Protecting against dementia

[Alphaville]

i think the best "capital" in life is learning to avoid attachments

not nihilistically bitter, but a bit like this:
https://www.learnreligions.com/why-do-b ... ent-449714

the essential problem of capitalism is that it reinforces a "me."

memememememememememememememememememememememememememeeeeeeee...

[chenda]

@Alphaville Money and religion are like my two favourite topics I agree in some ultimate sense it's all irrelevant. Kinda like in the 10th century in was wise to ensure rental agreements had special dispensation to forego non payment of rent in case of viking incursion (this was common) Now utterly irrelevant to the contract parties, but would have been highly important at the time. I don't wholely agree with non attachment though, as it can lead to too much indifference to the world. One reason why I shifted from Advaita Vedanta (the world and everyones sense of individuality is an illusion) to Vishishtadvaita (the world and your sense of individuality is real, albiet part of a qualified oneness)

[Alphaville]

@Alphaville Money and religion are like my two favourite topics I agree in some ultimate sense it's all irrelevant. Kinda like in the 10th century in was wise to ensure rental agreements had special dispensation to forego non payment of rent in case of viking incursion (this was common) Now utterly irrelevant to the contract parties, but would have been highly important at the time.

hahahahaa! i had no idea of that fact. hilarious.

and yes, i fail to see the use of money in old age. if bullfighting doesn't deliver the desired results maybe i'd like to end my days in a monastery. it's not like one could make "big plans"

I don't wholely agree with non attachment though, as it can lead to too much indifference to the world.

that hasnt been my experience with the nonattachers. i mean just look at the tibetans--more lovingkindness and compassion than anyone could shake a stick at. but i guess it could be in some cases.

One reason why I shifted from Advaita Vedanta (the world and everyones sense of individuality is an illusion) to Vishishtadvaita (the world and your sense of individuality is real, albiet part of a qualified oneness)

ah yes. that is something i can't know in my current state, hence i refrain from making that leap of faith. i am superagnostic...

[chenda]

that hasnt been my experience with the nonattachers....

Yes that's very true actually, I think for me is more of a personal preference that I like to believe the world is more than one long linear dream.

@analyticalengineer - Yes there seems to be so many stories like that.

Trust law though is fascinating and something I'd be interested in learning more about. I think the problem with trusts is that they can be expensive to run, especially discretionary trusts, so might only be viable for higher net worth estates. An annuity might be a cheaper option but of course the capital dies with you.

So healthy 70 year old Chenda might be happy with putting her stash in an interest in possession trust throwing off £1000 a month, knowing her niece will be the capital beneficiary when she dies. But then at 90 she needs £3000 a month nursing care and can't access the capital or withdraw more to fund her care...so that might be legally problematic. (You could structure a trust which would allow capital access under certain circumstances, but that would I think involve discretionary management and additional costs)

It would be interested to know what happens with very wealthy individuals and how they plan for their demise, as there would be no shortage of vultures looking to feast. I imagine in part you'd want to appoint a legal firm to act on your behalf a send packing door to door sales men and the like.

[Alphaville]

linear dream.

i dont get it. please explain?

[chenda]

i dont get it. please explain?

It's the idea in Advaita that there is ultimately no difference between the waking and dreaming state. Both are ultimately unreal; the only difference is that the waking state appears to form part of a continuing narrative...like watching an episode each evening of a tv series which references the previous episodes.... It's one of those arguments which initially sound absurd yet is impossible to rationally refute...

[Alphaville]

It's the idea in Advaita that there is ultimately no difference between the waking and dreaming state. Both are ultimately unreal; the only difference is that the waking state appears to form part of a continuing narrative...like watching an episode each evening of a tv series which references the previous episodes.... It's one of those arguments which initially sound absurd yet is impossible to rationally refute...

that went whoosh far very far over my head

but i get that now that you're talking about advaita, not buddhism.

the only thing that comes to mind is the australian aboriginal dreamtime. but that's neither here not there, sorry...

i'm not much of a theologian

[chenda]

@Alphaville I'm probably doing a poor job of explaining it, I only understand Advaita really at a basic level. Buddhism I've never really groked with...

Dreamtime...yes I've heard of that but no nothing about it...

[Bankai]

Overall, people with four to six healthy behaviours or two to three were almost 90% and almost 30% respectively less likely to develop dementia or mild cognitive impairment relative to those who were the least healthy, the BMJ reported.

Dr Susan Mitchell, head of policy at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This is a well-conducted study, which followed people over a long period of time, and adds to the substantial evidence that a healthy lifestyle can help to support memory and thinking skills as we age.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... year-study

[ertyu]

I love how "nuts and tea" is a food group

I go back and forth on tea and coffee. On the one hand, they both affect sleep (even green tea does, for instance if I haven't had caffeine in a while, a cup of green tea mid-morning is enough to disrupt by bedtime). On the other hand, both green tea and coffee have been shown to be protective for dementia.

FYI: Chinese food pagoda (apparently they do pagodas over pyramids there)



tl;dr: eat food, not too much, mostly plants

[IlliniDave]

I love how "nuts and tea" is a food group

I go back and forth on tea and coffee. On the one hand, they both affect sleep (even green tea does, for instance if I haven't had caffeine in a while, a cup of green tea mid-morning is enough to disrupt by bedtime). On the other hand, both green tea and coffee have been shown to be protective for dementia.

Coffee and (green) tea I think are worth their weight in gold for the polyphenols they contain which can play a role in mitochondrial health--allegedly both mitochondrial decoupling and mitogenesis. Both of those in turn are allegedly associated with reduction in risk of age- and metabolic-related diseases: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, many autoimmune conditions, liver disease, hypertension, and most relevantly, dementia. I drink one cup of strong coffee first thing every morning (~400-500 am) and have for the last 10 or so years (prior to that I drank coffee all day at work but that did cause me to have poor sleep). I've never been able to drink tea of any kind without getting heartburn so I take a green tea extract supplement (in the morning).

I didn't read the whole thread but based on some outside reading and podcast listening I've been doing lately (in part because "dementia" has become a fact in my life over the last few years) the tl;dr of what recent discoveries would suggest for minimizing age-associated cognitive impairment would be something like: eliminate processed foods, drastically curb sugar in your diet (that includes breads and starchy foods your digestive tract quickly breaks down into sugars), get the right fats in your diet, practice intermittent fasting, i.e., don't graze and limit your daily eating window to 6 hours or less to give your mitochondria and organs plenty of time to repair from the damage they incur processing foods, eat a wide variety of plants (while being wary of lectins in plants native to the new world), maintain an active lifestyle, and get at least 7 hours sleep per night.

The nice thing about it is, aside from dementia, those measures hold promise for giving you a good chance of staving off an array of conditions associated with aging: heart disease, fatty liver disease, diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, cancer, etc. It's starting to look like those diseases are all manifestations of the same root cause of your metabolism getting severely out of whack. Unfortunately, at least here in the US, medicine still too often resembles the sales staff for pharmaceutical companies and ignores the more holistic approach.

Anecdotally, I've been sneaking a little "good" nutrition into my dad's diet over the last month. A relative who saw him yesterday remarked that he seemed to be doing much better than a couple months ago: more alert, less confused, his sense of humor returning, etc. I'd thought I'd noticed similar but chalked it up to misplaced optimism and confirmation bias. FWIW.

[Ego]

It seems there are at least two types, (ac)cumulative and trauma related.

One of my good friends had another bike crash and very slight brain bleed. I saw him last week about three weeks post-crash. He asked me the same question three times. His wife is terrified because he wants to get back on the bike as soon as the doctor deems him physically able. I told her about zwift, which may satisfy his competitive nature.

I now ride one day a week on the road and avoid groups. I practice falling / rolling / tumbling so that head protection is second nature.

[IlliniDave]

It seems there are at least two types, (ac)cumulative and trauma related.

One of my good friends had another bike crash and very slight brain bleed. I saw him last week about three weeks post-crash. He asked me the same question three times. His wife is terrified because he wants to get back on the bike as soon as the doctor deems him physically able. I told her about zwift, which may satisfy his competitive nature.

I now ride one day a week on the road and avoid groups. I practice falling / rolling / tumbling so that head protection is second nature.

FWIW, I was recently listening to an MD whose specialty was brain-related issues (forget what he called his specialty). His take was that is is especially important for people with high susceptibility to head injury (some of his clients are current and former NFL guys, for example), that maintaining tip-top mitochondrial health is extra important because the recovery capacity for people with excellent heath in that regard is much better than for people whose mitochondria are stressed/damaged, including both those whose damage comes from "Western" metabolic lifestyle disease and from prior traumatic injury. That's just his clinical observation. No controlled, peer-reviewed studies to back it up or anything.

[Ego]

Interesting. Makes perfect sense and a bit of a conundrum.

A common problem for those who suffered traumatic brain injury is difficulty managing impulsivity and disinhibition, the very things needed to avoid unhealthy habits.

[IlliniDave]

Ego, yeah, I imagine it is much more difficult for people suffering significant outward symptoms and likely part of why he stresses taking preventive action. The way he described it a lot of his pro athlete clients haven't necessarily suffered past brain injury but as often come to him with the goal of minimizing future brain injury. The context of the discussion wasn't really about traumatic injuries, more focused on age-related cognitive decline, and the anecdotes about the athletes was just a bit of a rabbit trail--he was making the point that as far as nutritional regimens, he does the same with young peak-conditioned athletes as he does for say, an elderly Alzheimer's patient. Dunno if any of the context included injuries as severe as your friend's.

[white belt]

I’m surprised no one has mentioned supplementing with creatine to improve cognitive performance.

[Jean]

i noticed that a lot of elders have hobby up until a late age, and then, some body part nescessary for the hobby stop functionning properly, you lose your hobby, you don't do anything anymore, an brain starts to decay.
For this reason, i wanted to make introductory role playing game session for people in their sixties, because it's young enough to pick a new hobby, and it's a hobby you can keep even if many body part fail, thus helping your brain to decay later.

[ertyu]

i noticed that a lot of elders have hobby up until a late age, and then, some body part nescessary for the hobby stop functionning properly, you lose your hobby, you don't do anything anymore, an brain starts to decay.
For this reason, i wanted to make introductory role playing game session for people in their sixties, because it's young enough to pick a new hobby, and it's a hobby you can keep even if many body part fail, thus helping your brain to decay later.

this would be beneficial in multiple ways: creativity + socializing + going somewhere at a set time every week/having something to look forward to. excellent idea

[ertyu]

I’m surprised no one has mentioned supplementing with creatine to improve cognitive performance.

iirc from humerman, creatine has pro-cancer side effects; i believe he discussed it in relation to its use by guys bulking up

[white belt]

iirc from humerman, creatine has pro-cancer side effects; i believe he discussed it in relation to its use by guys bulking up

My understanding is that early research showed a possible correlation between Creatine and cancer but that has since been debunked. Also, it seems like Huberman recommends Creatine and takes it himself: https://twitter.com/hubermanlab/status/ ... 5089807361