Thursday, March 03, 2005

More Proof - Use It, Or Lose It! Healthy Lifestyle Could Reduce Alzheimer's Risk Again, and again, and again, research proves that the best way to maintain health, especially mental health, well into our later years, is to eat healthy, exercise healthy, and work our brains regularly. Unfortunately, this does not describe the average American. The average American, especially an elder American, lives on a diet of "white trash" processed foods - high in useless carbohydrates, low in protein and essential fats, and stripped of vitamins and minerals in the processing. Many Americans consider a 100 yard waddle from the SUV to the grocery store to stock up on colas and donuts to be major exercise - so exhausting in fact that some need to collapse their bulk into the self-powered shopping carts so conveniently placed at the store entrance. Have you ever noticed that there is usually a display of sweet goodies - cinnamon rolls or the like - very close to those electric shopping carts? Even those Americans who indulge in the game of golf, ostensibly for the fresh air and exercise, now travel from place to place on the golf course in motorized carts - how much exercise is that? For many Americans, young and old alike, mental stimulation and exercise consists of channel surfing. Reality TV, sitcoms, and made-for-TV movies have replaced board games, cards, crosswords, hobbies, and reading. It is far easier to put the mind and body into "neutral" and let Corporate America do the thinking - telling us what to eat, drink, think, do, and even what to tell our doctors to give us for drugs! Here is an alternative: A healthier diet, lower in useless refined sugars and flour and higher in protein and essential fats, supplemented with optimal (not "minimum daily requirements!) doses of vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, phytonutrients, flavonoids, and Essential Fatty Acids each and every day. Less cola, more pure water. Simple daily exercise to keep the body in shape - walk instead of drive, tend your garden yourself instead of having "the service" do it, take fido and your sweetheart for a stroll in the park - you'll all benefit. Turn off the "boob-tube" and get your news from a newspaper, your sitcom from a funny book, your "reality" from a card game and good discussion about current events with friends. Read the latest "Harry Potter" adventure story to your children or grandchildren - they might be delighted to learn that there is entertainment to be had elsewhere than the TV! Take up a hobby - collect stamps or butterflies or kewpie dolls, build model trains or ships or birdhouses, sew quilts or knit baby bonnets or create wedding gowns, try your hand at painting or photography or pottery - anything that requires you to think, to exercise the millions of neurons that make up your brain. Take a pair of binoculars and go for a hike - watch whales or birds or other wildlife. We at the Wellness Club have had members and patients who have done all of these very things, and who have gone from being enfeebled, chronically ill oldsters to being vital, active, healthy seniors, many of them capable of running circles around others who are decades younger but who have not yet learned these "secrets" to good health. We have many other members who have always done these things and are 80 and 90 and more years "young". There is no excuse for "fading away" into senescence, or "loosing the marbles" to Alzheimer's or senile dementia. Please visit our website at www.DrMyattsWellnessClub.com to learn more about things like Alzheimer's, Senility, Memory Loss, High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, Heart Health, and a whole host of other important subjects. The information is free, and who knows - you might learn something new! See you on the hiking trails... Cheers, Nurse Mark Wellness Club website: www.DrMyattsWellnessClub.com 11:49:11 AM

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