If you or someone close to you is aging, then they should take precautions against Alzheimer’s in advance. This advice goes double for those with a hereditary propensity towards Alzheimer’s. Although it’s true that Alzheimer’s cannot be completely prevented or cured, there is proof to suggest the disease can be delayed and then slowed down significantly. To do so, people must be prepared to take a multifaceted approach that includes the following.
Stimulating Interactions
Human interaction is important for more reasons than we realize and one of those reasons is mental stimulation. It’s a bad idea to live in social isolation at any age, but it can be particularly bad for elders. They need to be able to talk and engage in mentally stimulating conversations because it has a direct and significant impact on their cognitive and psychological wellbeing.
If the elder is living on their own and they do not get much opportunity to talk to people, that can actively accelerate the onset and progress of Alzheimer’s. It would be a much more fulfilling experience for them to live in an assisted living St. Louis County community. Good assisted living communities generally have medically approved memory care programs of their own.
Physical Games
There is a difference between physical and virtual games that are known to work against the detrimental effects of dementia, but both are important. For example, it’s a common and effective practice to blindfold someone and give them a vaguely familiar object in their hands. The blindfolded individual must determine what it is that they are holding, as fast as they can.
This simple game stimulates the brain in unfamiliar ways, as it must call upon memories in a way that it’s not used to. Another example would be to stimulate their memory by playing tunes to songs that they are familiar with. As long as they can recognize anything about the song, that’s progress.
Virtual Games
Virtual games that keep the aging brain active belong to one of two categories:
- Games that have been digitized: Chess, checkers, cards, jigsaw puzzles, sudoku, crossword puzzles, etc.
- Video games: 3D Platformers and racing games.
Classic table games like chess, checkers, and cards have a direct stimulating effect on the human brain, so it’s not really a surprise that older individuals who keep playing them tend to stay sharper. However, digitization has made these games much more playable because elders will never have trouble finding people to play chess with on the internet. There are thousands of new sudoku, and crossword puzzles being released every day for free, so that part is covered as well.
What about 3D platformers then? Well, a specially designed game for Alzheimer’s patients called Neuroracer was used to gauge whether modern 3D video games can be used to fight the disease. The results were downright amazing because the participants did not only show significant improvement; the observed and measured improvements remained unchanged for a period of roughly size months. It is estimated that playing 3D platformers and 3D racing games regularly can not only delay Alzheimer’s, but they can even delay its progress in patients who already have the disease.
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