24/11/2022
Daily Brain-Damaging Habits
1. Sleep deprivation
lack of sleep may be a cause of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. It's best to have regular sleeping hours. If you have trouble with sleep, avoid alcohol, caffeine, and electronics in the evening, and start a soothing bedtime ritual.
2. High Volume Headphones
With your earbuds at full volume, you can permanently damage your hearing in only 30 minutes. But it’s not just your ears: Hearing loss in older adults is linked to brain problems, such as Alzheimer’s and loss of brain tissue. This may be because your brain has to work so hard to understand what’s being said around you that it can’t store what you’ve heard into memory. So turn it down -- no louder than 60% of your device’s maximum volume -- and try not to listen for more than a couple of hours at a time.
3. Too Much Sugar & Junk Food
Tips regarding how to eat healthily are actually quite valuable for your body’s health, and for your brain too. A study published in the journal Neurology in 2012 examined 6000 people, who were on average 50 years old. 10 years later, the same participants were examined once again and the results showed that the ones who were overweight, had a 22% higher deterioration of their cognitive functions than their slimmer counterparts.
4. Loneliness
Being lonely doesn’t necessarily mean not having many friends. Sometimes even people who have many friends can be lonely. As with many things in life, here too, it’s the quality that matters. This being said, however, being alone can promote the feeling of loneliness, which causes stress and inflammatory processes in the brain. A study at the *Rush University Medical Center*
in Chicago conducted with the participation of over 100 people, all aged 80+, revealed that those who had the least social contacts were suffering from the most severe cognitive deterioration.
5. Lack of Exercise
The longer you go without regular exercise, the more likely you are to have dementia. You’re also more likely to get diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure -- all of which may be linked to Alzheimer’s. You don’t have to start running marathons -- a half-hour in the garden or a brisk walk around the neighborhood will work. The important thing is to do it at least 3 days a week.
6. Smoking
It can shrink your brain -- and that’s not a good thing. It makes your memory worse and makes you twice as likely to get dementia, including Alzheimer’s. It also causes heart disease, diabetes, str