Can Alzheimer’s disease be cured?
Dr. Heather Sandison, a renowned expert in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia care, believes that reversal is not only possible, but is already happening in many patients.
In her new book “Reversing Alzheimer’s: The New Tool Kit to Improve Cognition and Protect Brain Health,” published by HarperCollins on June 11, Sandison – based in California – offers a step-by-step guide to helping patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s. improve their overall brain health.
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One of the essential elements of Sandison’s program is a focus on exercise as one of the most important lifestyle factors in the prevention and control of dementia.
Research has shown that physical activity can reduce the risk and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
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In the excerpt below, Sandison offers specific recommendations for the types of exercises that can benefit patients living with the disease.
Dr. Heather Sandison: Need new motivation to be active? Exercise is medicine for the brain and offers an astonishing range of benefits.
Obviously, exercise increases blood flow throughout the body, including to the brain. This means that moving your body will provide more oxygen and nutrients to your brain while removing more waste.
Exercise also strengthens heart and cardiovascular system, which helps improve blood circulation even when you’re not exercising; it also reduces the risk of arterial plaques that could disrupt blood flow to the brain and contribute to dementia.
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The main reason why exercise is so important powerful health protector is that it’s what we call a hormetic or a beneficial stressor.
Basically, when you put your body through its paces, it is forced to deplete resources and your tissues may even be degraded a little. (This is what happens when you lift weights: your muscles tear a little.)
In this sense, you are introducing stress into your system, but this stress is a force for good, because it causes your body to use its resources more efficiently and your tissues to grow even stronger. In other words, exercise makes your body – including your brain – more resilient.
Benefits of Exercise many of the root causes of neurological diseases.
It’s getting better structure by increasing your cardiovascular capacity and boosting circulation, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the brain.
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It reduces stress in many ways – giving you a way to blow off steam, producing feel-good hormones like endorphins, and lowering cortisol, stress hormoneand, depending on the type of exercise you choose, taking you outside and into nature, a well-known way to relieve stress.
It can also be social and a great way to spend time with friends or even meet new people, helping to combat loneliness and social isolation which The Lancet lists as one of the risk factors modifiable causes of Alzheimer’s disease.
It’s getting better sleep making you tired.
It strengthens immune function, which reduces the risk and effects of infection – all these muscle contractions and movement against gravity improve the circulation of lymphatic fluid, which delivers immune cells and eliminates invading cells.
He favors detoxificationboth through increased circulation and through sweating.
It’s getting better signagebecause challenging and strengthening your muscles triggers the release of several signaling molecules, called exerkines, which have been shown to have neuroprotective functions.
If you do just one thing: change your current exercise routine in a way that stimulates your brain and increases the intensity.
If you’re a dedicated walker, find a new route that includes hills or stairs. If you’re ready to try something different, check out a new exercise class you’ve been meaning to try.
There are four types of exercises you want to focus on. Four may seem like a lot, but they’re not mutually exclusive.
You can combine two or more types of exercises in a single session: you can turn strength training into cardio by performing your strength moves in high-intensity intervals, or you can make your cardio double duty by doing something something that requires your mental concentration while you move.
Aerobic exercise is what we call “cardio”: it gets your heart and blood pumping and includes forms of exercise such as walking, jogging, cycling, dancing and swimming.
Aerobic exercise strengthens your heart, and what’s good for your heart is also good for your brain, because your heart sends the blood, oxygen, and nutrients your brain needs to function to the brain.
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Your first goal in adding more exercise to your life is to get 150 to 200 minutes of aerobic exercise each week so that your heart rate is in the vigorous zone of 70 to 85 percent of maximum heart rate.
Listening to your body and adjusting your intensity level based on perceived exertion is one of the best ways to know if you’re exercising enough.
Strength training – also known as resistance training – is exactly what it sounds like: using weights or other forms of resistance to build muscle tissue.
Muscle building, especially in the large muscle groups of the legs, hips and torso, is directly related to brain healthbecause these muscles generate brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a “fertilizer” for the brain, prompting it to create new neuronal connections and promoting neuroplasticity.
You want to aim for at least two strength training sessions per week. Strength training doesn’t necessarily require using standard dumbbells and a bench to press your body weight.
You can use resistance bands, light dumbbells, or even your own body weight in exercises like squats, lunges, and planks.
Even walking up stairs or hills counts as strength and cardio training in one activity because they increase your heart rate while keeping your leg and hip muscles strong.
This next-level form of exercise combines physical movement with a cognitive challenge. The simplest form is walking and talking.
What a cognitive challenge is varies from person to person, but if you’re in prevention mode, listen to a foreign language class or nonfiction book while you walk outside or ride a stationary bike, then Pausing the recording to recap what you just learned every few minutes is a good option.
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For some people, attending a Pilates, yoga, or other class where you really have to pay attention to the instructor’s cues constitutes double-duty training — but not if it’s something you’ve been doing long enough to be able to move away.
And if you’ve already started to experience measurable cognitive decline, dual-task training might look like walking around showing you the names of plants you pass along the way, or having someone ask you about the names of limbs of your family, or even a reminder family stories or important dates.
Wherever you are, you want to work at the cutting edge: you can almost feel the wheels of your brain turning to stay focused.
This relatively unique form of training alternates the amount of oxygen in the air you breathe as you exercise – an approach that encourages the smallest blood vessels (called microvasculature) throughout your body, including your brain, to open up, resulting in considerable improvement. blood flow.
It’s like going to altitude to train and build your aerobic capacity, and it’s incredibly valuable for cognitive function.
This type of exercise requires specialized equipment. You can buy the device or go find a clinic near you where you can try it. This requires wearing a mask connected to a machine while you exercise, and when oxygen saturation is low, it can be intense because you have to work harder to get enough air in.
In other words, contrast oxygen therapy is not available to everyone. But if you’re willing and able, it can be extremely helpful.
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Honestly, exercise is so powerful health intervention that if we could just bottle it, we could probably get rid of chronic diseases.
Exercise takes time and effort, but making this activity a regular part of your life addresses so many of the causative factors of dementia that it can significantly reduce your risk.
Excerpted with permission from the new book, “Reversing Alzheimer’s Disease: The New Toolkit to Improve Cognition and Protect Brain Health” (HarperCollins) by Dr. Heather Sandison, copyright © 2024 by Dr. Heather Sandison. All rights reserved.
Original article source: “Reversing” Alzheimer’s: Here are exercises to make the brain more resilient