Today’s Reflection
My mother doesn’t know who I am anymore. Every time I go into her room, I say “hi, Mom.’ Sometimes she smiles with recognition. More and more she stares blankly, as if I am a total stranger. I tell her about my family, but it is clear she doesn’t know anybody I am talking about. Mother has great difficulty signing her name. There are days when I wonder if she knows who she is.”
The heartbreaking description of a person with Alzheimer’s disease illustrates what a precious thing we have in the gift of memory. Memory gives us a past and enables us to plan for a future. We enjoy routines in our daily cycle and retrace our steps. Without memory, all we have is the present – no more. Everybody is a stranger. Calendars don’t make sense. Even mirrors are confusing, because there is somebody else here in the room.
Ecclesiastes 12:1 suggests that we should remember our Creator when we are young, because days of trouble will come. The implication is that we will forget even our God. Declining mental abilities are well-known symptoms of increasing age. In 1906 Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German physician, did a brain autopsy on one of his elderly patients who had died after years of severe memory problems. He was surprised to find tangled nerve cells and dense deposits around them. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that science positively linked them to memory losses. After that it wasn’t long until intense research began to uncover some of the environmental and genetic causes of what is now commonly known as Alzheimer’s disease. We still don’t have the cure, but we do know some risk factors.
Here is how to avoid Alzheimer’s disease. 1. Don’t get old. Aging is the number one risk factor. OK, none of us have any say about that. 2. Don’t have parents or siblings that have the disease. A known gene increase risk but is not a guarantee of getting the disease. We don’t have a choice about that issue, either. 3. Avoid serious head injuries. They increase risk, so be careful. 4. Exercise regularly – something that we do have control over. 5. Eat a healthy balanced diet. 6. Avoid tobacco. 7. Stay socially active. 8. Play games and regularly participate in intellectually stimulating activities. All of the last five are lifestyle issues that we can control. Most of all enjoy every day we have as a special gift from our God.