The wee hours.

[Chuck H]

Other Causes, just guessing here, Smoking, Drugs, Alcohol, Lead Fumes, Paint fumes, etc.
T

I need to do A LOT of mental exercises then.

[km6xz]

I have been through two slow progressions of elderly mental decline with relatives or relative of mine or my partner and it has to be more impacting on the families than the patient.
There has been some long term studies relating head trauma with decades later dementia and warnings are starting to be voiced that even minor head injuries while teens have a strong correlation with later mental impairment, while those suffered later are less strongly associated. HS football, just might be one of the most dangerous sports for later life and even one concussion is reason for great caution.
Humans are just not suited for long life, so reaching old age with everything functioning is pretty rare. Even reaching age of mating has historically, been a remarkable achievement. The odds of any of us being alive today or being born at all is amazing when you consider that there has to be an extremely rare combination of an unbroken chain of thousands of generations of our ancestors back to a common ancestor we all share. Every one of those ancestors in each of our lineage was beating the odds by living long enough to pass on genes to people who did the same with no break in that trait. Most family branches dead-end after a few generations with no surviving chain of genes being propagated. Natural Selection is mostly concerned about amplifying traits that increase survivability of a genetic line, if not the individual, so those traits that effect only those older than mating age are not going to drift towards more survivability of old age.

[DrGonz78]

What I can tell you about my grandpa's dementia... He was getting nearer the age for retiring from his job, and his plan was to travel and see the world some more after retiring. He was a bad drinker and sat watching TV a lot. He had a really bad back and went to have spine surgery around 1996 at age 61. Now there is a thought in my mind that he could have drank a bit the night before surgery or either way the anesthesia had a profound effect. It sped up his now very noticeable memory loss. He started to forget security clearance type codes at his work and they granted him his full pension, settling him into an earlier retirement. I think drinking is a big factor here and sitting around drinking watching TV every night was not a help either. The anesthesia at his age ultimately triggered the dementia to rapidly erode away his memory. In a matter of about a year or so he was more lost and you could see it in his facial expressions. In 4 years we were all completely lost from his memory and he did not know what was going on at all. He always sang great songs and many of those older memories took many more years to fail him. By the time of 2012, the year he died, I could barely get him out of the car when we went to the doctor together. He was starting to forget how to use his body and I knew he was gonna pass very soon. A little over a month after that last doctor's appointment he was gone, at the age of 77. Unfortunately, his retirement plans were never fulfilled. Which all I have to say is do the things you want to do now while you have your health. Don't plan so far into the future or say I will go someday, do it now.

[Enzo]

Corrrelation is not causality. Old people, do they have their brains turn to mush by watching TV all day? Or do they watch TV all day because their brains are turning to mush?

Lack of mental exercise may not cause alzheimers, but that is a different thing from mental exercise helping to slow its progress.

About the time I bought a new Rolling Stones record, by arthritis got a lot worse. What is it about their music that causes....? How many times have you repaired an amp, and told the customer he had a bad plate resistor in the preamp, and he then wants to know WHY it failed. Was it from using his fuzz pedal? Maybe it was from playing too loud? They always want a this caused that. And there isn't one. Nope, nothing anyone DID pal, just a part failed. Correlations are appealing, but we can easily read way too much into them.

[km6xz]

The time to travel is early, fewer limitations, more open mind and more that needs be learned. I tell parents if they want happy well adjusted children, do not send them to college after high school. They will waste several years by not being motivated or not having a realistic view of what any of the subjects lead to. Instead of wasting $100,000 on school, give them $2000-3000 and a backpack and passport. Tell them to not come back for at least a year or two. Being out in the world, seeing, experiencing things not as a tourist, changes them, somewhere along the trek something will spark an interest that is not just a casual interest. When they do come back, they will likely have a desire for a subject they never would have picked, will be more motivated due to that acquired passion and make better use of the study. They will also be wiser and better grounded than any of their friends who did not buck that routine of HS>college.

My parents traveled right after the war but got caught up in the American dream of kids and mortgages and put off their travels until 40 years later and that was the highlight of their lives, what they talked about most for decades but health issues of my mother kept them close to home for the next 20 years. Their very last travel was my taking their ashes to central Scotland to our ancestral home and spreading them in the Lake of Menteith and on the little island in the lake with the ruins of the Inchmahome Priory where many relatives up to the 19th century are buried. That was a year ago. Get your parents if they are able to travel now. They will appreciate your prodding them and pushing them. Plans for "someday" never comes, do it now, it has never been easier or cheaper to visit far off lands.

I was a bit different, I needed no prodding, having visited 86 countries so far.

[Mick Bailey]

Good plan! And let's not forget that aluminum has been mentioned as a causative element in "old-timers" disease. You can choose to believe that or not, but I discarded my aluminum cookware 20 years ago and by coincidence so did my cousin, who is a nurse and a very smart observer of the scene. (OK maybe we can run around with our aluminum foil hats now but that doesn't get it into our systems.)

I can't remember the last time I ate out of an aluminium saucepan

The link with aluminium is now thought to be a symptom rather than a cause. For the time being.

[Enzo]

There go those correlations again. Studies have shown over and over than the majority of heroin addicts were first fed on mother's milk. A clear correlation. SO I suppose we stop breast feeding, we stop drug addiction. I can think of a few congressmen who would even buy that argument.

[J M Fahey]

Yes, correlation is the *first* step, but there's more to be done.

For a real useful conclusion, you must make the experiment.

Which in common everyday vocabulary has lost its meaning, is is seen as something restricted to mad scientists in white aprons (those with chemical stains or caked drops of blood are even better) while in fact it's a simple sequence of events to separate chaff from wheat.

To follow Enzo's example (which *is* a valid theory, just needs to be checked):

1) heroin addicts were (mostly) weaned on Mother's milk. So far so good.

2) take 1000 babies, separate them in 2 groups, feed 500 Mother's milk, raise the other 500 with formula bottles.

3) 50 years later , check how many in each group became heroin addicts.

You can refine the experiment as much as you wish, such as switching brands, feeding schedule, singing (or not) while doing it, etc.

Is Juan crazy? Who will make an experiment lasting 50 years, involving 2000 subjects (include the Mothers) plus a couple dozen Investigators , clerical employees, etc.?

Well, that's why *physical/chemical/etc.* experiments, which can be done relatively quickly , make "hard" Sciences ..... "Hard":

While Sociology, Psychology, etc. are more indefinite, and subject to "personal opinion", "authority", etc. : because *their* experiments are much more complicated and hard to carry.

Plus many times Ethics forbids them.

There was a famous experiment where they wanted to know whether Human Languages were *forced* onto kids or there was some "natural" Human Language, which was being "crushed" by learnt ones.

So they took a small group of babies and raised them in isolation from anybody else, the few Doctors and Nurses they met never talked, tried to avoid using even hand or face signs, etc.

The kids never developed a complex language, "used something like bird's chirps" (I'm quoting from memory) and were "back into the Human Race" at, say, 7 y.o. or not far from that.

The damage caused to them was immense.

They never became "normal people".

[big_teee]

Speaking of brain games?
While I read forums, On the Computer I read CNN, Daily Beast, HuffPost, Salon, MotherJones, Politico, I sit here and Play Klondike Solitare.
While I'm doing that I'm flipping channels on TV watching all the news channels, CNN, MSNBC, Current, and yes a little bit of Fox.
I drive my Spouse Nuts, she watches her own TV in the Back of the house. lol
I try to play Klondike, and FreeCell as fast as I can, and just scan the cards, and not over think it.
It gets easier to do over time.
Also typing all the time is a good mental thinking tool.
What do you guys do to make the noodle think?
T

[Chuck H]

1) heroin addicts were (mostly) weaned on Mother's milk. So far so good.

2) take 1000 babies, separate them in 2 groups, feed 500 Mother's milk, raise the other 500 with formula bottles.

3) 50 years later , check how many in each group became heroin addicts.

Right! But this is still only the NEXT step. It follows that the experiment must be repeatable. Supposing that it turned out to be a repeatable experiment and breast fed individuals are at an increased risk of heroin addiction, even then it only proves "that". Any number of additional correlations may be factors. Are mothers prone to breast feeding also prone to other parenting practices at a greater per capita than other mothers? And could any of these practices be the actual cause for the increased risk of heroin addiction? Further, by this thinking the milk itself cannot be pinpointed as causal. We would need a different experiment that excludes the breast as the delivery method.

One thing I know for certain... Everyone who eats or has eaten peanut butter is going to die.

[big_teee]

They can see it much faster than your studies.
They can see the results on brain scans.
That is how they have determined the Trauma effect playing football.
By the time you got done with your 50 year studies, All of us here would be dead anyway!
T

[Enzo]

One thing I know for certain... Everyone who eats or has eaten peanut butter is going to die.

Too true. But did you also know that all musicians reach a point where they stop listening to music?

[Leo_Gnardo]

I can think of a few congressmen who would even buy that argument.

You don't mean Mister Tangerine Man by any chance? I think he was weaned at about 1 day, and put on the whiskey bottle. Has the intellect to match.

Juan, for long term medical research it's hard to beat the Framingham Heart Study, been going on since 1948.

Not exactly med, but sociological, the film 56 Up just came out. Been a series in the UK since 7 up. They've done interviews with the same group of people every 7 years since they were 7 years old. Heard a feature on NPR last weekend. Veddy interesting... It's supposed to be shown on TV, maybe some cable station will have it. Check the google.