Filling the prescription for dementia
Filling the prescription for dementia: friends, learning and change at AGOM
By Victoria Alfred-Levow
Amid health concerns surrounding the COVID pandemic, most of us are protecting ourselves by staying home and limiting social interaction. While isolating is important for keeping the virus at bay, isolation and lack of intellectual stimulation has proven to have a strongly negative effect on cognitive functioning and mood for folks dealing with Alzheimer’s, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and other forms of memory and cognitive decline. However, there are effective and proven ways to slow this decline even in the face of the current pandemic and its restrictions.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta has advised Americans on virus updates on CNN; recently, he discussed ways to fight against dementia with CBS’s Dr. Jon LaPook. Dr. Gupta’s teenage experience watching his grandfather develop Alzheimer’s inspired him to become a neurosurgeon and try to illuminate the brain’s memory processing for everyone. He recommends brain-strengthening habits that include social interaction, intellectual engagement, and challenging oneself daily. Supporting these recommendations, a recent study by researchers at University College London found that getting out and about and stimulating your brain can reduce the risk of dementia onset. Adults over 50 who went to community cultural activities like visiting a museum or theater were less likely to develop dementia than those who rarely performed these activities. While many of these activities are not currently available, there are still ways to stay engaged socially and intellectually.
One such way is with A Gathering of Minds, our interactive online program that provides a high level of intellectual experience and social engagement for people in the early stages of memory loss. At AGOM’s daily meetings, members share interests, opinions, memories, and discussions about a wide range of topics. AGOM members connect each day with their online friend group, forming strong bonds with one another while investigating a host of interesting subjects. While members experience meetings as fun, the intention and design of the program are to provide intellectual stimulation and decrease loneliness and isolation to slow the rate of cognitive decline. As Dr. Gupta said on CBS Sunday Morning, “The feelings, the experiences that you have through empathy, through these connections with people, is all nourishing the brain as well. It’s why we live.”
In addition to social and intellectual engagement, one of Dr. Gupta’s recommendations was to learn something new and challenge yourself. “If you can get outside your comfort zone in some way every day, you’re harnessing real estate in the brain that you don’t otherwise use very often,” he said. That’s why A Gathering of Minds Director Victoria Hart leads AGOM participants in analyzing current events, music, history, science, culture and more, with daily “brain games” and even a short daily exercise segment. Hart says that every day of programming is different because she “wants to open up the world for our members. Active friendships and lifelong learning are part of what makes life worthwhile, and that’s what A Gathering of Minds provides.”
Relevant Resources:
- Sanjay Gupta’s prescription for fighting off dementia (Jan 3, 2021, CBS Sunday Morning)
- Fancourt D, Steptoe A, Cadar D. Community engagement and dementia risk: time-to-event analyses from a national cohort study J Epidemiol Community Health 2020;74:71-77.
- Catherine Offord, How Social Isolation Affects the Brain, The Scientist Magazine, July 13, 2020
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
