Main description:

Worried about memory loss and dementia risk? This new book will show you easy-to-follow steps to keep your brain healthy.

Emily Clionsky, MD, and Mitchell Clionsky, PhD, are a physician and neuropsychologist couple who have cared for their own parents with dementia, created a test used by doctors to measure cognitive function, and treated more than 25,000 patients with cognitive impairment. In Dementia Prevention, they combine the most current scientific findings about Alzheimer's disease and other dementias with their experience to present a practical guide that empowers you to improve your brain's future.

This book skips the fads, the unsupported claims of advertised products, and fringe theories. Instead, the authors guide you through a science-based tour of dementia, including how your brain works and how its function is affected by everything from blood circulation and blood pressure to sugar levels, medications, vision, and hearing. You will learn how your activity level, weight, habits, mental outlook, and social engagement may affect your likelihood of developing dementia.

Dementia Prevention provides a dementia risk checklist to better understand your personal risk profile to help you on your journey. The authors' training and experience as behavioral scientists will help you set better goals, identify roadblocks to success, and overcome these obstacles. Forgetfulness and confusion are not an inevitable part of growing older-you can make changes to keep your brain working well into your 70s and beyond. From how you breathe while you sleep to what you do socially and physically every day, Dementia Prevention will give you practical-and sometimes surprising-methods for you to protect your brain.

Contents:

Introduction: An Ounce of Prevention
Section 1: Nature and Origin of Dementia
1. What is Dementia?
2. Normal Cognitive Aging
Section 2: Dementia Risk Model
3. Genetics and Early Life Factors
4. Midlife Medical Conditions Impacting Dementia Risk
5. Lifestyle Factors of Smoking, Diet and Exercise
6. Breathing, Sleeping, Breathing While Sleeping
7. Metabolic and Vitamin Deficiencies
8. Alcohol, Drugs, and Medications
9. Sensory and Emotional Factors That Amplify Dementia Risk
10. Putting It All Together in an Interactive Dementia Risk Model
Section 3: Where Do You Stand and What You Can Do About It
11. Take the Test: Your Dementia Prevention Checklist
12. Everybody Wants to Feel Better, But Nobody Wants to Change
13. Use Your Brain to Save Your Brain
14. Applying the Change Formula to Your Life
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index