Welcome to Max Your Memory!
Max Your Memory has been around for about 2 years, mostly in my head and in the WordPad on my computer. I’ve launched it a couple of times but haven’t been content with how it was functioning. Yes, I’m technically challenged and there’s nothing more time consuming than a TC person building & writing a blog!
If you’ve looked around this blog, you’ll understand that it’s about “Brain Fitness” and you’ll see how I came to know about this subject. My goal in the actual Blog part of Max Your Memory is to write about any interesting topics, research or news I come across related to the 5 key elements of Brain Fitness.
Brain Fitness Exercise
Healthy Diet & Nutrition
Physical Fitness
Peak Performance
Engaging Community
Here are a couple of examples of topics I’ll pass along to you:
Branch Chained Amino Acids Ameliorate Injury Induced Cognitive Impairment
2010 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts & Figures
Environmental Threat to Healthy Aging
I welcome any insight into any of these 5 elements if you’d like to share your experience. I’m sure at some point I’ll be launching a Facebook Group or Membership Site where we can all collaborate and help each other find solutions and answers to our questions.
Alzheimer’s Disease and Cognitive Decline
In April of 2010, the U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services conducted a study on Alzheimer’s Disease and Cognitive Decline with the following objective:
Objectives: To assess whether previous research on purported risk or protective factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cognitive decline is of sufficient strength to warrant specific recommendations for behavioral, lifestyle, or pharmaceutical interventions/modifications targeted to these endpoints.
Alvaro Fernandez of Sharp Brains did a review of the study, click here for his review.
The following is taken from a section of the conclusion of the report. In order not to be taken out of context you may visit the links above to see the whole report and also an expert review. In my opinion, this report concurs with what many experts agree upon, lifestyle may decrease the risk of cognitive decline. Whenever possible I like to refer to scientific studies for validation. I believe we’re on the right track here at Max Your Memory.
High Decreased risk:
• Cognitive training*
Low Decreased risk:
• Vegetable intake
• Mediterranean diet
• Omega-3 fatty acids*
• Physical activity*
• Non-cognitive, non-physical leisure activities
Vitamin B-12 Deficiency
A couple of years ago I noticed that Lauren was a little off her game. Now, the short term memory thing is part of our every day life and we actually have fun with it but things were becoming a bit concerning for me. She was becoming erratic and began having issues with activities normally performed every day like setting the coffee for the morning or she would put the cream for her coffee back in the cabinet, not the refrigerator. A trip to the Doctor led us to getting a blood test which revealed that Lauren’s B-12 levels were very low. At first they wanted Lauren to have monthly B-12 shots but I researched further and found that many were having very good results with sublingual B-12 vitamins. Sure enough after the first month, B-12 levels went from 180 to 550…a very nice improvement. We’ve been using Sublingual B-12 ever since and have had no recurrences. Here are a couple of resources for vitamin B-12 deficiency:
Vitamin B-12 Deficiency Can Look Identical to Alzheimer’s Disease by Kerri Knox
Micronutrient Information Center – Vitamin B-12
Just a quick note, I prefer using sublingual vitamin B-12 with Methylcobalamin. As always…check w/ your Doctor!
Healthy Diet Search
Ok, I just did a Google search for “Healthy Diet” and the search resulted with a total of 229,001,100 websites. So, I guess pretty much everyone on the planet has an opinion on a particular diet. Who do you follow? I think the obvious answer is, you do what’s right for you. Personally I’ve boiled it down by asking myself a couple of questions when I eat… what is this and where did it come from? Now I’ve found out a couple of things from a nutritional perspective. The first is a quote from a research project by Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. The quote from the study, “Can Food Forestall Aging” says:
“several large trials testing individual antioxidant vitamins have had mixed results. “It may be that combinations of nutrients found in foods have greater protective effects than each nutrient taken alone,” says Cao, a chemist and medical doctor.” Read the rest of this entry »
