pretentious as some in intellectual magazines. However, it's taking me most of the day (albeit at odd moments), and I don't always finish it even then. When I last used to do this crossword 50 years ago I usually finished it comfortably within an hour or so. Keith snip, snip, snip
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