HUMANITY HIKER

Alzheimer’s is so unpredictable. Thirty years ago when we were taking care of my Mom I referred to her condition as senility dementia. She had never been one for exercise on her own and in my ignorance at the time I took no steps to make that happen. Despite her sedentary lifestyle she remained mobile up until the last few weeks she spent in a nursing home before she passed away.

Contrast that with my oldest brother Pete who also succumbed to Alzheimer’s. He was a world renowned mountain climber back in the fifties and sixties and maintained an active lifestyle throughout. He has spent the last year confined to a wheelchair and likely will pass away at a younger age than our Mom.

Considering what has been revealed about the damaging side effects of donepezil (Aricept), perhaps that alone accounts for the difference. Mom did not take that medication; I don’t think it existed back then. Yet it is also true that Alzheimer’s strikes everybody differently.

Cindy is still in good condition, having had more strenuous exercise in her middle age than even my brother Pete. I’ve already divulged how our walk across the country that started almost four years ago helped to reverse Cindy’s decline. I’ve also revealed that our hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, begun less than a year ago, failed to have a similarly dramatic effect.

I cannot add much about exercise at this point that I have not already covered over the past year. I cannot guarantee exercise is the magic treatment that will cure everybody. Still, as I read all the articles on Alzheimer’s and brain health sent to me by Google Alerts exercise stands out as the one constant.

Yes, you should probably begin with diet in regards to your health. The body has amazing recuperative powers, but you need to provide the right materials. Yet people differ in their conditions and afflictions, what constitutes precisely the best diet for one differs from that for another. What remains universally true is that exercise is needed to regenerate brain tissue. Exercise is the blender that mixes the ingredients you provide through diet into the best health smoothie for yourself.

Regenerating your brain tissue is not the same as improving your cognitive function. You either need the right kind of exercise to enhance cognitive function, such as dancing, or other activities that serve such a purpose. What constitutes the right kind of exercise for improving cognitive function?

Dancing continually engages the mind more than something like bicycling, where the mind sometimes can be placed on “autopilot.” Other exercises that similarly engage the mind include various forms of yoga and martial arts. Many sports engage the mind, though many sports also become difficult for the older body to pursue.

Hiking would seem to be in the category as bicycling or swimming where the mind can be put on autopilot. Yet Cindy did improve her cognitive function while we hiked the American Discovery Trail and I think there are good reasons for that. Vitamin D may be the most important of all vitamins for brain health and continual exposure to the sun provides the best means for the body to acquire that. Think twice before applying too much sunscreen. Rugged wilderness trails engage the mind in a similar fashion as dancing, requiring nimble footwork at times to negotiate the obstacles along the way. For someone like Cindy, hiking also continually engages the mind through the beauty observed along the way.

Unfortunately, once Alzheimer’s advances far enough you cannot regenerate brain tissue faster than it is being degraded. Still, exercise remains the universal constant for improving your health in general as well as your quality of life. Our bodies did not evolve for a sedentary life and being civilized does not change that.

Cindy asked me what I was grinning about. I replied: “my backpacker wife.” We were at a Brazilian buffet near our timeshare in Orlando and she was eating the food I cut up on her plate with her fingers, something a backpacker might do without a care. Cindy smiled back at my reply, pleased with being called a backpacker.

In truth there has not been a lot to smile about. We came to Orlando last year at this time as an item on Cindy’s bucket list, to be snowbirds. At the time I thought we would not be back had an attitude of closure. Now we are back for the sake of exercising in a warmer climate and my attitude is aiming to be back again next year, with the hope that we can be back again next year.

Being down here has relieved me of the stress I was experiencing at home. There were too many responsibilities and undesirable situations I was balancing. I know too well the impact stress has on health and I’ll take a bit of sadness in trade for awhile. The sadness stems from witnessing the decline in Cindy, more pronounced in comparison with one intermittent adventure to the next. These seem to be the two options these days: be stressed at home or depressed on an adventure away from home.

Stress and depression are unhealthy opposites. Indeed, antidepressants have led to anxiety disorders. Back when work and family problems first presented themselves to Cindy our (former) primary care physician prescribed an antidepressant for her. Back then I was in the habit of just going along with a doctor’s recommendation without doing my own research, yet I should have rebelled against that diagnosis from the start. People following this blog and/or my Facebook page (even more photos are on the Facebook page) have seen how warmly Cindy smiles. She simply is not a depressed person. However, the hiker once known as the “Go Go Go Gal” is prone to stress. I smartened up within a couple of months and got her off the medication, but perhaps by then it was too late.

Depression does present a problem for memory and perhaps Alzheimer’s, but in this regard is the lesser of the two unhealthy evils. A recent study I shared on my Facebook page revealed that the memories of people with and without depression both suffered while they were having depressive thoughts, yet neither category suffered with their memory when they were not having such thoughts. In other words, we can recover from memory loss from being depressed more easily than from being stressed.

As for me, I’m no more a depressed person than Cindy. I’ve been called the eternal optimist by friends. I would not even categorize my current thoughts as “depressive” so much as simply “sad.” I’ll trade “sad” for “stressed” any day, so I’ll do my best to have us enjoy being snowbirds once again. May we be back next year.