
Dementia – what is it?
Cerebral drift essentially – and for most people it happens later in life meaning that people work hard all their ‘life’ and then lose cognition, which is not a very thrilling prospect at all!
The brain itself is a very powerful organ with a lot of redundancy (reserve). However, from studying brain MRI’s it has been shown that from around age 50 onwards there are small white spots that start to appear – these are now known to be small strokes. (From a study of 11,000 MRIs.)
But, as mentioned the brain has a lot of reserve and so people do carry on walking, talking, and living normally because of this reserve.
The problem is people aren’t aware that this is happening and so continue the lifestyle which promotes dementia. Now, diet isn’t the only factor but by continuing to eat in a manner which causes vascular disease, these small strokes continue, and so that large amount of redundancy is no longer so large.