What you can do to slow dementia down

ALMOST half a million Australians live with dementia - and while there's currently no cure, there are some things you can do to help. 

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ALMOST half a million Australians live with dementia - and while there's currently no cure, there are some things you can do to help.

More than 436,000 Australians currently live with dementia. Another 1800 people are diagnosed with it each week, which is a more than 250 people per day.

Without a medical breakthrough, Dementia Australia warns the number of people living with dementia in our country will rise to more than 1.07 million by 2058.

Treating it currently costs us more than $15 billion each year. However, according to Sydney-based geriatrician, Associate Professor Nalin Singh, one simple thing can make the world of difference to staving off dementia and slowing its onset.

Weightlifting.

Yes, you read that correctly. Assoc Prof Singh, who runs the Centre for Strong Medicine on Sydney’s north shore, says exercise is often the first thing he recommends to patients with early onset dementia.

“It’s essential to optimise your health,” he tells News Corp. “Exercise is very important, and things like weightlifting or aerobic exercise can slow the onset of dementia.”

He says regular exercise can actually increase the size of different parts of the brain, including the hippocampus, which is the part where memories are stored.

“When you test for various cognitive functions like memory, or executive functions like planning, exercise seems to improve your testing of those things if you’ve got early dementia. We know that if you do six months of weightlifting, even 18 months later, the benefits are still there.”

Dementia isn’t one disease. Rather, it’s a collection of symptoms caused by disorders affecting the brain. It affects things like thinking and behaviour as the brain slowly deteriorates over time. According to Dementia Australia, it’s most common in people over the age of 65, but can also present in people in their 40s and 50s.

Studies linking exercise and a lowered risk of dementia are still in early stages, but the government is investing in more research. In 2014, Assoc Prof Singh was involved in a project called the Study of Mental and Resistance Training (SMART) at the University of Sydney. It split a random sample of people into four groups who did different combinations of strength training and solving computerised puzzles.

“People who did puzzles did not get a significant improvement in their memory, whereas those who did weightlifting did,” he says.

“Lots of people do sudokus and crosswords and think that will help, but the evidence isn’t there just yet. There is evidence that if you learn a new musical instrument or a new language that may help. It seems like the stimulus has got to be something novel and different to what you’ve used your brain for before. You need to challenge it.”

The trouble, he says, is that too many people do all of their learning early in life before they enter the workforce. Once we reach our 40s and 50s, we’re at the peak of our working lives, and we tend to stop learning. According to Assoc Prof Singh, the key is to foster a habit of learning throughout your life.

Of course, it’s also important not to drink to excess and to get things like diabetes under control.

Besides strengthening cognitive function, exercise has many other benefits as we age. For one thing, it decreases the vascular risk factors that can lead to heart attacks and strokes that can damage the brain.

For another, it can help people stay functional, which is important as it’s common for people living with dementia to experience things like loss of balance and increased frailty.

Good nutrition also plays a key part in slowing the onset of dementia symptoms.

Joel Feren is The Nutrition Guy, an accredited practising dietitian from Melbourne. He tells News Corp certain dietary guidelines may actually help to “cheat” dementia.

In 2014, a US-based study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging that found substantial evidence to suggest a combination of healthy diet and exercise may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, which is one of the conditions that comes under the umbrella of “dementia”.

Among the recommendations were minimising intake of saturated fats; replacing meats and dairy products with vegetables, legumes, fruits and whole grains; and consuming Vitamins E and B12.

“It’s about keeping the brain healthy,” he says. “Those things are they’re high in antioxidants, which decreases inflammation in the body, and a wonderful source of nutrients. As a general rule, whatever is good for your body is good for your brain.”

As symptoms of dementia progress, common side-effects are malnutrition and weight loss, because people have less drive to eat and may have difficulty chewing or recognising things like spoons. Poor appetite can then contribute to things like muscle wastage and a poor immune system.

“The two main things are energy, so calories, and protein,” he says. “With someone not eating well, we want as much bang for your buck as possible … an extra dollop of butter or some oil can really help. It’s high-energy, high-protein food. I’m constantly prescribing full-cream milk in aged care homes.”

There is currently no cure for dementia. More research is being done all the time, but in the meantime, it seems the best chance of slowing the onset is frequent exercise and a healthy diet.