Heart Month

It’s heart month! Time to looks at the facts to help you improve the quality of your heart. Exercise is essential to a healthy heart. Regular exercise improves your circulation and helps your body use oxygen better. It also improves muscle tone, strength, balance and flexability. Exercise can be as simple as walking for 30 minutes every day. Save your heart, stay active.

Go Red! Heart Healthy Month to Quit Smoking

Go red!  February is red heart month.   Not only is it Valentine’s Day, but it’s a day to begin a healthy lifestyle.  One way to do this is to play close attention to things that impact your heart and your health.  Having healthy habits, like regular exercise will go a long way, verses taking part in unhealthy habits like smoking.   Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body and it causes many diseases and reduces one’s health overall.   Cigarettes causes more than 480,000 deaths each year, which is more than deaths caused by alcohol use and motor vehicle injuries, among others.   Smoking is estimated to increase the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke by 2 to 4 times.  Smoking also can cause cancer nearly any place in the body from your bladder to your stomach to your larynx and nearly in every other organ.   Smoking also ages every organ including your skin.  This is the month to focus on a healthy heart by adding healthy habits and stopping bad ones. Here’s to heart healthy focused month and year!

Save Your Life, Don’t Smoke

It is a known fact that smoking is not good for you. It will reduce the proper function of a person’s stamina, endurance, and overall lung function. Most people would say the most common disease by smoking is lung cancer. This is false, it’s heart disease. Which is worse than all forms of cancer combined. In 1965, a federal law was passed that cigarette packs must warn the people “Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health”. This being said, understand that smoking is the number one preventable caused death. The longer a person smokes, the greater the chance that person loses their life. The risk of heart attack drops 50% after 5 years of a smoker refraining from smoking. Within 15 years of not smoking, the person has nearly the same risk of heart disease as a non-smoker. The sooner you quit, the sooner you save your life.

Lack of Sleep; How it Affects You

Everyone can appreciate a good night sleep. There’s nothing better than waking up refreshed and ready to start your day with a smile. Lack of sleep will leave you drained and feeling terrible. Most people in today’s world do not get enough sleep. It is recommended for adults to get a minimum eight hours of sleep. Lack of sleep will affect your ability to learn and retain information; it can also affect judgment and mood. Long term side effects of sleep deprivation can lead to a much higher risk of health problems and injury. Avoiding these harmful effects is so easy and relaxing. Just sleep.

The Benefits of Fruit

There are numerous ways to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Fruit is a major factor of good health that strengthens the quality of life. Fruit contains antioxidants that help avoid harm to our bodies such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancers. Eating fruits that are high in fiber is a great way to reduce the chance of strokes, heart attacks and obesity. There are certain nutrients that our body craves because it doesn’t receive enough. Potassium is one; it fights high blood pressure, kidney stones and protects bone loss. Vitamin C is another which improves the growth of body tissues and strengthens teeth and gums. Folate (a folic acid) reduces the chance of birth defects and are a factor in creating red blood cells. Foods that are grown naturally on plants are called phytonutrients. Consuming these nutrients provide a pool of health benefits essentially enhancing life overall.

Safe Return Program

Tips to reduce wandering:

1. Place deadbolts either high or low on exterior doors.

2. Move around and exercise to reduce anxiety, agitation and restlessness.

3. Ensure all basic needs are met (toileting, nutrition, thirst).

4, Carry out daily activities, such as folding laundry or preparing dinner.

5. Reassure the person if he or she feels lost, abandoned or disoriented.

6. Control access to car keys (a person with dementia may not just wander by foot).

7. Avoid busy places that are confusing and can cause disorientation, such as shopping malls.

8. Do not leave someone with dementia unsupervised in new surroundings.

More than 60% of those with dementia will wander.

Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

Please join us for an evening of appetizers, cocktails, and prizes to celebrate the opening of our new office in Burlington. The ceremony will take place on Wednesday, September 25 from 5:30pm-7:00pm. Our new office can be located at 83 Cambridge Street, suite 3A in Burlington, MA.

Please RSVP by calling 885-226-8696

Also don’t forget that the Alzheimer’s Disease Support Group meeting, held the first Thursday of every month. The next meeting will be held on October 3, from 1-2:30 pm at the Lexington Senior Center, located at 1475 Massachusetts Ave, Lexington, Ma.

Keeping our mind sharp, with games!

Just like we need to exercise to keep our muscles strong, our brain needs exercise to stay in shape. Thankfully you don’t have to go to your local gym for these workouts. Along with a healthy diet, “brain games” are a great way to keep you brain strong and ward off some of the risks that can lead to Alzheimer’s. Brain exercises or “brain games” can be broken down into 4 categories.

The first category being, memory & recall. Playing card games such as solitare, bridge, and even blackjack, can help with stimulate memory. Chess is another great game that helps boost short-term memory. Chess requires the player to constantly devise new strategies, this helps stimulate the players short term memory. Even a simple crossword puzzle or word jumbles are a great way to boost your ability to memorize and recall.

The second category is, attention & focus. Reading is a great way to relax at the end of the day, but it also helps your brain stay attentive and focused. If reading isn’t your thing you can also play memory games. These type of games force the brain to pay close attention to details. Not only do memory games help with attention span, but also with memory because these two are strognly linked.

The third categoty is cognition and problem solving. Playing games that involve numbers help the brain with problem solving.

Finally, the fourth category is, speed & reaction time. Surprisingly a great way to improve brain speed and reaction time is by playing video games. These games require the brain to be alert and ready for what may come next.

Keeping a sharp mind is a great step in preventing Alzheimers. You can use these fun games to exercise your mind or you can come up with your own, just like your muscles our brain stays strong the more we work it out.

For more information on this subject take a look at this article by Michael A. Smith, MD

http://blog.lef.org/search?q=train+your+brain+for+better+memory+and+cognition&submit=Go