We all dread “losing our marbles” as we age. Watching someone you love with Alzheimer’s disease progressively deteriorate before your eyes is heart breaking. But even if it runs in your family, it’s not inevitable. Watching others decline is a great incentive to maintain your brain and keep your marbles in good shape.
Dr Bruce Lipton in his book The Biology of Belief presents his scientific research and clearly shows we are not the victims of our genes. The environment we create in the cells will determine which part of our genetic blueprint we turn on. We have a choice. We do not have to turn on a weakness or activate a tendency. We are not doomed to dis-ease.
Yet some people are definitely doomed to disease, often by their own making and lack of interest and knowledge. But for most of us, no, we are not doomed to disease, if we take charge of our wellness. Thank goodness we can learn from those who go before us, can choose to adjust our course of action, and reap the benefits from what we have learned and applied.
“For years, scientists thought that Alzheimer’s was primarily genetic,” said Gary Wenk, professor of neuroscience at Ohio State University. “We now believe that, while there’s a genetic component, Alzheimer’s is primarily a lifestyle disease.”
Science is proving that lifestyle diseases are our major causes of decline and death. Diseases are linked to wear and tear faster than repair and attempted repair going haywire. Why is that? It’s becoming clear that decline is about stresses we create, physical stress, mental and emotional stress, and nutritional stress. We are not paying enough attention to what the body requires to stay well.
Our cellular environment needs to be conducive to healthy cell repair and replacement to avoid setting up dis-ease and declining function. Being overweight, inactive, eating a poor diet, and stressed to your eyeballs, all contribute to Alzheimer’s and numerous other diseases associated with aging. But you don’t have to go down that track.
Your Brain Needs Oxygen And Water
All the researched indicators point to recognizing that the state of your body reflects the state of your mind. Brain cells need more oxygen than any other part of your body and that’s why exercise is so important.
Exercise increases delivery of oxygenated blood to your brain so that the brain can effectively monitor your entire body and its functions, from breathing to digestion, liver detoxification, kidney filtration, immune response, to elimination of waste materials … and all the rest.
A sluggish brain means sluggish organ function too. Turning to sugar to lift the sluggishness is not the answer, as long term this sets up conditions for dis-ease in the form of diabetes, with further serious side effects from that too. Letting your brain dehydrate compounds all ills.
Your brain is 75 to 80% water. Even a 2% reduction of brain hydration reduces efficiency of the whole body. With even mild dehydration your concentration can decrease 13% and short-term memory 7%. You become irritable, heavy headed and clumsy. No wonder your brain seems sluggish – it ‘s thirsty and needs at drink of water.
Your Brain Relies On Your Heart
It’s your heart’s job to get blood to every part of the body, including your brain, to deliver essential nutrition, including water. Dehydration can have an impact on the mechanical function of your heart. Cells shrink when dehydrated which may affect the transmission of electrical impulses that stimulate your heart muscles to contract.
Your heart will beat about 100,000 times in one day, about 40 million times in a year, and about 3 billion times during your life. It will pump blood through 60,000 miles, or over 96,000 kilometers of tubes, your veins and arteries. How far is that? About twice round the world. Your tubes for blood circulation range from nearly the diameter of your garden hose to capillaries so fine that it takes ten of these fine capillaries to equal the thickness of a human hair. What a phenomenal effort your heart puts in!
Be Grateful and Exercise
Day in, day out, your heart keeps working for you! Your brain keeps working for you. Your organs keep working for you. This happens without your conscious awareness or command. So what is your part in all this? All you need to do is exercise your body, provide quality food for maintenance, repair, and replacement, and give your body some down time to rebuild what you have worn down during the day. And, you need to stimulate and exercise your brain as much as your body.
Dehydration means waste products in cells and around cells accumulate and clump instead of being diluted for easy collection and elimination. No wonder your brain and organs become sluggish. Dehydration leads to thicker blood. With less fluid in the arteries the artery walls adjust by constricting. Yet the volume of blood cells and nutrients for delivery to organs, muscles and other tissues remains the same. So the viscosity of the blood has gone up. Your blood is thicker.
Now your heart has to pump harder to drive the thicker brew to every destination in your body. Thick blood is one of the main reasons for high blood pressure. Doctors prescribe blood thinners when you might need water first. The other causes for thick blood come from what you eat. Be aware that some drinks actually dehydrate your system. Coffee is a diuretic as is alcohol and sugary soft drinks too.
So often people are on blood thinning drugs, which have disturbing side effects, instead of drinking more water, breathing more fully more of the time, and adjusting their food choices. So now the medical drugs add to liver’s load, which sets you up for liver issues. Drugs of any kind always add to liver and kidney load, and add to brain deterioration, just as surely as poor diet undermines brain cell function.
Choose Brain and Heart Enhancing Foods
Cut out sugar saturated fats and trans fats. They are bad for the brain and all cell membranes in your body. The double layered membrane of cells is filled with essential fats. This cellular skin has to allow in what feeds cells and supports function and allow waste out. With the wrong kind of fat within the double membrane it becomes harder to discriminate what to allow in and what to dump.
Specific foods can boost and protect brain and cells. Include omega 3 rich foods like fish, nuts, seeds and their oils and antioxidants, the plant nutrients evident in the colour of fruit and vegetables. Fat soluble vitamins like E come from the yellow of egg yolk, and Vitamin A from avocado. Both are protective and aid skin and tissue healing. Yellow, orange, red fruit and vegetable provide fat soluble carotenoids to protect your brain and cell membranes, and the dark coloured ones like beetroot, black grapes, blue berries, provide water soluble antioxidants.
So to maintain your brain and keep your marbles in good shape: exercise, breathing, water, and nutrition, all enhance the life of the cells in your body and in your brain, keeping them healthy and productive. Even if there are various tendencies in the family you are not doomed to disease. By maintaining a healthy environment in your cells you don’t have to be a victim of your genetics nor of lifestyle diseases. You can keep your marbles in good shape in old age.
Cheers
Anna