Welcome back to Cheddar News all morning. We've been
talking about Alzheimer's disease and the struggles to find an
effective treatment. So I'm here with Dr Joel Salinas
Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology at N Y U Langone
Health and Chief Medical Officer at Isaac Health to talk
a little bit more about preventing the disease. So
first of all, start with what are some of
the early signs of dementia? Early science can include
a pattern of slowly worsening memory loss, having an
occasional laugh is okay. But if you're consistently forgetting
things, especially things that you are very familiar with
or things that happened recently that can be more alarming
, but there's other brain functions as well that can
be affected, like forgetting words, changes in behavior
, personality, that's very typical for somebody difficulty learning
new things using gadgets. It's a combination of things
. So anything that might be affecting your memory and
your overall thinking and behavior that can raise a red
flag and also to be aware of the excuses people
Try to use to make up for them, especially
when parents are like, Oh, I just didn't
sleep well last night, like the signs to look
out for, but we talked to us a little
bit more about the rising number and so many more
people having dementia opposed to, you know, 30
years ago. Yeah, there's a lot of different
factors at play here. The biggest one being age
. So as baby boomers get older, which is
one of the largest groups on the world right now
. Uh as they get older, you'll see more
and more people developing this condition. So that's what
people call this silver tsunami. Another big factor is
COVID-19 has actually increased the incidence of these conditions by
about 17%. So there's a lot of factors at
play and I think it's, it's a crisis that's
really looming and that we're really concerned about. Well
, one of the things I know people that are
concerned that research shows that, you know, eating
a Mediterranean diet has helped people lesson there, I
guess possibility of getting Alzheimer's disease. Is there any
truth to that? Yeah, absolutely. There's a
specific diet called the Mind diet, which is a
modified Mediterranean diet that has a lot of evidence around
it. But what we can see from that is
it does help to kind of put the odds in
your favor that you'll be less likely develop these conditions
or have progression of it. Some of it has
to do with reducing some of these kind of biological
factors that may cause injury to cells and D N
A as well. As helping to reduce inflammation.
I know my, my grandma would always say it's
in the food, baby, it's in the food
, you know, all the stuff that we eat
. Exactly. And so are you saying that more
organic, leafy, green spinach vegetables is the way
to go ideally to be able? Well, one
of the nice things about the mind diet specifically is
that just adhering it to it moderately, actually gives
you some benefit but kind of the healthier diet that
you can bring into your life, the better off
it will be in the long term. So what
about some people? They're not going to change that
? We try to encourage them over and over again
, they're not gonna do it. So what about
other changes we can incorporate into our lives besides diet
? A huge one which is maybe not, not
any easier. It's bringing in more exercise into one's
life, whether that's just a little bit of extra
physical activity or kind of taking on a new major
exercise routine, any kind of physical activity is,
is really helpful here. Other things are kind of
keeping yourself socially engaged as well as helping to yourself
to learn new and mentally stimulating activities. Another major
one that it's forgotten a lot of the time is
better sleep. And then if you have other medical
conditions, getting those things taken care of like high
blood pressure, high cholesterol diabetes and even things like
anxiety and depression can also increase your risk. My
wife is a big proponent of learning new things and
like giving her mother crossword puzzles and different things and
just keep the brain active. But for those people
who may have a history of dementia in their family
, what do you recommend for them? I would
say one of the first things is to talk to
your doctor about. What are the things that you
can do to help to better care for your brain
health. So that might include doing things that are
more heart healthy, like diet or exercise, finding
issues like high blood pressure and many that earlier.
Um but even just talking about these changes that are
happening, there's a lot of stigma around these conditions
. So talking to either kind of trusted friends or
family about kind of changes that you're noticing if there's
been a pattern that you're not able to see and
then just talking to your doctor about it, you
know, I think heart health is brain health,
mental health is brain health. Ultimately, you can't
have health without brain health. Yeah, that's great
advice. Hopefully people are listening and taking notes on
all of this information. Thanks again, Dr Joel
Salinas from the New York University Langone Health as well
as Isaac Health. Great information and please make sure
you speak to your doctor about all of these things --> .