Thanks Butch from Mum and Dad Care for alerting me to this article Exercise May Protect Against Brain Shrinkage written by Anahad O’Connor for The New York Times. It discusses yet another research study about exercise helping our bodies and brains. Almost every chronic disease has studies linked to it proving exercise can and will help reduce the symptoms of, or in some instances even help to cure a disease. For example, with diet and exercise, we can change high cholesterol back to a healthy range, thereby eradicating the need for medication to control it. And yet, most people don’t do this, and instead continue with their lifestyle, and end up needing medication. A few years ago I had high cholesterol, and am a classic example of this, and although it was not high enough to require medicating, I was doing very little to change my lifestyle.  Now that I have properly engaged in the Fight Dementia campaign for my own life, my cholesterol is likely to have come down to a normal range. I’m going to get it checked soon to see if this is the case!

What I’m curious about though is why I didn’t engage in a healthier lifestyle before the diagnosis of dementia. I’ve engaged in it whenever I’ve been seriously sick, then gone back to my old ways. It’s not that I’ve been overly unhealthy, or ever been morbidly obese, but the habit of eating unhealthy food more than I should, and of not exercising enough I always put down to being a product of not having enough time. It was probably more because I didn’t have the required motivation, nor had the wisdom to accept the long term benefits of being more proactive with my health. Maintaining a healthy weight is easy if you focus on a healthy lifestyle, exercise a few times per week, and simply cut out processed sugar and saturated fats, and reduce your intake of added salt from your food intake.

If it is this simple, why doesn’t everyone do it?? Of course, it is not this simple, and the complexity of humans gets in the way; unhealthy food was/is almost used to placate children when they are sick. Take your child to the doctor for an injection, and most medical centres give out a jelly bean or other sweet to help them ‘get over it’. Visit a friend in hospital, and many of us take a box of chocolates as a gift. Many grow up using chocolate and other unhealthy food as ‘comfort food’. I was unusual in that I didn’t like chocolate or many types of lollies when I was a kit, but I did love desserts and cakes!  I have also read some research that indicates people who grew up in poor families, who didn’t always have enough food, overeat sometimes to the point of gorging when they grow up and can afford to eat well.

Such a complex topic, and for those who have trouble being slim, or are happily over the healthy weight range, all I have to say is weight is only a number. Anyone who has experience severe weight loss through the effects of cancer or cancer treatment would be very happy to be even a little bit overweight. Exercise and eat well, and work on your well-being is my message today, and live your life your own way. Just be a little careful or thoughtful about the impact some of the things you do might have on you later on. As the poster below says, you can’t change what has already happened in your life, but you can impact your future outcomes. Maybe you will need to analyse some parts of what has happened, or at least why and if you need to change your own behaviour and thinking, but moving on from allowing things in our past to hold you back is worth it.