Re: Off Topic: Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Shows

[Guest guest]

Well, most of you know where I am on this. Whether it is memory,

mobility, general health, or blood sugar, real exercise (and diet

control) are very important. When Jan went through her five year bout

with autoimmune disease, stroke, AML, and finally the return of AML and

the transplant, she was regularly brought to a very low level

physically. Exercise was our recovery from the time it started as

walking across the room to long hikes in the hills.

She was diabetic at times in this period and that is why I am currently

pushing her hard to keep exercising. Today we discussed what hike she

would take. She had a four mile hike with over a thousand feet vertical

which I thought was good. When I came back from an interesting

afternoon on a technical review of a robotics project some high school

kids were doing, she confessed that she had taken the short (in our

minds minimum) hike that is an easy three miles and less altitude. I

suggested a half hour on her exercise bike. She told me at supper that

she'd done it.

It has taken a long time to get to this point, but when she tells me

what she has done, she is honest. She actually likes the hikes and

usually prefers to do them by herself because she then sets the pace.

It is slow,but I only complain if she comes back too close to dark.

Her Mom still runs in the park and I regularly hike myself, so this

isn't something that we just tell her to do.

On the other hand, although she also walks probably ten miles during the

week, she doesn't get the diet supervision and typically I face a 3-5

pound increase when she's on her own for a week. We are working on

that, which is largely impulse control on junk food, but it will be a

long time. In the net, we are holding her weight, but not getting it

down. I'd really like her 30 pounds lighter and I know she'd feel better.

The good news was that her last physical was great. The blood tests

came back all normal. We are five years out from the transplant and

she's on absolutely no meds.

Yes I worry about the early onset of Alzheimer's plaques in people with

down syndrome. We've even been told that it is 100% by age 40. Still

we don't see any memory decline. Now I'm somewhat older and can't make

the same claim, even though my blood sugar has never been a problem. So

far among her peers, we don't see signs of dementia, at least as we

would recognize it.

Rick ... dad to 35 year old Jan

p.s. exercise isn't a new thing to Jan. She started gymnastics at about

5 and along with an active family, she was always pretty fit. Yes, I

had a role in that as well.