Live Longer Better
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Many people imagine dementia is inevitable or incapable of being prevented but think differently. You can increase your Brainability and reduce your risk of dementia

The great news is that your brain can grow and develop throughout life. it is what scientists call 'plastic'

INCREASE YOUR BRAINABILITY, AND REDUCE YOUR RISK OF DEMENTIA 

Dementia and Alzheimer's disease, the commonest cause of dementia, are major health problems of great concern to both individuals and society. No cure for Alzheimer's disease has yet been discovered although drug companies have spent billions with this aim. However there is good news. dementia has decreased in prevalence in the past 20 years and there is scope for a further decrease in the next twenty years if society and individuals take action. increasing physical and cognitive or learning activity and increasing social and emotional activity by preventing isolation and depression 

THE MEANINGS OF THE TERMS BRAIN AND MIND 
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The brain is the organ inside your skull which carries out the functions of the mind. People are terribly excited about AI, artificial intelligence, but actually the human brain has been managing intelligence for thousands of years.
 
The brain is an organ like the liver or the kidneys and although it has a very rich blood supply it always looks white on the butchers slab, if it ever appears on the butchers slab in the United Kingdom (people in the UK seem squeamish about seeing brain in great lumps, unlike in Italy or other continental countries.  We do eat brain, but it has usually disappeared into sausages for cultural reasons.) Ask a butcher to look at a brain and you will see that it is white unlike liver, kidneys or muscle but the blood supply is rich and obviously just as important.  Interruption of the The interruption of the blood supply causes a stroke if a big artery is blocked and lots of mini-strokes due to damage to the small arteries. these can  cause vascular dementia, one of the two main causes of dementia, the other of curse being Alheimer's disease.
 
The mind is involved in thinking and feeling and it is conventional to divide the functions of the mind into two types – cognitive and emotional.  
 
  • The cognitive function of the mind relates to the activities that computers try to copy and support namely the activities of reasoning, decision making, learning and memory. Although loss of memory is often promoted as one of the key features of dementia it affects in everyone and it is damage to the parts of the brain that carry out the other cognitive functions that leads to the serious signs of dementia, for example difficulty with driving or managing household accounts.
  • The emotional function relates to feeling, feeling happy and sad for example.  

WHY KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE BRAIN AND MIND IS IMPORTANT
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It used to be thought that ageing of the brain was downhill all the way from birth with cells dying off daily.  We now know however that

  • new cells can develop, a process called neurogenesis, and
  • new connections can take place between existing cells allowing new skills to be learned and new functions to emerge, a process called neuroplasticity.
 
Furthermore we also appreciate now that many of the tests we used to assess brain function are unfairly biased towards the brains of young people because they focus on quick decision making.  Thus the effects of ageing have been over emphasised and the benefits of living longer, something we call experience, have been underestimated.  

Dementia and depression 

These are two most common problems, the former primarily a condition of the brain, the latter a condition of the mind but the two often occur together because depression is a major risk factor for depression 

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