Beating Alzheimer's....

This is an important and hopeful book.

As the author says early on: "Here, finally, is nothing less than the first good news about Alzheimer's disease. It is a chronicle of joy, of the blessing of getting your life back. One of the patients you shall read about said he has allowed himself to think about the future once again when he talks to his grandchildren. Another said her memory is better than it has been in thirty years.... What you read about here is the beginning of a changed world, the beginning of the end of Alzheimer's disease."

We learn about a specific patient named Kristin who was noticing some decline in her mental abilities. She would get lost driving on the highway and forget which exit to take. She was finding it more difficult to analyze data at work and started thinking about resigning. She couldn't remember simple bits of information and had to start writing everything down.

Kristin worked with her own doctor to start following the author's ReCODE protocol and within three months she saw great improvement! No more worries about work, no more getting lost on the highway, no more forgetting little bits of information.

If his theory is correct Dr. Bredesen thinks there are three threats the brain is trying to protect itself against when it produces amyloid that is associated with Alzheimer's:

1. Inflammation from infection, diet, or some other source.
2. Lack of proper nutrients for the brain.
3. Toxic substances such as metals or biotoxins.

The goal of the ReCODE protocol is to:

1. Remove these threats to the brain.
2. Then remove the amyloid.
3. Then rebuild any damaged synapses.

As an overarching principle the author says that anything that is bad for general health or cardiovascular health is probably going to increase your risk of Alzheimers, so many of the things he mentions will sound familiar.

Here are some of the things that can increase our risk of Alzheimer's according to this book:

1. Too much sugar
2. Lack of rest
3. Being overweight
4. Too much stress
5. Lack of exercise
6. Lack of sunlight
7. Eating trans-fats
8. Smoking
9. High blood pressure
10. Too many Omega-6 fats and too few Omega-3 fats

The author also mentioned some things that surprised me a bit:

1. Too much dairy (which can trigger inflammation)
2. Too much gluten (which can damage the gastrointestinal tract and trigger inflammation)
3. Taking too many antacids (which reduces the body's ability to extract nutrients from food)
4. Too many statins (Cholesterol too LOW can increase risk of brain atrophy! I never heard of this one!)
5. Poor oral hygiene

I am not a doctor so I cannot evaluate the medical advice given by Dr. Bredesen in this book. However, I do feel confident that if you want to help a loved one with Alzheimer's or avoid Alzheimer's yourself reading this book will NOT be a waste of time.

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[Read this great book on beating Alzheimer's.]

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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

Tyrants turned pale.... : Studying Voltaire

Sunday morning.
My favorite time.
MY time!
Let's LEARN!

This morning I am studying the life of Voltaire. He spent decades fighting for tolerance and freedom and changed the world for the better. He fought tyranny and fanaticism and cruelty and he didn't care if his enemies were priests or bishops or aristocrats or kings he fought them all and he would never stop.

Two times he was arrested and sent to the Bastille and three times he was exiled from his homeland. Later in life he lived on the border between France and Switzerland so when the authorities came for him he could run! He would antagonize the rulers of the land with his criticisms and mockery and then, when they came for him, he would escape across the border.

Some people criticized him for running but I admire him. He was a guerrilla fighter against an oppressive government. Hit and run! We should ALWAYS hit the bad people. But then we have no obligation to let the bad people hit us back....

Voltaire was one of the most brilliant men of the 1700's and a literary genius whose pen made him the most famous man in the world and, ultimately, one of the richest.

He lived long enough to be recognized as a hero of civilization and great people from all over the world, people like Benjamin Franklin from the United States, made pilgrimages to his home to visit the giant of the age.

The French philosopher, and editor of the famous Encyclopedie, Diderot wrote of Voltaire while he was still alive: “Pile assumptions on assumptions; accumulate wars on wars; make interminable disturbances succeed to interminable disturbances; let the universe be inundated by a general spirit of confusion; and it would take a hundred thousand years for the works and the name of Voltaire to be lost.”

In the 1800's the British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote: “In truth, of all the intellectual weapons that have been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailings and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name.”

Whenever we feel grateful for being free, we should remember Voltaire.

[Read this excellent biography of the great Voltaire.]

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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

"Mad With Joy" - G.K. Chesterton

I've been reading a lot about G K Chesterton lately. One of those people I love to spend time with. So smart they seem scary. So smart they keep losing me and I have to back up circling around and around to pick up the trail again. So smart that every sentence they write, almost, is worth pausing over to contemplate and ponder.

About Francis of Assisi Chesterton wrote: "...all true joy expresses itself in asceticism. It was 'the universe itself' that made Francis's followers 'mad with joy' - 'the only thing really worthy of enjoyment....' Ultimately, people in Chesterton's view are either optimists or pessimists: either they see 'life black against white' or 'white against black.' And the Franciscans embraced sacrifice because they saw life as 'full of the blaze of an universal mercy,' whereas pessimists indulge themselves because they see only 'a black curtain of incalculable night.' But Chesterton concludes: 'The revelers are old, and the monks are young. It was the monks who were the spendthrifts of happiness, and we who are its misers.' "

Chesterton wandered through early 20th century London thinking like this, writing like this, wearing a cape and a sombrero and a sword-stick, talking to himself and getting lost because his mind was so often present elsewhere.

He wrote somewhere around 100 books including poetry, fiction, essays, travel, literary criticism, Christian apologetics, and detective stories.

Scary smart.

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[Read this great biography of the scary smart G.K. Chesterton.]

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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

Western Intellectual Tradition - A Book To Make the Earth Tilt....

Look what came in the mail yesterday! (Saturday 30-Sep-2017)

So I was up reading before dawn today....

This book traces the development of the main ideas of Western Civilization from the 1400's to the 1800's, the weakening of the medieval Christian synthesis, the growing chasm between science and the humanities, the ever more rapid gain of reliable knowledge combined with the ever more rapid loss of human meaning.

By describing the greatest ideas about the most important issues of an entire civilization this book helps us to sort out what we believe for ourselves and how we understand the world and how we understand our place in it.

This is the kind of book that makes the earth tilt... makes your hands tremble... makes it hard to catch your breath....

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[Read this great book about the people who started the United States.]

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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

The Spirit of the Framers....

I love this little story about John Adams as an old man:

"When one young man tried to congratulate him for belonging to a truly heroic generation, Adams felt obliged to correct him: 'I ought not to object to your reverence for your fathers, meaning those concerned with the direction of public affairs,' he cautioned, 'but to tell you a very great secret, as far as I am capable of comparing the merit of different periods, I have no reason to believe that we were better than you are.' "

When we study the Constitutional Convention we see that the participants were smart, but there are lots of smart people around now.

And yet, in 1787, a group that disagreed on many issues, ultimately wrote a complete Constitution for an entirely new government, that was then accepted by the people of every single state! Now, in 2017, we can't even get a health care bill passed, or reach a compromise on gun safety.

I think the biggest difference is that in 1787 leaders were debating HONESTLY, which doesn't mean they never shaded the truth but that they were sincerely trying to solve a problem. In 2017 leaders are not really trying to solve problems, they are trying to WIN and make their opponents look bad.

I think that is the difference.

I think if we could get people to argue less about parties and factions - which are hopeless arguments that never end - and argue more about problems and solutions - which are practical arguments that can lead to progress - we might be able to recapture some of the spirit of 1787 and make the world a better place!

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[Read this great book about the people who started the United States.]

[If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

***

Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway