THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE IS STRONG - YOU CAN INCREASE THE ABILITY OF YOUR BRAIN AND MIND, AND REDUCE YOUR RISK OF DEMENTIA - please look at our new book
We are now very clear that not only can care for people with dementia be better but also that we could reduce the probability of developing dementia by at least a third and our mission in writing the book How to Increase Your Brainability and Reduce Your Risk of Dementia was to project this positive message to people who are living longer, to their families and friends and to the clinical professions, including our colleagues, the doctors, many of whom are still confused about dementia and Alzehimer’s disease and are unaware of the potential for prevention
We decided to focus on Brainability because the image of ageing is so negative. We believe this is unscientific and not supported by the evidence and we need to focus on ability and not disability, on the positive and not the negative. The 100 Year Life is the title of a stimulating new book which emphasises the fact that an increasing proportion of people will reach the age of a hundred and therefore there will be increasing numbers of people in their nineties, eighties and seventies. Society, and governments, are concerned about the social and economic impact of population ageing but it is important to emphasise that an increase in the number of very elderly people does not necessarily mean an increase in the proportion of people who are highly dependent and it is now clear that we can not only reduce the risk of heart disease, type II diabetes, stroke and cancer we can also prevent or delay the onset of disability, dementia and frailty, the latter condition being the end result of a number of different conditions compounded by the side-effects of medication and loss of fitness. We now understand what is happening to us as we live longer and have described it in our Kindle with the title the Antidote to Ageing but this site and the linked book is focused on the disease that most people fear most - dementia
There has always been a disease most feared of all. First of all it was the Black Death and then in the 19th Century a new type of plague called cholera which spread through Europe like wildfire and created panic and fear. As these came under control a new fearsome disease emerged - tuberculosis, the wasting disease, described in many novels. It was incurable and fatal and consumed the person infected, from which came the name consumption. However when antibiotic treatment for tuberculosis was developed fear of TB diminished but, as had happened before, a new disease emerged to terrify society – cancer. There are similarities between cancer and tuberculosis in the minds of the public. Both appeared to consume the individual affected and both were regarded as a death sentence. However cancer is now no longer the killer that it was and many cancers are now being regarded as what doctors calllong term conditions, like Type II diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis, something you have to live with so cancer is not feared in the way that it was, although of course life would be much better if you could avoid it than if you developed it. We now understand what is happening to us as we live longer, and have described it in our Kindle The Antidote to Ageing but this site and the linked book are focussed on dementia. Of course dementia has always been present in society but when there are very few people of advanced age it was never a major challenge but as life expectancy has increased and the number of older people has increased so too has the number of people with dementia and so too has fear of dementia.
The evidence is summarised and the key references are included in our book Increase Your Brainability and Reduce your Risk of Dementia. We also monitor key sources like the Cochrane Dementia Group
