Staying On Point

Shifting course but still bearing True North

I got a very legit and well-meaning question a couple weeks ago. The fact that it made me flinch reminded me that every once in a while I need to remind myself why the heck I am hitting “send” every Wednesday. The question, regarding Losing the Mothership, was: “So now what’s your focus?” The meaning: The arc of Nina’s story has been told (it wrapped up in Full Circle), so what’s it about now?

The answer is simple: Brain health, brain health, brain health! I am still working on getting the book out there, though not as quickly as I’d like; and I’m always circling back to Nina’s life and our Alzheimer’s experience, because I keep remembering related tidbits. Some of them are also darned funny (looking at you White Chocolate Wedding Cake). In the meantime, there’s so much to say on the topic of brain health, be it related specifically to my experience or not.

PUTTING FEAR TO WORK

As explained in “Am I Next” and noted many times elsewhere, anxiety about the potential of Alzheimer’s in my future is a recurring theme in my psyche. That fear is what motivated me to exorcise these demons by bringing them into the light. It has also motivated me to grasp at every reasonable way in my power to write a different script for myself and my family as I age.

Fear is a powerful motivator, be it fear of failure (nothing like a looming deadline for productivity) or of bodily injury (every downhill ski racer knows that full attack is the safest mode). As the Mothership plows ahead, it’s shifting course to brain health because that is my story now; and, though it is still motivated by fear, that is decreasingly so.

I feel so fortunate that we are in a time where we’re realizing genetics don’t determine our future. Yes genetics are contributors, but they are not our destiny. Preventative neurology is not a mainstream specialty yet (which is bonkers and we’ll talk about that in an upcoming post) but ten years ago it wasn’t even a term. It was exactly ten years ago when my dad died suddenly, making the care of mom, then in mid-stage Alzheimer’s, a major focus in my own life and the dominant theme of our family dynamics.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Today we are inundated by things we can do to maintain our cognitive health. Most of us are getting bombarded by advice and products and trends vying for our attention and our wallets. Despite the interest, studies and science related to dementia prevention, the professional training and specialization in preventative neurology lags far behind. How do you fill that gap? How do you match the lack of professional advice from trusted sources with the information overload?

That’s where I’d like to help. Not as an expert in the science of it—God knows I am no scientist except for the experiments living in my fridge—but in the filtering and communication of the information.

My goal is to share the techniques and information that resonate with me, while calling out the well-founded frustration with various trends and with the slow moving reality of change. I hope you will stay with me for this shift, and I promise to stay true to my mission of “talking lightly about heavyish things.” We WILL have some fun along the way, dammit!

A couple weeks back, in Get Smaht I mentioned signing up for the Brain Health Project. It does take a bit of time to walk through the (easy) process of creating your Brain Health Index, and I did screw up royally in a few sections. On the plus side, I expect to feel like a superstar on my next assessment. (Your brain health assessment is your own, only compared to you, which takes the edge off.) So far the daily training is much less annoying than Duolingo, so that’s another plus. For that and other reasons it feels sustainable, which is my #1 criteria for starting anything new.

Incidentally, we talked about Better Brain here when I signed up for it back in December 2024. It is now covered by most insurance and soon by Medicare. So….if you’re interested, get on it!

TAKE LESS IN, BUT GO DEEPER

Brain training itself has become its own industry preying on our anxiety related to brain decline. In another recent Brain Storm podcast, Sandra Bond Chapman, co leader of the Brain Health Project spoke directly to that frustration. She referred to the hundreds of millions of downloads of brain games, most of which make you better at playing the games but do little to actually strengthen the brain. The irony is that these games meant to build our cognitive strength are also keeping our minds busy rather than giving them time to rest and refresh.

Keeping up with the offerings and deciding which ones to pursue is as exhausting as keeping up on your daily supplements (don’t get me started!). It adds stress while also taking away productivity and clarity. Chapman’s advice is to take less in but to go deeper. For instance, when listening to a podcast or reading an article (like this) she advises to find two key takeaways then figure out a way to implement them and to share them. Says Chapman: “It’s better to create strategies and daily practices than to keep our brains busy all the time.”

That makes a ton of sense and, more importantly, feels doable. That’s my goal here. Rather than just throwing info at you, I hope to put the info into the context of doable routines, all pointing the same direction.

I hope this helps you know where we’re going, that you got a couple of takeaways and that you’ll stay with me on this trip.