Smokers Oh My

We don't smoke but we share high blood pressure and or diabetes. At our age this makes us susceptible to "lose our minds up in here, up in here." If it weren't for our coffee intake we'd have to make more of an effort to exercise our bodies and our minds. Aunt Pearlie worked crossword puzzles and loved SCRABBLE on the PC and against her friends on a board. She kept her wits about her longer than her twin and drank her MAXWELL HOUSE every morning. Pearlie wasn't big on exercising once she lost the ability to walk. Her twin, Aunt Mamie continued to walk up until her final days though she needed the aid of a cane. She wasn't a walker but outlived Aunt Pearlie.

If we understood the technical research better we'd translate it here but BBC News did a much better job than we could. We are in age range in the study done in conjunction with the UK and from the Universities in America.

"Smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes were all strongly linked with dementia, which the researchers say is not unexpected since these can damage the brain and the small blood vessels that supply it."

"Current smokers were 70% more likely than those who had never smoked to develop dementia, people with high blood pressure were 60% more likely than those without high blood pressure, and people with diabetes were more than twice as likely than those without diabetes to develop it."

The curse of aging is the possibility of losing the thing that we value most, our memories and the knowledge of who we are. Aunt Mamie, the twin, was a remarkable woman desperate to retrieve the fading memories. Wanting to do whatever to get back the ability to remember and to not to forget. Dementia robs you of the ability to remember the things that should be instinctual. You can forget to breathe.