Running: A Fever

Welcome to the 17th and final episode in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable in some cases. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. This is the longest series I've ever done on the show and I hope you've been pleased with the format. I have certainly learned a lot about dementia. How devastating it can be to victims and families, how difficult it is for doctors to diagnose and treat. There is a sense of hopelessness about this disease, but there is hope, as I think I've shown in this series. Well this is the final episode in the series, and the last in the episodes about prevention. Sleep seems like the easiest form of prevention there is. But lack of sleep can have a serious impact on mental health. And getting sleep can be harder for people at risk for dementia if they suffer from chronic illness and have poor lifestyle habits. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.

Welcome to the 16th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable in some cases. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. As promised, this series has focused on prevention of dementia as much as anything else. We want to be informed about the disease, but more than that we want to prevent it. So I'm happy to be able to offer some information on how we can prevent dementia in the course of our journey of learning here. When you think about mental health, physical exercise might not be the first things that comes to mind. But the brain is a physical organ, and it's health depends on a foundation of good overall health. But there are some specific benefits of exercise that apply to dementia and its delay, mitigation, and even revention. Believe it or not, exercise can cause new synapses to form in the brain. According to an article on the Harvard University website, sustained aer

Welcome to the 15th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable in some cases. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. As promised, this series has focused on prevention of dementia as much as anything else. We want to be informed about the disease, but more than that we want to prevent it. Every time I hear that cry of "increasing awareness", as good-intentioned as it may be, it's not really an action-oriented sentiment. So I'm happy to be able to offer some information on how we can prevent dementia in the course of our journey of learning here. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/239  

Welcome to the 14th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable in some cases. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. We've discussed diet quite a bit on the podcast, and usually, it has more to do with maintaining a healthy body fat percentage than anything else. But did you know that diet is also important for mental health? In the last episode, I brought up a fact that was new to me, that obesity is related to brain function, particularly memory. So in what other ways can what we eat impact how healthy our brains are? Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/237  

Welcome to the 13th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. This episode is about improving your memory. When it comes to brain function, there's nothing more important than memory. Memory loss is a symptom of dementia and an effect of the disease. And while improving it may not prevent dementia, it certainly gives you more to work with, so you can have a fighting chance at reducing the overall effects. So here are some tips that can help us sharpen this valuable tool. Read the full post at HTTP://RunningAFEVER.com/236  

Welcome to the 12th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. Prevention is really what this series is all about. Nobody wants to know a bunch of stuff about a disease for which there is no hope. And there are a lot of people saying that, and I want to contradict them as much as I can here. So here is another episode in which I'll talk about concrete steps you can take to prevent dementia. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/235  

Welcome to the 11th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. For the first few chapters of the series, we talked about dementia itself, the different types, symptoms, and a little about prevention. We have switched to some more fundamental concepts about the brain. In the last episode, we talked about how memory works. Today we'll focus specifically on how aging affects the brain. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/234

Welcome to the 10th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. Thus far in the series we have talked about dementia itself, the different types, symptoms, and a little about prevention. Now I want to get into some more fundamental concepts about the brain itself. So for the next two episodes we'll talk about this amazing organ, and today we'll focus specifically on memory, which is affected deeply by dementia. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/233  

Welcome to the 9th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. By now, if you've been with me, you know what dementia is, and you know some of the different types. Today we're going to talk about preventing dementia, which is the whole point, right? As you might expect, this is where my main interest lies in this series. I mean, you need to know something about the enemy before you set about fighting him, but the fight is the thing, and like Sun Tsu said in the art of war, "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." So that's what we're going to do. We're going to defeat dementia before we have to fight it. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/232  

Welcome to the 8th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. In part 3 I went through the many types of dementia, and we're going to have separate episodes on the most common of these. This is the 5th and final of that series-within-a-series, and it's about Mixed Dementia. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/231 Get more Running:AFEVER articles on Medium: http://RunningAFEVER.com/Medium  

Welcome to the 7th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. In part 3 I went through the many types of dementia, and we're going to have separate episodes on the most common of these. This is the fourth of that series-within-a-series, and it's about Lewy Body Dementia (LBD). Read the full article on Medium https://medium.com/@michaeldavismedia/lewy-body-dementia-affects-over-one-million-americans-over-50-82a334d13c86

I guess I have a musical mind, I always get music in my head when something comes up in conversation or otherwise. I was thinking of a couple famous 80's songs, but did you know there are over 1000 songs with the title "Rumors"? Seems like a popular topic, and almost always very problematic. It implies something less reliable than information, or news, or data, or even story. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/238  

Welcome to the 6th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. In part 3 I went through the many types of dementia, and we're going to have separate episodes on the most common of these. This is the third of that series-within-a-series. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/229  

Welcome to the 5th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. In part 3 I went through the many types of dementia, and we're going to have separate episodes on the most common of these. This is the second of that series-within-a-series. Read the full post: https://medium.com/running-a-fever/vascular-dementia-is-the-most-preventable-form-of-dementia-2bb4f64bd328

I'm doing a whole series on dementia, and this is part 4. In part 3 I went through the many types of dementia, and we're going to have separate episodes on the most common of these. This is the first of that series-within-a-series. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/227  

Welcome to the 3rd in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I've set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/226

There is a group of brain disorders in which the patient experiences a loss of cognitive function. The name used for this group is "Dementia". So it's not one particular ailment. But a group of them that have certain things in common. The cause of these disorders is thought to be the deterioration of brain cells. This is a natural process that occurs throughout our lives, but in people with dementia the loss of these nerve cells (neurons) is far greater. A normal adult brain has about 100 billion neurons. Also some sources indicated that at least one type of dementia shows no significant loss of neurons, indicating that other factors are at play. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/225  

I'm sorry to interrupt our fascinating study of dementia, but this new article about COVID-19 is somewhat related and very timely, so I thought I should bring it to your attention. Last week a report was released of a study conducted by Dr. Adam Hampshire of Imperial College London. This has been widely reported, I have some links in the show notes at http://RunningAFEVER.com/245.  The results are new, so they have not been peer-reviewed. 84,000 people who had recovered from COVID-19 were studied and found to perform worse on cognitive performance tests than demographics would normally predict. The difference was found to be equivalent to a 10-year decline or an 8.5-point difference in IQ. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/245  

This episode is the beginning of a major series. I have planned 17 episodes in the series, so this will take us a few weeks into 2021. The subject is dementia. I think it's important. It affects 50 million people worldwide. But this wouldn't necessarily convince me to spend so much time on this disease. The fact is, some pretty reliable sources of medical information say that dementia is a preventable disease. And since we want to be healthy as long as possible here on Running: A FEVER, we definitely want to do whatever we can to prevent dementia. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/224  

An annual physical is essential to optimal health management. If you are fortunate enough to not have any medical problems throughout the year, or any chronic disorders that need to be managed, it at least gives you one meeting with your doctor, in which you can ask any of those nagging questions you have. He might also have some good ones for you. This time my doc asked me if I had any skin rashes. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/243