I too learn new things when researching for my weekly blog, and if you missed last week’s video, the take-away was this – regular dental flossing is good for your heart. All very interesting, but means little if not practiced regularly. I’ve been very fortunate with my teeth; never had so much as a filling. At each check up however my hygienist always asks how much I floss, and I always exaggerate and say every week, when the reality is about once a fortnight. This week I’m up to alternate days, and fully intend to continue. My point is, as much as I hope you find my blogs and videos interesting, I really hope you use the information to make behavioural changes that will positively impact your life.
I usually write and film content on a Sunday, but this week is different. I will have everything auto-loaded to appear at the usual time, but this weekend is likely to be one of the hardest and most depressing of my life. I have written before, and indeed very recently, about my mum’s dementia. It appears to be rapidly progressive, and the point has come that my Dad simply can’t cope with her at home any longer. Anyone who has had children will know how hard it is to be woken throughout the night, and how hard it is to function with broken sleep. Dad is in his mid-70s himself now, and being woken with her wandering confused around the house, trying to get out and not recognising the rooms they have occupied for 40 years is simply too much. His own health is suffering, and she needs professional residential care.
My wife and I have volunteered to take her. It’s one thing talking about dementia care, it’s another actually moving in to the care home, and I don’t want my Dad to have to do it. It is so desperately depressing, yet I feel somehow emotionally numb about it as I write these words. I think in my mind, she has not been by Mum for some time now and perhaps that is why. She doesn’t even look like Mum any more. She has always been very careful about her diet, and been slim, yet in the last year has ballooned in weight as all she wants to eat are sugary snacks, whilst been utterly sedentary. My Mum would absolutely hate to see herself now, The woman I am taking to the care home this weekend is not my Mum. Oh dear. I have just teared up at that sentence. Maybe I’m not as emotionally numb as I thought.
I hope you will forgive my somewhat selfish indulgence with this week’s blog. In a funny way I think writing about it helps my own mental health, and my own understanding. Self-therapy of some sort! All of us will have days in our lives that we will never forget, be they good or bad, and I’m sure this will be one of them for me.
I have always been a glass-half-full sort of a person, and will see the positive or possibility in any given situation. This is no different. Living through the difficulties of this terrible disease only serves to reinforce my feeling that I am in a rather unique position: I have a platform that reaches a fairly large number of people one way or the other. The odds of developing dementia can be massively stacked in your favour through various lifestyle measures. Last year I wrote a whole series of posts on dementia (available in the library on the member’s site) and indeed many of my videos and blogs address these issues also. It’s perhaps no coincidence that many of the things that protect your heart, also protect your brain.
I fully accept that I am at one end of a spectrum when it comes to my own lifestyle, and whilst not perfect, I am addicted to exercise, healthy eating, cold showers and all the rest of it. However I sincerely hope and believe that readers and viewers (who almost certainly won’t be as nerdy as I am) will still adopt some of these behaviours themselves, and for their friends and family. In doing so, without wishing to be too self-indulgent or congratulatory, I can’t help but think some people will be spared the pain of dementia, and indeed other chronic health conditions.
As you finish reading this, have a good think about what this means for you.
I have no idea how the transition will go. The next few weeks will undoubtedly be hard, but for the best. This week there are two videos on the members site. The first is an update from the European Society of Hypertension (high blood pressure) session at a European Medical conference in Florence last week (I wish I had gone, I think Florence is the most wonderful city I have ever visited!). The second is an ‘ask me anything’ video. I have had a question from a member about homeopathic remedies, and I give my thoughts.