Maintaining Brain Health for Life

In this adapted excerpt from What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age, by Ken Dychtwald, PhD, and Robert Morison (Wiley, 2020), we examine the supreme importance of brain health among older Americans.

Retirees’ greatest fear regarding living a long life is losing physical and cognitive abilities. Presented with a forced choice, 75% say that it’s more important to function well mentally than physically. Alzheimer’s has become the most feared condition of old age, more feared than cancer, stroke, heart disease, and infectious disease like coronavirus. What retirees really fear are the repercussions of dementia—losing independence, losing personal dignity, and becoming a burden on their families.

The World Health Organization estimates that 50 million people worldwide are living with dementia. The number with Alzheimer’s in the United States is expected to grow from 5.8 million in 2020 to 15 million in 2050. Over 10% of Americans over age 65, and one-third of those over 85, are living with Alzheimer’s. With so many people living into or beyond their late 80s, Alzheimer’s will become a challenge that most families—and nations—will face. Unless there’s a true breakthrough, it could become the mental, physical, social, and economic sinkhole of the twenty-first century.

Dale Bredesen, MD, author of The End of Alzheimer’s, is an optimistic voice while acknowledging the complexity of the challenge. He explains that a person with Alzheimer’s or related dementias may have 10 to 25 different factors contributing to their condition: “It’s not going to be a one-pill, silver bullet solution that ends Alzheimer’s. It’s got to be a much more comprehensive approach.” He believes that with continued scientific and clinical progress worldwide, rates of Alzheimer’s and other dementias will start to decline within the lifetime of the Boomer generation.

Others are also taking multidimensional approaches. Based on the work of psychiatrist and self-help guru Dr. Daniel Amen, Amen Clinics opened in 1991 and has nine locations nationwide. They look at the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of their patients’ lives to come up with a comprehensive approach to lifelong mental wellness.

Lisa Genova, PhD, is a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, speaker, and yogi (and author of the bestselling novel Still Alice). She told us, “People have become very comfortable with the idea that they can influence their health from the neck down. So people wear Fitbits, know their blood pressure, know their cholesterol level, and they are managing those numbers by what they eat and how they conduct their lifestyle. But most have the sense that there’s nothing they can do about their health from the neck up. And in truth, there’s a lot we can do.”

Exercise, sufficient sleep, stress reduction, and heart health all make a difference. “But it’s more than that,” Dr. Genova added. “Having a sense of belonging, staying cognitively active, and learning new things also help your brain develop new neural pathways. Every time you learn something new, you’re actually building a bigger, more elaborately connected, Alzheimer’s-resistant, healthier brain.”

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What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org (which benefits independent bookstores) or direct from your?favorite book store.