Considering we are in the midst of an Alzheimer's epidemic, it will be important to consider some simple proactive approaches, as losing your mind isn't a pretty thing.

A study published late in 2004, described how, in comparison to women who maintained normal weight levels, women who had been obese throughout their entire lives were found to be more prone to a loss of brain tissue in their temporal lobes--the area in the brain responsible for speech, comprehension and memory.

If this information didn't attract your attention, I certainly hope the important results of the above study do.

Not only will losing weight decrease your chances of developing dementia, doing so will also help you:

• Improve your energy level.
• Boost your emotional well-being.
• Enhance your ability to stay focused.

Most importantly, you will improve the overall quality of your life.

To ensure healthy, effective and long-lasting weight loss, I recommend following the Total Health Program by:

• Reducing (with the idea of eventually eliminating) your intake of grains and sugars. The body's storage capacity for carbohydrates is quite limited, so when you eat an excess of grains and sugars they are converted, via insulin, into fat.

• Modifying your diet according to your body's unique nutritional type. Foods that result in weight gain for some people may not have the same effect on others, so it is vitally important to determine which ones will help you and which ones won't. nutritional typing is the best way I know of to do so.

• Getting on an exercise program.

• Improving your emotional health and well-being. It doesn't matter how devoted you are to a proper diet and lifestyle, emotional health is absolutely essential to losing weight and reaching your optimal health goals. That is why I suggest adopting the concept of my favorite psychology tool, the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

EFT is an energy psychology tool that uses acupressure techniques that can help you to channel your stress-related thoughts and leave you feeling calmer and more able to face your challenges.

Although losing weight is an important part of preventing dementia and Alzheimer's disease, there are additional ways to help shore up your defenses even more. They include:

• Eating plenty of high-quality omega-3 oils.

• Avoiding most fish and removing mercury.

• Exercising. We all know that exercise is good for our cardiovascular system, but studies have found that exercise can also protect the brain, thereby warding off Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. According to one study, the odds of developing Alzheimer's were nearly quadrupled in people who were less active during their leisure time, between the ages of 20 and 60, compared with their peers.

  Also, please note that, in regard to dementia, choosing a variety of exercises is even more important than how often, how long or how intense the exercise is performed.

• Challenging your mind. Mental stimulation, such as traveling, learning to play an instrument or doing crossword puzzles, is associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer's. Researchers suspect that mental challenge helps to build up the brain, making it less susceptible to the lesions associated with Alzheimer's disease.

• Avoiding aluminum such as in antiperspirants, cookware, etc.

• Eating plenty of vegetables according to your nutritional type.

• Avoiding flu vaccinations.

• Trying Wild Blueberry IQ, an all-natural, whole fruit softgel made from wild blueberries, which have high anthocyanin and antioxidant content that are known to guard against Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases.

If you suffer from some form of dementia already, consider adding ginkgo to your diet.

Gary Craig's Comment:

While proper diet, lifestyle and emotional health are important for dementia, I find that balancing the energy meridians with EFT can often restore some of the lost mental capacity. We have many reports of this welcome benefit, including cases where Alzheimer's patients are able to recall specific memories AND recognize family members.

Gary Craig is a pioneering developer of EFT, a profoundly effective emotional/mental healing approach. I learned it from Gary and have taught it to patients in my clinic for years, and they have experienced truly incredible and permanent results with it.

Ron Rosedale, M.D. Comment

It is becoming fairly scientifically well-established that defects in leptin signaling, i.e. leptin resistance, is at the heart of the misappropriation of fat especially in visceral tissues. This, for instance, is partially behind the involvement of leptin resistance causing hepatic insulin resistance leading to diabetes. Stress is certainly one of the factors that can cause a chronic elevation in blood glucose secondary to cortisol, with concomitant metabolism of that glucose through adipocytes causing spikes in leptin, causing leptin resistance, which then in turn causes visceral adiposity.

One of the most prevalent, and powerful stresses that people subject to themselves is diet, especially a diet which causes spikes in leptin which in turn causes surges in sympathetic nervous system response (which then in turn can cause elevated cortisone and the initiation of a vicious cycle). This of course would be a diet high in starches and grains or excess proteins.

I do not feel that cortisol is a primary cause of excess visceral fat (as seems to be a common misconception currently with popular infomercials such as "Cortislim"), since excess visceral adiposity will continue to worsen and even begin to initiate, after "adrenal fatigue" when cortisol levels are abnormally low (but leptin is still elevated).

Also, the association between obesity and other chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, and dementia is certainly contributed to by chronic inflammation, and again leptin is at the center of this, being itself a cytokine and also orchestrating the manufacture within adipocytes of numerous inflammatory chemicals such as TNFa.

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