One Way Not to Develop Dementia or Alzheimers.

This is why I removed some of my photos in my articles. https://medium.com/illumination/people-are-being-sued-for-using-creative-commons-images-adc5c8ba1491

Dementia.

Alzheimer's.

Here is one way, in my own opinion, how to age without developing these terrible conditions.

I live in a senior residence and in my building, there are quite a few people here with Dementia. I write this article because of my encounter with a Dementia lady, today.

She asked me how I was doing. I said “fine” and then I began to make a metaphor about something. Partway through my analogy, she interrupted with a brisk, curt, “YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!”

I was mildly taken aback! Then I realized where she was coming from. She gave orders all of her life as a charge nurse. For her, everything was in black and white and precise doses and routines.

She is telling me that *she* does not know what I am talking about! In addition, she has in her own mind, now fixed in Titanium steel, what is right and what is wrong and that is that; end of line! She cannot now think, now, in metaphors. Her dementia only permits simple, literal, ideas.

I then Realized something! I suspect that she never thought of imaginative metaphors and analogies throughout her entire life. Every brain nerve junction might have only developed one or two synapses, one or two nerve junctions. Thus if that one were to get dementia-corrupted, that link is now then gone.

I then recalled the “nun study”. Researchers found a treasure trove of information to research dementia. Nuns, when they enter a convent at an early age, have to write a two-page letter telling the admissions people “why do I want to become a nun”. This letter is then kept forever on file.

The researchers went to several nursing homes, homes that the Catholic Church operated for retired elderly nuns. They broke down the residents of study by if they did, or did not, have dementia; two groups.

Then they went to read the letters.

They found an obvious difference between the letter writers who did not have dementia and the letter writers who did. The differences were even clear if the ladies were only late teens in age!

The non-dementia elderly nuns wrote letters full of metaphors, digressions, and analogies.

The dementia nuns wrote letters that were “plain”. “Length, breadth, and height”, only. There was no imagination. There was nothing but facts and data in these letters.

So.

I think, then, if this study and my observations are real, then many of the dementia people in my residence never had much of imagination when young.

Imagine someone driving to a place high in the mountains where there is only one road to get there. He drives halfway up the valley and then he sees that a landslide has utterly closed the road. Oops! There is no plan B. He has to turn around and go back as this road is the only road to his there.

On the other hand, someone driving across a populated farm area to arrive at a destination: finding that his road has a bridge that collapsed, he can then go look at his roadmap, and yes there are ten other roads that he can take to get there.

My suggestion, then, is to begin to develop a richer sense of Imagination. Learn to use metaphors in your thinking and speech.

Read novels, especially novels of science fiction and fantasy. Daydream. Think about Possibilities, for every problem. Develop “Defensive Living” wherein anything that you plan to do or actually do, to have a Plan B ready in case plan A were to fail.

Here is that excellent Idea; develop a brain richer in dendrite nerve connections, the more nerves that are interconnected, the more chances are that if old age dementia takes out one nerve connection, there will be other nerves to take up the slack.