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.

Notice the difference between these two brain MRI images. Over 90 small lesions (scars) can be seen on the brain with advanced dementia.

When the redundancy becomes less and less, that is to say that a neuron passing on a message may bump into a portion of scar tissue where a small stroke occurred prior we see problems.

Over time, it becomes obvious why the messages cannot be communicated across the brain effectively and this is dementia – loss of cognition, loss of decision-making ability, loss of memory – or all of these, dependent on the areas of the brain affected.

Not a nice outcome at all.

This is vascular dementia and whilst Intelligent Eating focuses on long-term cardiovascular health, when you eat to save your heart, you can also save your brain. The body is not compartmentalised as often portrayed but one incredible system.

Can you think of any people in a position of power who are age 50 or over whom we should perform an MRI on their brain to check their decision-making abilities? ;-)

So, please – if you’re serious, pop your first name and email in below and I’ll give you a bit of information on the path towards becoming literate in nutrition so that you can achieve your health goals.

Thanks,

Adam.