Exercise and Alzheimer's

     If you Google exercise and Alzheimer's you will find all kinds of sites discussing the topic. It has been long thought that exercise can delay the onset of Alzheimer's and bring about improvements once somebody has Alzheimer's. About 900  studies have been done on exercise and Alzheimer's. None of these studies had a clear idea as to what actually happened to bring about improvement. They just find that there is some evidence that improvement occurs.

    I had read something on the Internet the other day on this topic but did not finish the article. This morning there was a column in my paper that filled in what I missed. The memory part of our brain keeps on producing more cells. The trigger for growing the new cells is exercise. So this is one of the first times that they have been able to put together a more concrete cause and effect. 

    Now there are various forms of dementia. Loss of memory is one of the factors. If memory can be increased by growing new memory cells some dementia could be alleviated. There's still lots more tricks that dementia throws at us.

    In the "Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain" Barbara Strauch deals with the topic.

    The Ontario Brain Institute has just mined 55 different studies on the effects of exercising. Recommendations advise that we exercise over a lifetime for 150 minutes a week.

    So there we are again! More reminders of the value of exercise.

The Food Baddies: Salt, Sugar and Fat

      On Thursday morning I listened to and interview on CBC with Michael Moss who has just written a book called "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. What  fascinating interview!

     Michael told how large food companies go to great lengths to put the right balance of salt,sugar and fat in their products so that we will literally become addicted to the product and there fore buy more of the item over and over again. 

    Salt enhances flavor so that we find the food pleasing to the taste and therefore eat more. Salt also causes high blood pressure, but do the large companies care? Nor one bit. 

    Sugar is used in an amazing number of products. Relish has sugar in it. He covers cereals which are pitched to kids and how the sugar content has steadily increased and why. Kids are growing. A sugar kick doesn't last long so the brain tells the kid you're growing, you have to eat some more. It's unbelievable how much sugar is loaded into cereals.   Sugar leads to diabetes and diabetes is a nasty that causes all kinds of other health problems.

     Fat also makes food more pleasant. Fat can lead to high cholesterol which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

    So people eat the three baddies and they first of all become obese and that leads to a very unhappy life style and huge health costs.

    What to do? Moss has all kinds of practical suggestions. However , the whole thing is a challenge. Just the other day a motion was made in the Canadian Parliament to require salt labeling to be more precise. Prime Minister Steven Harper voted against this motion as he thought it would cause companies difficulty. What rubbish!

    I am not innocent when it comes to salt, sugar and fat. I have been lucky. At school I developed a coke habit. Usually one a day but on a bad day maybe three. I also had a small bag of cheezies each day! When I retired I heard that sodas had 7 teaspoons of sugar in them. I stopped drinking pop immediately. I did eat a lot of chips. I loved chips. Now I rarely eat them. I don't have salt on the table and rarely put salt in things that I cook. 

    My wife was diagnosed with high cholesterol quite a while ago. We made an effort to change our diet and reduce fat. I benefited from that one.

    I still have some vices to face. I eat quite a bit of canned soup. It's loaded with salt. I can remember enjoying tomato soup and putting lots of salt and pepper on it. Yikes!

    I certainly enjoyed Moss's comments. They made me think again and I will try and cut down on these some more.

   It was interesting to see that Moss was interviewed by a number of programs. Papers covered him too. I guess that's what happens when you come out with a hot new book.

For Me; A book I Should Have Read a Long time Ago

    I've just read Nonviolent Communication a Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg. This is a book I should have read many years ago but I couldn't because it just came out in 2003. There are many excellent books on good communication. Many cover the same territory as Rosenberg covers but Rosenberg has made the message more concise and practical. After you read this book you will have some practical things you can use.

    Rosenberg covers four areas: Giving form the heart, Compassion, observing without evaluating and identifying and expressing feelings.

    I was a teacher and every day I saw how important good communication was. The more accurate and particular you were the more successful things were.. 

    You had to watch your students for cues from them as to how they were feeling and how they were reacting. Sometimes missing a clue could make a big difference. I asked all my classes to watch what I did when I first came in the classroom. They really didn't know so after some prompting they saw what I was doing. I made sure that I looked at every student to see if there were any clues I should pick up from them. This made sense to the kids. I also suggested that they do the same for me. Check me out. Am I in a bad mood? 

   Sometimes dealing with parents  required care or you could end up in a nasty conversation. Looking back at some difficult interviews usually showed that I missed something.

    So Rosenberg's book puts things in a format the is practical. If you follow his ideas you can avoid some nasty communications problems and solve problems once you're in them. He gives examples with students, couples, staffs and street groups. 

    So if you like books on communication, this is a good one.

When You're Wrong, You're Wrong.

   I usually don't comment on Canadian current events because followers outside Canada aren't interested and don't know much about it. 

    A few days ago we had well known academic and  politically active mouth piece, Tom Flanagan, make a very unfortunate statement. He wondered out loud if people should be put in jail because of pictures they look at. He was referring to pornographic material and in particular pictures of children. He had made a similar statement three years ago but this time it was videoed and put on you tube. It went viral. He was dropped as a commentator from CBC. He was dropped by the Wild Rose Party from being an advisor. The Conservative party of Canada dropped him from any activity. At one time he was prime minister Harper's chief of staff.

    Now such a statement is just wrong in many ways. People should go to jail for looking at pornographic pictures involving children as children have to be harmed in order to get the pictures.

    Now some academics have jumped to Tom Flanagan's defence trying to say that  he was raising the topic to bring about discussion of the issue. Not on this one . It's just completely illogical. 

    Professors and teachers use the procedure of throwing  out challenging ideas to get their students to think about issues. This was the wrong topic to be used for discussion stimulation.

    What is really sad is that Tom Flanagan has written a very strong article defending himself. 

    I hope we've seen the last of Tom Flanagan and that others will think twice about opening their mouths with similar unthinkable ideas. 

Snow Visits Me Again.

     
    Last night I knew the forecast was for snow. The wind blew from the east all night. I was up a couple of times but it wasn't snowing. When I got up this morning there was heavy snow falling. There was a strong north east wind and visibility was limited. It was one of those storms where you say, "I hope this doesn't last long!"  By about 11:30 AM the snow had stopped but it left lots for me to shovel. 

    We are approaching spring equinox. Days are lengthening. The sun rose at 7:16 this morning and set at 6:17 tonight so it's giving us about 11 hours of sunlight. Some of you have had your last snow of the winter. I will get lots more snows. Our snow should melt by April 1 but there will be snow fall after that.

Shoveling this kept me out of trouble for a while!

I took a quick peak around the neighborhood.

Perspectives Gained by Searching

    Sometimes I start an aimless Internet search when I'm feeling curious. I was born about 5 miles from the village of Esk,  Sask. In it's hay day Esk had a peak population of 50. Now it's population is probably zero. I Googled this village last night because I knew there were several websites about it. None of these sites had much information because no one has contributed to them.

    My search did lead to a link on cemeteries. There were two cemeteries for the village. Think about it ? Two cemeteries for a village of 50 people. First , I went though the list  in the Baptist cemetery. It's a walk threw history. There were people who were elderly when I was a child and those who have  died since I left the area. One thing I noticed was that an Aunt and uncle were not buried there so now I will have to look for them.

    The Lutheran cemetery is larger and that's where my relatives are buried. My Great Grandpa donated the plot of land for the cemetery. Again, I was just going through the names and not concentrating.   All of a sudden a name popped out at me and it was my Mom. Why did the name pop out? I haven't heard my Mom referred to by her name for a very long time as we always talk about "Mom" and her friends who would use her first name are not here anymore. By this time I was awake and I knew what name would be coming next...my sister who passed away when she was eleven yeas old. 

   So coming across these two names got me thinking. Mom died in 1973, My sister died in 1953. So this year there are two anniversaries. My Mom passed away 40 years ago and my sister passed away 60 years ago. I started to wonder how these family members will be remembered. There aren't very many people who are living who knew my sister. Her memory is carried by very few people. My Mom is in a similar situation. If my Mom was living, next year she would have been 100. Very few of her acquaintances are left. Very few people are left who knew her. 

   So time rolls on and generations spend their time here and pass away. Grave markers will remind people of who was here. Slowly over time the markers will also disintegrate and we will be forgotten. 

Communication With Children on Health Issues.

     So my previous post on communication with children was setting the stage for talking to children about their health conditions. Most of the time we do a good job of communicating with our children. Sometimes we could do better. When it comes to health issues it is crucial that we get it right.

     My story is this.   It happened a long time ago...in the late forties. The world was a different place. When I was seven or eight years old I began having "spells" as my mother called them. I was taken in to the old country doctor and he diagnosed my condition as epilepsy. I'm not sure if he explained to my mother what the condition was . I'm not sure if my mother understood what was going on. I certainly didn't understand and had many misconceptions that frightened me. I thought I had something that I would die from! My mother was warned to watch that I didn't swallow my tongue. I thought the condition I had related to my heart and even little kids knew that heart attacks kill people. I also sensed that there was a great stigma related to this condition. People had strange ideas about it and thought those who had epilepsy were somewhat deranged. This adds to a kid's anxiety.

    I was given medication. I was given responsibility for taking the medication. Often I didn't take the medication so had more seizures. 

    So my example illustrates what I have to say. It is extremely important that we explain to children what medical condition they have. Children understand much more than we give them credit for. Sometimes the child's anxiety and loneliness is worse than the condition itself. Yet, people still do not take the time to fully explain conditions to children.

    Fortunately I had what is known as juvenile epilepsy and when I hit puberty the epilepsy stopped. 

   Now three years ago I was diagnosed with seizures again! Of course, I thought the diagnosis was wrong because after all I had experience with seizures and these seizures were not remotely the same as what I had as a child. So I came home and immediately went on the Internet and found that my specialist was right. 

    It's now known that in many situations a seniors forgetfulness and confusion is caused by senior epilepsy.

   So maybe communication has to be carefully done with older people too or at least with this elderly person.

   I am doing well. I do not have any seizures. I take my medication but the medication has side effects. It bothers my balance.