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Fighting off Forgetfulness
After retirement, many people do not engage in activities that stretch their mental capacity at all - they lead a lifestyle of routine doing the same things week after week, month after month, year in and year out. If we want to keep our brain sharp, we have to keep it busy! We need to exercise our brains, just as we need to exercise our bodies.
There are many brain-building activities elderly people can consider. These include:
- Word games (crosswords, Scrabble, quizzes)
- Pick up a new hobby, where there are new things to learn all the time (bird watching, arts and crafts etc.)
- Attend speaker forums where you are introduced to new ideas and concepts and then discuss them.
- Join a discussion group
- Attend adult learning courses
- Become a member of a committee where decisions have to be made
- Read – fiction as well as non-fiction - and discuss the ideas.
- Keep up to date with technology – have lessons.
 Read Diagnosing Dementia
Diagnosing Dementia
When we talk about someone having “Alzheimer’s” we actually mean they have dementia. Dementia has very specific symptoms (it is not just the commonly held belief of “a demented person being really batty!”)
Simply put, Dementia has the following symptoms:
- Memory impairment (impaired ability to learn new information or to recall previously learned information).
- One (or more) of the following disturbances:
a) Aphasia (language disturbance)
b) Apraxia (impaired ability to carry out
motor activities despite intact motor
function)
c) Agnosia (failure to recognise or identify
objects despite intact sensory function)
D) Disturbance in executive functioning (i.e.
planning, organising, sequencing,
abstracting)
These symptoms start gradually and continue to get worse and worse.
(Refer to the full article, Diagnosing Dementia, on my website for detailed information, including causes and prevalence of this disease.)
Image by Rach Davies
What's next?
Watch out for my next newsletter where you will be E-Quipped to...Cope With The Challenge of Change.
Tip! Save these newsletters and accumulate the series on Putting the Logical Back into Psychological.
Regards
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