January 27, 2023

Daily Diary, Day 878: Another busy day. It started out with usual cleaning, but added scrubbing the sink, which was very tea-stained, and then on to an early walk at 8 AM. The walk was lovely, only in 50s, but sunny. Just enough of a nip in the air to make the tip of my nose cold (smile), on the other hand, by the end of the walk I was glad to unzip my coat.

Once home, it was time for Leeza’s play date with Rio the border collie, and she seemed to like the chilly air as well, did more zoomies (running big loops in the upper and lower yard) than usual. Then, I spent half an hour setting up some promotions for next month, and starting on this post before a scheduled phone call.

After that call, time to shower, start wash, have lunch, and a second phone call. After that, I sat with my husband and ordered groceries. Only then did I get to writing, and now I have gotten 638 words done, and I needed to stop and finish this post before dinner.

But here’s a cheerful list I got from an article from the Washington Post that I read over breakfast. It was about a study of nearly 30,000 older adults that identified six “habits” that appeared to be connected to lowering the risk of dementia and also slowed general memory decline.

I am going to quote from the article, listing the factors, and joyfully ticking off how I (and my husband) have all six habits. Turns out all you have to have is at least four of these habits to see a marked effect! Given my father’s long, losing battle with Alzheimer’s, I was particularly glad to read that these habits seem to moderate the genetic component of this disease.

The six modifiable lifestyle factors the researchers focused on included:

• Physical exercise: Doing at least 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week--Both of us do at least two or three times this amount of moderate activity.

• Diet: Eating appropriate daily amounts of at least seven of 12 food items (fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, dairy products, salt, oil, eggs, cereals, legumes, nuts and tea). We are vegetarians, so our protein comes from eggs and dairy (and in my case protein shakes) and my husband can eat fruits and legumes, when I can’t, but we both eat a lot of vegetables, whole wheat cereals, and nuts, and of course for me tea!!!

• Alcohol: Never drank or drank occasionally. Don’t drink

• Smoking: Never having smoked or being a former smoker. Never smoked!

• Cognitive activity: Exercising the brain at least twice a week (by reading and playing cards or mah-jongg, for example). You of course know I am busy exercising my brain with research and writing, and my husband is doing the same-with the government document preservation textbook he is writing.

• Social contact: Engaging with others at least twice a week (by attending community meetings or visiting friends or relatives, for example). Phone calls for me are a daily kind of social contact, for my husband it is more in cyberspace and the various people he meets and chats with on his three walks a day with our dog.

I’d love to hear from you all on whether those of you who are senior citizens like me who have at least four of these habits down pat! And for you youngsters it's never too early to start!

Here is one more picture from one of my walks this week.