Published: October 26, 2009
A searingly honest and moving account in The Telegraph by a writer who has witnessed her mothers slide into dementia.
When I was about 10, she made me promise that I would kill her if ever she became either disabled or demented. She would say: “I have no fear of death, you know. But I want a dead death, not a living one.”
She has begged each of us in turn to take her to Switzerland, but we tell her that we couldn’t live with ourselves if we helped her to die, and she understands that. So we cowards get on with our own lives and try not to think about her too much. There used to be a time when she could have explained herself to her doctor. They could have given her morphine for the pain, just a little too much. But how much easier it is to innure oneself to someone else’s pain than to risk being struck off the medical register; how much easier it is to hide than to bear a bad conscience.
Link to continue reading
Source: The TelegraphÂ
Image Credit: istock photo
Published: October 22, 2009
National Geographic reports that using search engines may help stave off dementia and memory loss, a new brain-scan study suggests.
Scientists found that middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience showed increased activity in key brain regions after surfing the Web for an hour a day for just two weeks (brain facts).
“It’s not so much the Internet itself as it is the seeking of new information and keeping your brain stimulated with new things,” said study team member Susan Bookheimer, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Playing Sudoku puzzles or immersing yourself in a new hobby, for example, has similar benefits, the team says. But Bookheimer says the Web is less likely to bore users after prolonged use. …continue reading
Source: National Geographic
Published: February 26, 2009
Do you work long hours? Well pay heed– a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows workers who put in long hours at work are underestimating the long term damage they are inflicting on their brains. The study examined the association between long working hours and cognitive functionin middle age. Data were collected from a study of 2,214 British civil servants. The middle aged workers who put in 55 hours or more had poorer mental skills, short term memory and ability to recall words than those who worked 40 hours or less.
This is probably the first large prospective study on the association between long working hours and cognitive function. Results indicate clearly that advances attained by working overtime may be lost in terms of reduced wellbeing and cognitive function of employees. “Therefore the disadvantages of overtime work should be taken seriously”, says Dr. Marianna Virtanen from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.
Published: January 15, 2009
Midlife coffee drinking can decrease the risk of dementia /Alzheimer’s disease (AD) later in life. This conclusion is made in a Finnish Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Aging and Dementia (CAIDE) Study published in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Volume 16:1). Image Credit: Julius Schorzman
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