The New Rule of Retirement: Retirees…You Can NEVER Retire.

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If you are looking at leaving your job for full retirement or downsizing your current job and easing into retirement, you’ve probably been through the counseling of your HR department and/or with your financial advisor. You are getting yourself financially ready.

But are you healthily ready? Is your health ready for this change, specifically your brain?

ARE YOU HEALTHILY READY FOR RETIREMENT?

In the Gulf Coast Alzheimer’s/Dementia support group I co-founded, my 5 year involvement showed that 60% percent of the attendees had a spouse fall victim to Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia within 3 to 6 months of retiring from their job.

As we are facing retirement and the extension of the rest of our lives, the number one fear in the world seeps in. And that is…

Well, statistics say that for the majority of us, our number one fear is public speaking. We all know that is absolutely NOT true. Nearly all of us can get up and tell a story or speak to a group if we have to. To be honest, we are afraid of losing our mind. Even if we lose our hearing and our sight, we still have our mind and can function and appreciate life. Losing our brain function…that is another story.

We all know why we must take care of our brain, to keep our mind fully functioning, keep it alert, to continue to make proper decisions and judgment calls, to manage our lives. Those are the technical, logistical reasons. The real reasons to take care of our brains, I think we all agree, are to continue to enjoy our lives, to enjoy our spouse and other family members and close friends, most importantly, to continue to love and be a part of the lives our children and grandchildren.

So yes, we know why we must keep a healthy brain, but knowing the how to do it…there, it gets a little tricky.

If a plant does not get water, it dwindles and dies. To make it grow, produce flowers or fruit, it’s good to add a little fertilizer. It is the same with our brain. We’ve got to feed it.  When we need to spruce up our energy and help our performance, we can consume a different type of fertilizer, a vitamin or supplement. Bottom line: We’ve got to take care of our brain. We just cannot let it sit on top of our shoulders and be. Our brain needs nurturing. And we fail to do that.

Most of us think of our brain like we think of our spleen. And that’s just it, we don’t think of our spleen. (The spleen by the way is an organ in our gut associated with our immune system that helps clean our blood, store white blood cells and help fight bacterial infections.)

MOST OF US THINK OF OUR BRAIN LIKE WE THINK OF OUR SLEEN, WE DON’T.

We think of our aching joints, our big hips, our beer bellies, our aching back, our stomach growling or even heartburn. At night when we can’t sleep, during the afternoon when we cannot stop yawning, when we keep forgetting names as well as how to balance our check book, when we lose our way home from church or the grocery, we don’t think of our brain, we just slap the air and say, “It’s hell getting old”. Regardless of the issue, it’s our brain calling out, “woe, woe, woe, I need some help”.

IT’S OUR BRAIN CALLING OUT, “WOE, WOE, WOK, I NEED SOME HELP”.

(Suffering from brain drain? Read my booklet, for free, 9 Signs You’re Experiencing Brian Drain and How to Keep Your Brain Fully Charged, here.)

How can we help our brain when it is calling out? There are many ways but the first and most important way is to acknowledge this precious organ and give it the respect it deserves.

Yes, our hair will turn grey, our skin will wrinkle but our mind and body do not have to shrivel up and be vacuumed away by dementia which can slowly percolate in our brain.

So the number one job, in our lives but especially when we retire is… we have to take care of and nurture our brain.

Here’s to your good brain health!

PS: Want more ways to care for your brain? Be a member of my Brain Health Revolution where I will send you a couple of times a month new info, quick tips, check lists and more on how to power up your brain and keep it fully charged. Join by grabbing my new booklet, 9 Signs You’re Experiencing Brian Drain and How to Keep Your Brain Fully Charged, here.

The purpose of this information is to convey knowledge. It is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure your condition or to be a substitute for advice from your main healthcare professional. Sincerely, I wish you and yours the very best in brain health.

www.JanetRichPittman.com

We’re Dying Our Brains!

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What do these foods have in common?

Box cakes and their icing, beverages, juices, candy, cereal like Captain Crunch and Fruit Loops, OTC drugs, Florida oranges, cosmetics (especially lip sticks), ice cream, sorbet, frozen fruit bars, sausage casings, maraschino cherries, gelatin desserts, BBQ sauce, fruit salad, Doritos and other chips, instant ice tea, Hamburger Helper?

They are all loaded with synthetic, artificial food dyes man-made from coal tar or petroleum.

Scientific studies, specifically from Pediatrics, The Lancet and Journal of Pediatrics, told us about 10 years ago, that these dyes were damaging the development of our children’s brains and could be a main source for ADHD-Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.  For those children NOT suffering from ADHD disorder, the studies also told us these same dyes can make kids hyperactive and/or hysterical, if not just plain nervous.

In the last few years studies, such as those from International Journal of Biological, Biomolecular, Agricultural, Food and Biotechnological Engineering and World Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, not only confirm artificial food dyes cause developmental brain problems but they also indicate artificial food colorings are a cause of brain cell degeneration.

Basically food coloring, eaten over the years, is a cause of dementia.

Dementia is from brain cell degeneration and that is when brain cells deteriorate, break down and die causing the brain to lose function.

When foods dyes are consumed over a series of months to years to decades, this causes the brain not to function at prime capacity. In other words, we lose names, train of thought, words are dropped where we cannot finish a sentence, we are tired all the time and somewhat in a haze.

And when we keep eating the coloring and other toxins, it gets worse, where we make improper judgment calls, our reasoning is off, we do not have strong control over impulses and emotions, changes in personality creep up, we cannot focus and pay attention, our senses become weak and our visual perception is off.

Yellow dyes are associated with high oxidative stress which creates free radical production.  Simply the yellow dye causes your brain cells to go crazy and beat each other up (hyper inflammation) , eventually killing each other.

Various artificial blue dyes cause gliomas which are tumors made in the glia cells, the supportive cells to neurons which hold up the neurons and direct them. Yep, tumors as in Brain cancer!

Orange to red dyes work to build up plaques in the brain.  Actually they cause a specific protein, amyloid precursor protein, to misfold and starve brain cells, resulting in dementia, Alzheimer’s the most common form of dementia.

The European Union has demanded warning labels be issued on foods containing artificial synthetic dyes.  Australia and the United Kingdom have banned these chemicals in foods altogether.

Why have companies in US not taken these artificial dyes out of our foods?

Companies make the food/candy with the coloring to make it attractive so to garner a sale. Obviously, it’s a political issue. And because of the cheap price and the attractiveness of the coloring, the packaging and the taste, we keep on buying it.  So let’s don’t because foods containing these dyes are killing our brain cells.

We can get good tastes, not the same taste though and maybe not even a better taste, from natural foods with natural colorings, but we will at least get safe, natural and productive nutrients to give us a healthy brain.  With a healthy brain we are sharp, quick and mentally astute; we have instant recall and energy as well as the most important, we are preventing dementia.

Nutrition is a main way to have good brain health. Not only do we need to absorb nutrients from all natural foods to better our brain, we must, else we will dye our brain to death.

For more ways on how to get a healthy brain:

Good to talk with you!

 

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Alzheimer’s Plaques May Be Good After All

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Beta Amyloid Plaques*

In the Alzheimer’s world the overproduction of these miss-folded proteins are thought to be a main cause of this deadly and family altering disease.

 A team co-led by Drs. Deepak Kumar Vijaya Kumar of Massachusetts General Hospital and Robert Moir and Rudolph Tanzi of Harvard Medical School[i] showed from their study released mid May 2016 that Beta Amyloid Plaques act as a natural antibiotic that protects the brain from infection.  Specifically the plaques trap and imprison bacterial pathogens (parasites that cause disease) preventing their spread.  The doctors denote it is still unclear if the plaques are “fighting a real or falsely perceived infection” but this research gives us a pathway for medicines to target if indeed Beta Amyloid Plaques are the true problem.

In the late 80s through early 90s scientist David Snowden, PhD showed us through his study of nearly 1,000 nuns[ii] who donated their brains to science, that those nuns dying under the last stage of Alzheimer’s had the same amount of Beta Amyloid Plaques than nuns showing no cognitive impairment on the scale of even the beginnings Alzheimer’s disease.

The science is still not there to give us a definite cause of Alzheimer’s disease. New research tests are beginning to tell us that these plaques, when in excess quantity, are perhaps banging around too much in our brains and breaking up our tau proteins causing Neurofibulary Tangles. An excess of tangles is thought to be another cause of Alzheimer’s. Stay tuned for developments on cures.

Beta Amyloid Plaques*
Clumps which form in the brain after Amyloid Precursor Proteins miss-fold and become sticky.
[i] D.K.V Kumar, R.E. Tanzi, R. D. Moir, et al., Amyloid-β peptide protects against microbial infection in mouse and worm models of Alzheimer’s disease; Science Translational Medicine; Vol. 8, Issue 340, pp. 340ra72, 5 25 2016, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf1059
[ii] Snowdon, David, PhD, Aging with Grace, New York, Bantam Books, 2002.

What to do with Willie… An Alzheimer’s Dilemma

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This article is a reprint from The Mobile County, Alabama Sherriff’s Magazine. The story is true.  Names have been changed for privacy.

     Bob, a police officer of one of Mobile’s suburbs, had been called to investigate and remove a middle to elder age man caught urinating in a corner of the local elementary school.  With Willie dangling while walking and greeting the little ones, this fella had to be removed from campus.

     Once Bob gingerly convinced him to put up Willie and accompany him to the patrol car, Bob began the real questioning.  His routine interrogation, given in a smooth, friendly voice, got nonsense gibberish, but the hanging neck tag Bob caught sight of, quickly gave all the answers.  It read:  James ‘Jim’ Smith, 123 Main Street, City, AL, 12345 Alzheimer’s Victim, ICE: Liz Smith Greenwood 251.123.4567.

     According to Liz, Mr. Smith’s daughter, after she secured a last minute doctor’s appointment, she could not get a sitter for her father who lives with her and her family.   This was the first time leaving her father alone since she moved him in 5 months ago to care for him full time after quitting her job.

     With Liz’s front door wide open and the dog missing, the situation was reconstructed.  Mr. Smith let the dog out of the front door after continuously seeing him scratch the door.  After visually following the dog scurrying about the yard, Mr. Smith quickly shifted his attention to the children on the school playground, four houses down.

     Being a retired school principle, this was ‘the place to be’ in his mind and once there, Mr. Smith suddenly became aware of his hygiene calling.  Sighting a plastic white urn in the corner as the commode, he stepped up to relieve himself.  Now…Bob understood.

     Liz’s gamble did not pay off and that is where Gulf Coast Dementia Services, GCDS, a 501c3 charity serving under Gulf Coast Senior Services can help play the hand many families are dealt when having to care for their demented parents. Families want to preserve their parent’s independence and keep them at home as long as possible.  When needed, a certified dementia caregiver can be scheduled to ‘sit’ with a demented family member.  These caregivers, schooled in responding to and reacting with dementia victims, offer family caregivers time off.

     Yet insurance, except for some long term health policies, does not pay for sitter service.

     “Healthcare costs to the extreme poor are government subsidized. Wealthy individuals have their own means of coverage.  Regarding dementia care, the vast middle class”, states Gina Germany, board president of GCDS, “is the segment of population left with no dementia health care help.  That is until now.  Through grants from private foundations and public entities we now offer certified dementia care to those in need, at a substantially discounted rate.”

     For an application or further information, visit http://www.gcseniorservices.com.

 

Coffee with Breakfast: it Prevents Dementia

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This is Post 2 of your Breakfast Brain Food Series

Coffee is a natural, organic food and it helps prevent cognitive decline—to prevent dementia leading to Alzheimer’s Disease.  Yep, your morning Joe prevents Dementia… but there’s a catch.

While many studies on mice and rats suggest that caffeinated coffee protects against Alzheimer’s Disease, direct human evidence for such was lacking, until now.  Sixteen professional constituents from the University of South Florida in Tampa and the Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Miami, The Univeristy of South Florida and University of Miami, reported their findings in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.  Two combined studies of 124 total individuals, age 65 to 88 years old, were mentally tested and had blood samples taken prior to the study.  The subjects were then monitored over a 2 to 4 year period to determine the extent caffeinated coffee played in their mental capabilities.  Less mental decline was associated with subjects who consistently drank coffee and subjects with higher blood caffeine levels avoided onset of Alzheimer’s Disease

     The research group took their finding and analyzed their ‘human’ results with results of other rodent Alzheimer’s studies.  All but one rodent comparison study gave equal results.  During this non matching study, twice weekly or every 72 hours to be exact, one set of mice with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) were given caffeinated coffee, another set of AD mice were given decaffeinated coffee and the third set of AD mice were simply given raw caffeine.  Only the mice with caffeinated coffee showed severe memory improvements.

     More significantly, the mice with the caffeinated coffee had continuous levels of G-CSF,  IL-10 and IL-6, growth stimulating proteins, which were not seen in the decaffeinated coffee and plain caffeine mice groups.  Scientific analysis of these proteins, present after consistent consumption of caffeinated coffee, reveals that caffeinated coffee triggers long-term beneficial ‘brain maintenance’ against–preventing Alzheimer’s Disease.

    Thus the indication: some ‘as of yet unidentified’ component of coffee synergizes with caffeine to greatly enhance certain protein production.  Catch One:  drink caffeinated coffee.

     Dr. Chuanhai Cao, a neuroscientist at the USF College of Pharmacy and the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Center and Research Institute who lead the study, said that older adults with mild cognitive impairment who drink coffee “will not convert to Alzheimer’s.  The results from this (human) study, along with our earlier studies in Alzheimer’s mice, are very consistent in indicating that moderate daily caffeine/coffee intake throughout adulthood should appreciably protect against Alzheimer’s disease later in life.”

    These tests provide direct evidence in humans that caffeinated coffee is associated with the reduce risk and /or delay onset of dementia and MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment).

     Catch 2:  the study reveals that less mental decline was associated with both men and women drinking 2 to 3 or more cups of coffee per day.  Since dementia begins to formulate in our brains ten to twenty years prior to symptoms of cognitive impairment occur, intervention to prevent MCI furthering into Alzheimer’s should begin early.

     “Moderate daily consumption of caffeinated coffee appears to be the best dietary option for long-term protection against Alzheimer’s memory loss, “ says study co-author Dr. Gary Arendash.  “Coffee is inexpensive, readily available, easily gets into the brain and (when consumed early in the day) has few side-effects for most of us.  Moreover, our studies show that caffeine and coffee appear to directly attack the Alzheimer’s Disease process.”

     There is hope so, ready for a cup?

 

What Will Yours Be?

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Some illness is going to get us. We all know we cannot live forever and at the end of the journey is death.

For many, something comes along as we make this journey and knocks us down, throwing us into a series of illnesses resulting in a slow body breakdown. From diabetes I and II, cancer, heart trouble (actually blood flow trouble) to even, heaven forbid, dementia/Alzheimer’s, these all are a painful and sorrowful–sickly way to age, as well as depart.

When suddenly struck like this and you face the wall of death, it is incredibly difficult if not impossible to summon energy to fight and try and beat the illness pulling you to the end. Just last week I faced such a group of people.

The Cancer Survivor’s Group of Citronelle, Alabama, 40 miles north of Mobile, gathers every month to support each other and to learn how to further take care of themselves. Their stories of the illness fermentation, their fight, fright and fatigue along with hope for a healthy future are amazing. When asked to talk to them about dementia, I was taken aback.

Here we have these illustrious survivors who had fought the vacuum to death by standing tall to the torture of cell changing medicines, chemotherapy and/or radiation. And they kept fighting despite their exhaustion, low self esteem and degrading confidence. These winning survivors now invest in their future to prevent other illnesses from giving torturous advances to death. They host informative talks or lectures so to educate themselves to prevent their cancer illness, nor any other illness, will strike them again.

Their meetings and self betterment: how inspirational.

“We have taken actions against cancer”, they pride fully tout, “but what can we do about dementia/Alzheimer’s? What actually is it? Will it strike us?”

Yes, they wanted to understand the disease but bottom line: they asked for my seminar because they are scared it might happen to them and that they might be struck with dementia. Here they wanted answers with preventative measures.

Wow! Hats off to such a fine group.

Now are you searching ways to age better, to prevent illness from tackling you? Are you worried about dementia striking?

Feel free to invite me to speak to you and your group on dementia prevention and healthy aging, specifically ‘The Four Ways to Age Successfully with NO Pain and NO Dementia”. You can pull up my website, www.JanetRichPittman.com, to peruse additional speech topics and view comments.

Most topics revolve around Dementia. Dementia is not a very attractive topic but we see

it, along with sickly aging, consuming our parents, our friends and our neighbors. We shake our heads yet go forward for we feel –we know we can do nothing.

Yet we can. We certainly can do something for ourselves. We can take steps to prevent dementia, to lead healthy productive lives. First, you are invited to a free subscription to my blog, www.SeniorMomentsNoMore.com where I submit short articles, similar to these in this great magazine, articles on dementia prevention, good brain health and successful aging. Once subscribed, you will automatically receive a free electronic report, Dementia or just another Senior Moment: The Difference.

Next, feel free to also invite me to speak to your group to explain what dementia is and open the door to venture into the various ways of prevention for a healthy enjoyable journey through life. It would be an honor to share my information on my blog and by speaking with you and your group.

Now, back to the main question: what will yours be?