STAYING SHARP Sanjay Gupta’s new book shows how to improve your brain health BY JANET REYNOLDS
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sk most people in middle age or beyond to name their greatest aging fear and you’ll likely hear the words dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Yes, the C word and heart disease are a concern but virtually no one wants to lose their cognitive ability. Statistics suggest our collective fears around cognitive decline are not hyperbolic. Globally, the number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease will increase to 152 million by 2050, a 200 percent increase from 2018. By 2060, the number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease or cognitive impairment is expected to climb from 6 million to 15 million. At that point, a new case of dementia will be diagnosed every four seconds. Enter Dr. Sanjay Gupta. A noted neurosurgeon and professor at Emory University School of Medicine, Gupta is also chief medical correspondent for CNN. His new book Stay Sharp: Build a Better Brain at any Age, is aimed at helping us realize that brain decline is not inevitable. Yes, brain changes can begin 20-30 years before any overt cognitive symptoms, but you can improve your brain function at any point by following some of his straightforward strategies. The book is divided into three basic parts: fundamental facts about how the brain works and biological risk factors for cognitive decline; strategies you can take to protect and heighten our brain function, in-
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cluding a 12-week program you can follow to improve your brain; and finally the challenges of diagnosing and treating brain diseases. Some readers might find the first part the scariest. That’s the chapter where Gupta asks 24 questions to help you assess your risk. He says it shouldn’t scare you but…see the first sentence in this story. Questions range from “do you avoid strenuous exercise” and “are you a woman” to “do you sit most of the day” and “are you over the age of 65.” If you answer yes to five or more of the questions (which is not that hard to do), your brain, he says, may be in decline or could be soon. Gupta quickly moves to potential solutions, though. He dispels 12 destructive myths around brain health, such as that older people are doomed to forget things and can’t learn new things, and then offers what he calls the Five Pillars that can help you maintain or improve brain health. These include exercise, staying connect55PLUSLIVINGGUIDE.COM
