NEW YORK POST – I travel the world to deliver neurological care in places with limited resources.
Along the way, I have learned several important lessons about protecting brain health and preventing brain disease.
Here are two simple steps to halt and reverse brain damage.
A major, under-the-radar risk factor
One risk factor for dementia that doesn’t get a lot of attention is undetected hearing loss.
Hearing loss is common with age. The problem is that good hearing is crucial for feeding the language centers, primarily located in the left hemisphere of the brain, with the proper information to produce language.
If hearing loss is not detected in a timely fashion, there might be improper funneling of information to this language area, increasing the risk of memory loss and dementia.
Screening timetables
Patients should be screened for brain-related conditions such as cognitive decline and stroke risk at least once a year.
A preventative primary care physician will measure blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol levels.
Cardiovascular brain damage is tricky because it often has no immediate warning signs. High blood pressure is known in medicine as a “silent killer” because you don’t feel it as you’re walking around.
High blood pressure causes arteries and veins to narrow, which decreases nourishment and blood flow to the brain. This leads to changes detectable by modern MRI.
Over time, memory loss, dementia and other harmful brain diseases can develop.
High cholesterol, along with high blood pressure, contributes to these very same changes because it leads to blockages in important arteries that feed your brain with blood.
Physical inactivity fuels high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other cardiovascular risk factors.
Fortunately, brain damage from poor cardiovascular health can be stalled and even reversed.
The traditional risk factors of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking are addressed by two behaviors — diet and exercise …
