Did your elder with Alzheimer's/dementia get much exercise during his/her lifetime?
Stay with me, please, but first read this little blurb...
The Alzheimer's Association has five recommendations to avoid dementia/ALHZ and they are: "Exercise: there's more evidence that regular exercise will prevent dementia than for any other measure we might take. Walking regularly is an excellent way of keeping active."; Eat Mediterranean food; Manage other health conditions: other conditions like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure; Avoid smoking; Challenge your brain with new things is the key, for example taking up a new hobby, learning a language or even walking an unfamiliar route.
OK, now to my question...
My aunt and mother were the first and only ones in the family to develop dementia and I can't help but notice that they NEVER got exercise during their lifetimes. If I'm out of his sight for 5 minutes he calls for me to see where I am. Both acted, in fact, as if getting exercise were a noxious, uncool thing to do. They NEVER engaged in any kind of sports or gymnastics, tennis, skiing, swimming, jogging, walking--nada, nichts, rein, niente, fahgedaboudit.
Forgive me for saying this but it is true: my mom's whole goal in life, it seemed, was to do nothing. She DID things, of course, like housework, cooking, etc but she had a powerful sense that she should really be living a life of absolute leisure. A good day for her was a morning of lying in the sun for hours and then watching TV all the rest of the day. Her hobby was bridge.
As some of you know, she now has no short term memory at all though she is otherwise rational. So, I am wondering, what was it like for the elders in your care? Did they get much exercise? Or were they like my mother and aunt???
Naturally, I am asking because, unlike my mother, I have had a very active life with, at various times, tennis, skiing, swimming, ping-pong, twenty years riding horses, and now lots of walking. I hope we can determine that this really helps!!!!
For myself, I was a gym rat for many years, kept my weight normal, would go hiking a lot, didn't smoke or drink, but I still got breast cancer even with no family markers... go figure. My doctor really believed stress had a lot to do with it as it was a year after I started to have to oversee my parents care.
My parents use to walk 2 miles a day up into their late 80's and early 90's, and Dad got a heart attack while doing volunteer work at the local hospital, talk about being in the right place at the right time. My parents were average weight, didn't over eat, Dad had his small glass of red wine at dinner time. No family markings for heart issues.... again, go figure.
For my Mom, it was head trauma from several falls within weeks of each other that caused her to get accelerated dementia, even though she was 98 [since passed on] and was still pretty sharp until that fall. Dad is 94 and has some memory issues which I contribute to aging as I found I can hold a better conversation with him on the telephone then in person.
What the medical community needs to investigate are chemicals placed in our foods. Like growth hormones in livestock that make them mature faster so the farmers can get the livestock to market quicker. Anyone notice that 12 year old children now look like 18 year olds? What are those growth hormones going to do later in life?
My mother had no choice but to be active raising 7 kids. She never "exercised" but in her old age she walked a lot. She has dementia. (Also not ALZ)
We absolutely Do Not Know why some people get dementia and others don't. Advice to stay active and eat well and maintain social contacts, etc. does no harm but it is pretty obvious from looking at people we know it isn't the magic bullet to prevent dementia!
I have put on 20 lbs over the past couple of years and wondered what the hey??? Where did this come from? I know I haven't been eating more and I am not one to nibble throughout the day. My gym rat days had been over about 6 years ago, didn't have any free time anymore :( Therefore, the combination of lack of exercise and those blood pressure pills that tired me out big time, probably are contributing to my weight gain.
The medical community (and I'm not bashing them...I'm a nurse) are grasping at straws to come up with an answer. Everyone wants to know "what" causes it, so now everything is suspect.
I remember mother not wanting to use aluminum based deodorant for the same reason.
My mother developed Alzheimer's dementia around 89 years old (when she showed symptoms). She never did any exercise. Her father (my grandpa) developed dementia around the same age and he literally walked miles every day. His wife (my grandma) died at 89 without dementia but never exercised. My mother's sister (my aunt) is 18 months younger than she (now 91) and has no signs of dementia, neither does my uncle at 86. Why my mom and not her siblings, who knows?
It seems like it's a matter of chance or like the "dementia demon" is playing spin the bottle with this disease and you and you and you are "it". We need more research into this awful infirmity because we really don't know much about it.
At this point, I don't think we have any answers.
We need to pour lots of money into solid reaseach so our children (and maybe us too) can be free of this brain-robbing disease.
My father was an electronics engineer. He worked a lot, but it wasn't a lot of exercise. He was diagnosed with very high blood pressure when he was in his 50s. It was downhill after that. He was able to keep functioning some, but had terrible time with his blood vessels and circulation. His dementia was just part of that.
As I said, my physically active husband outlived his family life expectancy by a couple of decades. Which means he was the only one in the family to live long enough to develop dementia.