The Secret; Care Givers are the ‘Silent’ Boss

How care givers can handle the frustrations that dementia and other senior health problems can manifest! Staying sane, while you give them care. …Francy Dickinson

Senior Care Tips:  Anger and upset from seniors in care…how to help calm this and give their days peace and enjoyment

Dear Francy; It’s the nasty looks, the angry words and the refusal to even move when I ask him to! This has driven me to the edge. How do I keep going; when I have only been caring for dad a month and I’m out of my mind?

Well, my idea is to remember; who is the senior in care? And who is the care giver? The care giver is the boss…but the hard part? You have to do it silently.

I want you to think of your senior as a young child. Now this is not to demean a senior adult. They are full-grown and with or without dementia they have lived a life that is to be honored. NO, do not demean them. You simply think of them as emotionally equal to a young person of 3-6 years. When there is a problem to handle…you ask yourself what would I do if I was caring for a younger person?

EXAMPLE:

Your dad is still trying to wear cargo pants during the day and his favorite shirt all week-long. He has trouble getting to the bathroom on time and then dealing with taking down his pants is adding to the constant accidents. Even if he does a morning clean up…his clothing is starting to smell. (Does that sound familiar Have you ever seen a 5-year-old that will not get out of his Spiderman pajamas and cape?) So, what you do is lay out two outfits for the next day and take his clothes and clean them. In the morning he has two tops and two pants (hopefully comfortable around the house sweats) to choose from. The other clothes are in the wash. He may be upset…but you have given him two choices and he has the feeling of freedom. Now that means that you have to sort through his clothes and get rid of a lot of things he no longer can safely or sanely wear. But once you get the routine down, the senior feels the honor of choice – even when the choices have been designed for the senior’s better good.

EXAMPLE

Your senior, is a sugar girl. But she has (diabetes, bad teeth, over-weight, or sugar highs at night) so you have to control the intake of sugar. Find a glass candy dish with a lid. Then find a few things that will hit her sweet tooth. Maybe a couple of cookies, a couple of sugar-free gummys, a mint, raisins, etc. Put two or three each in the dish each day. I would place it on her TV side table around 3PM. Let her chose and she gets to eat it fast or slow through the evening. You let her know…”This is your sweet dish for the day, remember this has to last”

Make sure you remove all signs of the sweets in her kitchen area…or your kitchen area. Keep them put away in a large plastic storage bin. So you have to hand out, but just like a young child…you only give them out in small quantities (Do you remember small baggies of goldfish or Cheerios for your toddler? This is the same idea…a treat, but not over-doing it)

PS/ Diabetic sweet products use sweeteners that can give the senior ‘the runs’ – it is very important that they only eat a small amount of the “candy style– sugar substitute” in those snacks. Keep an eye on this so you can learn to judge the amount your senior can handle.

What I am talking about is to think ahead to the day. What time does the senior have to eat or sleep to have a day that is calm? Have you been in the grocery store around 11′ish and heard a few children crying and carrying on? Why?…they are getting tired…they are getting hungry. The mother’s has miscalculated the time issue…they think a quick trip to the store and then take them to lunch. Wrong…the kids are on the edge of no return at that time. Children and seniors need to stay on a daily routine to give them a sense of security and well-being.

If you want to take a senior out. Make sure you have a cheese stick in your purse and water bottle ready for them to take a pill or just drink. Make sure you stop for food and insist they get home in time to nap. DO NOT MAKE MULTI-STOPS. Go to a doctor appointment and to lunch–then home. Another day, you go out and go for a walk around a store and then get ice cream. Another day you take them to a movie and make sure you feed them lunch and they go to the bathroom before they go into the theatre. “Thinking ahead” that is the job of the care-giver.

Your senior needs just the basics. They need a good bed that is comfortable and easy to get in and out of for night time bathroom runs. They need a good day comfort chair by the TV with a side-table. The side-table needs one or two drawers to keep their things in to keep them from a lot of ups and downs. Example: tuck in a nail file small scissor, pens, notebook, hand cream…those are just ideas to keep the need to constantly be asking you “to bring” them things..is reduced.

Plan, to give the senior their space…but you MUST check on them every 12-20 minutes. All mothers have this time frame in their minds; when they’re raising young children. You know that quiet can be good…or can mean the child is getting into trouble. So a check-in every few minutes means you are staying in contact with your senior’s needs, changing moods, and bathroom trips.

This means that you need to learn to plan your actions around the house to that time frame. It may seem overwhelming, but it works. You will get used to it. Then once you are on the same program as your senior…you know to take in their afternoon coffee or tea–or, to ask them to fold the clothes in the morning when they have energy. To keep the house quiet after lunch so they can nap. Not to mention; you can invite them to walk to the mailbox with you — to get their exercise in before 4PM when their energy naturally dips.

Most arguments and bad behavior is a sign of the senior wanting to be the BOSS. The senior is feeling that they are loosing personal power and they want to get it back. You are the person around for them to push buttons and try to be the boss. So when you change your thought pattern around…it allows them to ‘think’ they are making the decisions. The resistance goes down and the upsets depart. YOU, are the boss…and you have to keep the movement of the day and choices of the senior ‘pre-planned’. You do not find grade school teachers just walking into their classroom with 30 children – without a daily lesson plan. So think of your care-giving as a time to be prepared. The daily rituals will fall into place and you can then repeat the weekly plans with small changes. Both you and your senior will feel calmer.

After lunch each day…when the house is quiet and your senior is napping. Sit down and make a plan of action for your day and week. Then you can construct it to give the senior time to rest, play, eat and be calm. You can make time for yourself with visits to relatives senior centers and invite others to your place to give you a ‘time-out’. You can do it…it does take energy…it takes pre-planning–but you can do it. Once you have the rhythm down…it truly can be quieter in the life of both you and your senior.

If your senior continues to be really difficult — remember to write down examples and take them into the doctor the next trip. Let the health care team know you are on the edge and you need help…and they can advise a medication that can help lessen the stress for the senior. *** When I told the doctor and he gave George his medications for emotional stress…it made such a huge difference that I can not believe it took me so long to share the personal upset I had been fighting. Now, George feels calmer and every small issue is not a debate.

You are very kind to be sharing your patience, love and attention with your senior. Give yourself breaks. While the senior is watching their favorite TV shows…you walk out the door and go around the block…or just sit on the porch and breath a little. If your senior refuses baths–hire a bath person. If your senior has been in a snit all week, call a friend, cousin or sibling and ask them to come and give you a break. When they do…go out. Get in the car and drive to the store and just walk around. Or drive to the park and just relax…or drive to the coffee shop and give yourself a quiet treat. These little re-news…will make a huge difference in your ability to cope with rising stress levels.

Do not forget that music is your friend. Learn how to use a light tone in the morning….to get the day going…a quiet tone in the afternoon and early evening…and then a quicker tone when you want the senior to have dinner and be up in energy. Then tone the music down again in the later evening to prepare the senior for the quiet of the night. Music will lift you up and will calm you down…so keep it close and use it often.

Blessings on all that you do…Francy

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Diagnosis & Treatment of Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

Changes in memory become normal as people become older, but memory loss that interferes with daily life is not normal. It may, in fact, be a case of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. That's why getting a proper mild to moderate Alzheimer's diagnosis is the only way to know.

There is no single test that will diagnose mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. In order to diagnose mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, your loved one's doctor must rule out other possible causes of symptoms, such as forgetfulness. A complete evaluation helps determine whether mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease is the cause of a person's symptoms.

The healthcare professional may:

• Carry out a complete physical exam
• Take urine or blood samples, or both
• Carry out memory and psychological tests to see how well the brain is working
• Order a brain scan (like a computerized tomography scan)

Is It Just Old Age or Is It Mild to Moderate Alzheimer’s  Disease?

How do you know if it is mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease? As people get older it's common for them to forget things. But at what point is misplacing your car keys considered old age or something worse? Old age can often result in memory loss, whereas mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease can cause loss of cognition, which includes things like memory, understanding, communication, and reasoning.

Mild to moderate Alzheimer's Disease Symptoms. Here is a checklist of common symptoms to help recognize the warning signs of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease:

Memory Loss and Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

Forgetting recently learned information is one of the most common early signs of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. A person begins to forget more often and is unable to recall the information later.

What's Normal Aging? Forgetting names or appointments occasionally.

Difficulty Performing Familiar Tasks Because It Could Be Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

People with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease often find it hard to plan or complete everyday tasks. Individuals may lose track of the steps needed to prepare a meal, place a telephone call, or play a game.

What's Normal Aging? Occasionally forgetting why you came into a room or what you planned to say.

Problems with Language May Be a Sign of Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

People with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease often forget simple words or substitute unusual words, making their speech or writing hard to understand. They may not be able to find the toothbrush, for example, and instead ask for "that thing for my mouth."

What's Normal Aging? Sometimes having trouble finding the right word.

Disorientation to Time and Place Due to Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

People with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease can become lost in their own neighborhoods, forget where they are and how they got there, and not know how to get back home.

What's Normal Aging? Forgetting the day of the week or where you were going.

Poor or Decreased Judgment Due to Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

Those with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease may dress inappropriately, wearing several layers on a warm day, or little clothing in the cold. They may show poor judgment about money, like giving away large sums to telemarketers.

What's Normal Aging? Making a questionable or debatable decision from time to time.

Problems with Abstract Thinking–Is It Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease?

Someone with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease may have unusual difficulty performing complex mental tasks, like forgetting what numbers are and how they should be used.

What's Normal Aging? Finding it challenging to balance a checkbook.

Misplacing Things–a Sign of Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

A person with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease may put things in unusual places: an iron might go in the freezer or a wristwatch in the sugar bowl.

What's Normal Aging? Misplacing keys or a wallet temporarily.

Changes in Mood or Behavior in Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease Patients

Someone with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease may show rapid mood swings – from calm to tears to anger – for no apparent reason.

What's Normal Aging? Occasionally feeling sad or moody.

Changes in Personality Due to Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

The personalities of people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease can change dramatically. They may become extremely confused, suspicious, fearful, or dependent on a family member.

What's Normal Aging? People's personalities do change somewhat with age.

Loss of Initiative Due to Mild to Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

A person with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease may become very passive, sitting in front of the TV for hours, sleeping more than usual, or not wanting to do usual activities.

What's Normal Aging? Sometimes feeling weary of work or social obligations.

 

The Stages of Alzheimer's Disease

It can be confusing not knowing what to look for when your loved one shows possible symptoms of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, especially because it can affect everyone differently. Some people may not have every symptom, while for others, their symptoms may occur at different times. Since Alzheimer's disease can last as long as 20 years, it can be helpful to look at it in terms of stages. Knowing the stages can help give you a general idea of what to expect and how to provide care.

Unfortunately, mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease may bring about changes in your family member's overall functioning. Scroll down to find information about the changes you might expect at the mild and moderate stages of Alzheimer's disease and some suggested steps you can take to cope with these changes.

Mild Stage Alzheimer's Disease

Most people at this stage can still manage many of their daily activities themselves, but they may need some assistance or support to stay organized.

Possible Changes:

• Having trouble carrying out tasks that require multiple steps, like following a recipe
• Getting lost, even in familiar places
• Having difficulty performing some household chores
• Avoiding social situations
• Having trouble remembering appointments, people's names, or things that happened recently

Steps the Caregiver Can Take:

• Ask a trusted friend or family member to help manage your loved one's money
• Write reminders to your loved one in the same place, such as a calendar or notepad, to look at often
• Keep a list near the telephone of the names and telephone numbers of family and friends, along with their photos
• Put labels or pictures on cabinets, drawers, and closets so that things can be found easily
• Encourage your loved one to talk about his or her feelings with friends, family, clergy, or other professionals
• Consider enrolling your loved one in adult education, recreation, or fitness classes to stay physically and mentally alive

Moderate Stage Alzheimer's Disease

People at this stage may have more trouble taking care of themselves, but they can still be involved in their daily care and follow a comfortable routine.

Possible Changes:

• Needing help to take a bath or shower, choose clothing, or get dressed
• Needing help setting a table or getting out of a chair
• Developing sloppy table manners
• Feeling restless or wandering, especially in the late afternoon or evening
• Getting suspicious, angry, or easily upset
• Having trouble recognizing family members
• Having difficulty expressing oneself and understanding others

Steps the Caregiver Can Take:

• Encourage your loved one to stay involved in things he or she enjoys doing, even if for shorter periods of time
• Help your loved one share his or her memories with family members by telling stories or creating a scrapbook
• Speak calmly and clearly – show what you mean as you say it by making sure you have your loved one's attention
• Plan for exercise and other physical activity during the day to promote sleep at night
• Research community resources to provide help, such as home healthcare agencies or adult day centers

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Made These Seniors' Brains an Average of 11 Years Younger in Only 40 Hours

Story at-a-glance

• Research into brain plasticity has proven that your brain continues to make new neurons throughout life in response to mental activity, which means that cognitive function can be improved, regardless of your age, and cognitive decline can be reversed
• A key factor or ingredient necessary for improving brain function or reversing functional decline is the seriousness of purpose with which you engage in a task. In other words, the task must be important to you, or somehow meaningful or interesting
• There are computer-based brain fitness programs designed to help improve cognitive function in six different areas in about 40 hours, and can be used by any age group
• To optimize your brain fitness, the following lifestyle factors can help: daily physical exercise, focusing on your body movements and your environment, engaging in new learning throughout your life, staying socially active, and practicing “mindfulness”

How Innate ‘Plasticity’ of Your Brain Allows You to Improve Cognitive Performance and Prevent Age-Related Decline

Video: Dr. Mercola and Dr. Merzenich on Innate Brain Plasticity

Dr. Mercola:

It was once thought that any brain function lost was irretrievable. Today, research into what's referred to as "brain plasticity" has proven that this is not the case. On the contrary, your brain continues to make new neurons throughout life in response to mental activity.

Aside from toxicity, our modern lifestyle plays a part in cognitive decline, as described by Dr. Michael Merzenich, professor emeritus at the University of California, who has pioneered research in brain plasticity for more than 30 years.

He founded Scientific Learning Corporation in Oakland, California, and Posit Science in San Francisco; both specialize in science research into brain training software.

Dr. Merzenich's career arose from an interest in philosophy, and a fascination with the nature and origin of the human persona and individuality, and how brain processes might account for the evolution of our individual abilities. He believed that in those who have learning disabilities or develop psychiatric illnesses, the natural progressions of these brain processes must have encountered errors.

Use It or Lose It — the Principles of Brain Plasticity

The inherent plasticity of the brain was discovered some 30 years ago, and not long thereafter, animal models demonstrated that brain deterioration and aging were in fact reversible, provided the appropriate brain engagement. Dr. Merzenich describes brain plasticity as follows:

"The basic concept is simple. The brain changes physically, functionally, and chemically, as you acquire any ability or skill. You know this instinctively. Something must be changing as your abilities improve, or as new abilities emerge. You are actually remodeling your brain machinery by 'practicing' the skill; those physical changes account for your learning.

Actually what the brain is doing is changing its local wiring, changing the details of how the machinery controlling your behavior is connected. It's also changing itself in other physical, chemical, and functional ways. Collectively, those changes account for the improvement or acquisition of any human ability.

You probably haven't realizd it, but as you acquire an ability – for example, the ability to read – you have actually created a system in the brain that does not exist, that's not in place, in the non-reader. It [the ability; the brain system that controls the ability] actually evolves in you as it has been acquired through experience or learning."

As Dr. Merzenich explains, your brain is designed and constructed to be stimulated and challenged, and to carefully examine, resolve and interpret your environment. During the early days of mankind's development, keeping track of the details of immediate human environments was imperative for survival.

Today, however, we tend to try to remove ourselves from the details of life. For example, instead of keeping track of appointments and to-do lists in our head, we use electronic gadgets with reminder features. Our streets are paved and lit, requiring virtually no attention to navigate from one location to another. And if you don't sufficiently challenge your brain with new, surprising information, it eventually begins to deteriorate.

"Generally, by the third or fourth decade in life, you're in decline," Dr. Merzenich says. "One of the things that happens across this period is that you go from a period of the acquisition of abilities to largely using abilities that have been acquired earlier in life. By that I mean to say, most of the fundamental skills that you apply in your profession or in your everyday life are things you have mastered at a young age, and you're now doing them in 'automatic pilot' mode.

To a large extent, you're operating most of your day without really being consciously engaged in the things you're doing. You're substantially disengaged: 'sleepwalking through life.'

This inattention to detail is substantially a product of modern culture. Modern culture is all about minimizing environmental challenges and surprises... about enabling brainless stereotypy in our basic actions so that our brains can be engaged at more abstract levels of operations. We're no longer interested in the details of things in our world. Because our brains are highly dependent in their functional operations in recording information in detail, they slowly deteriorate. Without that recorded detail, memory and brain speed are compromised."

Contributing Factors to Cognitive Decline, and How to Counteract it

With age, brain researchers have found that there's an increase in "chatter" in your brain. Dr. Merzenich explains:

"Your brain becomes less precise in how it's resolving information as you're operating and listening in language, as you're operating in vision, or as you're operating in controlling your actions. We actually record these 'noisier' processes within the brain as you age. In fact, we can correlate the growing 'chatter' quite directly with the slowing down of your processing.

You know, every older person is slower in their actions, slower in their decisions, and less fluent in their operations than when they're younger. They're slower because the brain basically is dealing with information that is represented in its machinery in a fuzzier, more degraded form."

What research into brain plasticity shows us is that by providing your brain with appropriate stimulation, you can counteract this degeneration. A key factor or ingredient necessary for improving brain function or reversing functional decline is the seriousness of purpose with which you engage in a task. In other words, the task must be important to you, or somehow meaningful or interesting — it must hold your attention. Rote memorization of nonsensical or unimportant items or even heavy work at non-challenging tasks will not stimulate your brain to create new connections or neurons.

Dr. Merzenich has been instrumental in the development of a kind of "brain gym" environment — a computer-based brain training program that can help you sharpen a range of skills, from reading and comprehension to improved memorization and more. The program is called Brain HQ.¹

"There are some very useful exercises at www.BrainHQ.com that are free, and using them can give a person a better understanding of how exercising your brain can drive it in a rejuvenating direction. Using exercises at BrainHQ, most people, of any age, can drive sharp improvements in brain speed and accuracy, and thereby rewire the brain so that it again represents information in detail," he says.

"Basically, what you're doing is reducing the chatter -- the 'noisiness' -- of the processes in your brain. That impacts your capacity, for example, to record and remember that information. When the information the brain is shipping around in its machinery is in a degraded form, when it's fuzzy, when it's imprecise, all of the uses that it makes of it are also degraded. When you rejuvenate those elementary abilities, you significantly recover your 'higher' brain powers."

Who Can Benefit from a "Brain Gym"?

Everybody's brain is plastic, including yours, so no matter what your age or current level of brain function, your brain can improve to some degree or another. Dr. Merzenich and his colleagues have specialized in training children, primarily those with learning disabilities or impairments, using similar approaches. More than 4 million struggling kids have been trained so far. But seniors and adults of all ages are also using these programs at BrainHQ.com in increasing numbers. Individuals in all age groups have been found to reap significant rewards.

Children operating in the 10th to 20th percentile of academic performance are commonly able to improve their scores to the middle or average level with 20-30 hours of intensive computer-based training.

"That's a big difference for the child," he says. "It carries most children who are near the bottom of the class, on the average, to be somewhere in the middle or above average in the class. And that gives struggling children a chance to really succeed and in many cases excel in school."

Careful controlled studies in seniors have also been reported in scientific journals. After 40 hours of computer-based training, the average improvement in cognitive performance across the board was 14 years. On average, if you were 70 years old when you underwent the training after 40 hours of brain training, your cognitive abilities operated like that of a 56-year old. Equally strong or even greater effects were seen in 40 to 50 year olds using the program. Individuals who worked on the BrainHQ exercises at home did just as well as those who completed training in a clinic or research center.

How to Implement a Brain Training Program

So, how does such a training program work, and what's the optimal way to implement it in order to maximize the benefits?

"One of the great advantages that we have is that there's a very large body of scientific information that informs us about the optimum brain training approach," Dr. Merzenich says. "It comes from understanding, on a scientific level, the basis of what controls brain change. We know how the machine operates to control its own remodeling. We know that you have to be engaged attentively, and in a sense that the more attentively focused you are on the training tasks, the greater the positive benefits of training.

We know that rewards have to occur, or information or feedback about how you're doing have to occur, in a specific and timely way to drive the optimum changes in the brain. The way difficulties change in the task are also crucial for driving changes with highest proficiency.

One simple thing we do is to [continually] adjust the difficulty level of the task, so that every trainee is at a level in which they get most things correct but they're still capable of error. Because only when you're in this demanding situation, only when it matters to the brain, does the machinery turn on to change the brain. We actually regulate this, and as the person progresses session by session, day by day, they notch up their performance to higher and higher and higher and higher and higher levels."

Ideally, it would be wise to invest at least 20 minutes a day. But no more than five to seven minutes is to be spent on a specific task. When you spend longer amounts of time on a task, the benefits weaken. According to Dr. Merzenich, the primary benefits occur in the first five or six minutes of the task.

You can typically improve yourself to the highest practical or possible level in anywhere between five to a dozen brief sessions of seven or eight minutes each. Again, having a sense of purpose is crucial.

"When it matters to you, you are going to drive changes in your brain," he explains. "That's something always to keep in mind. If what you're doing seems senseless, meaningless, if it does not matter to you, then you're gaining less from it."

Dr. Merzenich developed a website, Brain HQ.com, to help take advantage of the brain's ability to repair.The Brain HQ website has many different exercises designed to improve brain function and it also allows you to track and monitor your progress over time. While there are many similar sites on the web, Brain HQ is one of the oldest and most widely used, and its programs are supported by dozens of published science studies and the most complete confirmation of behavioral benefits and brain rejuvenation.

How Your Daily Lifestyle Can Improve Your Brain Function

Aside from engaging in a computer-based brain exercise program, Dr. Merzenich lists several things you can do on a daily basis, as part of your day-to-day lifestyle, to help maintain optimal brain fitness:

• Get 15-30 minutes of physical exercise each day, and when exercising, think about using your brain to control your actions. That means, skip the iPod and instead take in the details of your environment.

  "Reconstruct the environment you're walking through in your mind. Basically, we are constructed to take in the details of our physical environments, and to interpret and reconstruct them. That's a critical form of exercise for us basically to refine our navigational skills and abilities in this sense – to basically look at the landmarks, to look at the details, to record them in detail," he says.

  Secondly, look for and take note of surprises in your environment. "If you walk across the landscape and are paying attention, you cannot take a walk for 15, 20, or 30 minutes without being surprised or delighted many times," he says. "And the brain loves surprises, because surprises mean that they must be engaged to interpret what they mean."

  Lastly, pay attention to your physical body. "You should feel yourself again. When's the last time you actually thought about the feelings of your body in motion?"

• Spend about five minutes every day working on the refinement of a specific, small domain of your physical body. Dr. Merzenich explains:

  "That is to say, move in a very variable and controlled way – variable in speed, variable to reach a target, for example, with your big toe or your little finger or the small of your back or the motion of your jaw. Pick a specific refinement target to work on, every day. I do that in a systematic way, because I'm trying to maintain the fidelity of the neurological control movement. I know that I'm very much thinking about the feeling in my movements as I do that."

• Find ways to engage yourself in new learning as a continuous aspect of your life, such as taking on new hobbies or learning new skills.
• Stay socially engaged.
• Practice "mindfulness," in which you're attentively focusing on the world around you again, as if you're seeing it for the first time.

  "Look at the wonder in the flower. Look with curiosity again at the movements of the lizard. Engage in the details of the world and in life. Associate what you hear with what you feel on your skin," he suggests. "It's incredibly important that you engage the brain and all of its details of how it's drinking in information, because this again relates to the fidelity with which it will represent it for all of its operations."

Nutrition and Brain Health

Another factor that cannot be overlooked is your diet. Foods have an immense impact on your brain, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental and physical health. Just like exercise, avoiding sugar (particularly fructose) and grains will help normalize your insulin levels.

This is an important aspect, as sugar causes chronic inflammation that disrupts your body's normal immune function and can wreak havoc on your brain. But sugar also suppresses BDNF, which is important for proper memory function, and appears to play a significant role in depression as well. At least we know that BDNF levels tend to be critically low in people with depression, and some animal models have suggested low BDNF levels may actually be causative.

The medical literature is also showing that coconut oil can be of particular benefit for brain health, and anecdotal evidence suggests it could be very beneficial in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Ketone bodies have been found to feed your brain and prevent brain atrophy. It may even restore and renew neuron and nerve function in your brain after damage has set in. Ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat (as opposed to glucose) into energy, and a primary source of ketone bodies are the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) found in coconut oil. Other dietary recommendations to preserve and improve your brain health include the following:

1. Optimize your vitamin D levels through safe sun exposure, a safe tanning bed and/or vitamin D3 supplements.
2. Take a high-quality animal-based omega-3 fat. I recommend consuming high quality krill oil to meet the optimal amount of omega-3 fats needed to achieve good health and fight cognitive decline.
3. Avoid processed foods and sugars, especially fructose – Excessive sugar and grain consumption are the driving factors behind insulin resistance, and the strategies that protect your brain are very similar to those for avoiding diabetes. There is simply no question that insulin resistance is one of the most pervasive influences on brain damage, as it contributes massively to inflammation, which will prematurely degenerate your brain.

   Ideally, you'll want to restrict your total fructose consumption to below 25 grams a day. This includes refraining from eating too many fruits, if you normally eat a lot of them. If you consume more than 25 grams a day of fructose you can damage your cells by creating insulin and leptin resistance and raising your uric acid levels.

4. Avoid grains – Even whole, organic grains will convert to sugar in your body and spike your insulin levels.
5. Avoid artificial sweeteners – Aspartame, for example, is an excitotoxin that can literally destroy your brain cells. There are many studies showing the dangers of aspartame. For example, one study published in 2000 found that aspartame shortens the memory response, impairs memory retention and damages hypothalamic neurons in mice.
6. Avoid soy – Unfermented soy products are another common food that should be avoided if you want to maintain healthy brain function.

   One well-designed epidemiological study linked tofu consumption with exaggerated brain aging. Men who ate tofu at least twice weekly had more cognitive impairment, compared with those who rarely or never ate the soybean curd, and their cognitive test results were about equivalent to what they would have been if they were five years older than their current age. What's more, higher midlife tofu consumption was also associated with low brain weight. Shrinkage does occur naturally with age, but for the men who had consumed more tofu showed an exaggeration of the usual patterns you typically see in aging.

   Dr. Kaayla Daniel has written an excellent book, The Whole Soy Story, which covers the health dangers of soy in great depth and I highly recommend it to anyone still under the illusion that soy is a health food.

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First Senior Moment... And Extinction

How Dinosaurs became extinct (The very first "senior moment"...???)

Global warming plan could leave humans extinct

Forget climate change -- the real threat to the planet and all of us riding on it comes from screwball scientists and their schemes to "save" us from nonexistent threats.

The latest plot sounds like it might have been hatched by a Bond villain: a series of simulated volcanic explosions to fill the atmosphere with a manmade chemical sunblock that would shield the entire planet.

Can you imagine anyone saying this stuff with a straight face? Yet that's just one of a number of dead-serious proposals in the growing field of "geoengineering."

Another scheme involves spraying seawater into the sky around the planet to create more clouds, lowering the global temperature. I hope you've invested in a good umbrella.

What's even more disturbing is that our government is actually taking this nonsense seriously. The National Science Foundation just awarded $382,000 of YOUR money to University of Montana researchers just to study the ethics of geoengineering.

They should have asked me -- I could solve that one for free: Ethics won't matter one whit if we're all dead after scientists blow their volcanic loads and dump the sea into the sky.

I wasn't around when the dinosaurs got wiped out -- I'm not that old -- but the leading theory says it started with a meteor impact. The space rock itself didn't kill off the creatures...instead, the real culprit was a massive cloud of dust kicked up by the impact, blocking out the sun.

Sound familiar?

I'm not convinced the climate is changing in the first place -- and even if it is, it's certainly not because of anything we've done. The planet's a lot older and stronger than us.

But if we give in to this manufactured panic and let the mad scientists engineer the environment for us, we'll go the way of the dinosaurs ourselves.

Hoping common sense isn't extinct,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.