Stay physically active! Keep your blood pumping. Your mind, as well as the rest of your body, thrives on a good supply of blood delivering nutrients and oxygen.
Don’t let your brain stagnant. Many recommendations push the value of socialization. My guess is that socialization works to keep your mind young by stimulating thought. So doesn’t just day to day life stimulate thought? Perhaps, but it depends on your life. Most likely the important part is pushing your brain to learn new things. Learn a new language, take up a new hobby. Pretty much anything except sitting down to the television and drinking (alcohol).
Meditation seems to have great value too. From my experience, meditation is related to sleep. Of course good sleep is essential to keeping your mind young and working well. Sleep is when you integrate what you have learned that day into your neural pathways for long term value and retention. Sleep is also when your brain does it’s housekeeping and literally takes the garbage out. All those “amyloid proteins” that get a ton of blame for Alzheimer’s, well those get cleaned out during sleep. If you don’t sleep well, that junk is going to accumulate.
Sauna therapy is worth considering. Another thing to consider is hearing loss. As your hearing gets weaker, you are going to be more disconnected and may also socially disengage.
The medical establishment would have you believe they are clueless and have no treatment for Alzheimer’s, that it’s basically hopeless. They are happy to sell you their drugs, but even they admit the drugs don’t work. Whereas nutritional research shows many nutrients deliver real benefit and even reverse cognitive decline.
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Since my expertise is in nutrition and metabolism, I should suggest some nutrients that help with cognitive function.
Fatty acids, specifically DHA, are critical. This is good basic common sense since DHA is essential to building your neural pathways in the first place that it’s also important for maintaining cognitive function.
Phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylcholine are both critical for making cell membranes and that’s vital for cell to cell communication.
Magnesium is a very inexpensive but fundamental nutrient that most people are deficient in. One of the more expensive forms of magnesium is magnesium threonate which is particularly good at reaching the brain and has documented success at improving memory.
Anything that promotes better blood flow is going to have some impact. This would include vinpocetine, ginkgo biloba, proteolytic enzymes and many more.
Blueberries and many other berries are very good for mental function.
Ubiquinol helps mitochondrial function, thus more energy. The brain uses a massive amount of energy!
Vitamin D “Higher brain 25(OH)D3 concentrations were associated with a 25% to 33% lower odds of dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) at the last visit before death”
To end, I’d like to re-iterate that the best time to treat cognitive decline is before it happens. Start now!
Update (August 7, 2023):
A study of 12,388 people over a ten year span found that vitamin D supplementation decreased the risk of dementia by 40%.
https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dad2.12404
Another study found that higher blood levels of vitamin D were associated with a 59% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
https://ejnpn.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41983-023-00676-w