I spent some time over the weekend proof-reading a draft copy of my new book.
Ready, Steady, Retire! Plan Your Way to Success in a Redefined Retirement is a new book co-written with retirement planning expert and fellow Chartered Financial Planner Justin King.
We wrote the book together following the creation of my documentary, which is released later this month, as Justin came on board to become Executive Producer of Boom! Demographics Are Destiny.
We quickly established a shared interest in taking our experience of helping clients live a fulfilled retirement and writing a book on the subject; not only looking at the Financial Planning aspects of retirement but everything else that needs to be considered.
Cognitive decline with age
Within the documentary and the book, one of the most interesting and valuable interviews in my opinion is with Jennifer Rusted.
Jenny is a Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex. Her research expertise includes behavioural neuroscience and cognitive decline with age.
Earlier this year I interviewed Professor Rusted as part of my documentary about the post-war generation entering retirement. I wanted to find out more about the outlook for dementia and other age-related diseases which will afflict the Baby Boomer generation in later life.
Here is what Jenny had to say on some of the steps we can take to reduce the risk of dementia in later life.
Here’s Professor Rusted
There is an awful lot of literature out there that tells you good things that you can do and these are reasonably well supported.
Exercise has an effect because we know that the brain is simply an organ really like the rest of the organs in the body.
If you have a good cerebral vascular system and if you are engaging the brain properly by supplying it with good nutrients and ensuring that the brain can eliminate all its by-products effectively, in other words by having a good vascular system that feeds nutrients and removes the by-products then that’s a really good thing to do.
Exercise promotes good brain vascular coverage and healthy vessels. A healthy diet – putting the right things into your body and hoping that the brain uses them properly – is another really good way to protect the brain.
We also know cognitive stimulation that asks the brain to work hard and challenges the brain to do stuff is really effective, ensuring the brain optimises its capacity, like the old Sudoku puzzles and stuff like that.
Social stimulation & cognitive reserve
The other factor that we know is important is social environment; social stimulation is good and social isolation is a risk factor for many age related diseases. It’s definitely the case living alone and living unsupported, is a risk factor for many things.
The other factor which we a bit about which is quite interesting is called cognitive reserve and that’s about putting in place a long term strategy to look after your brain.
“Cognitive reserve is about a long term strategy to look after your brain.” [tweet this]
A really good cognitive reserve provides the brain with the capacity to deal with the disease related changes that happen with dementia; people who have the same biological damage will experience quite different symptoms depending on how good their cognitive reserve is.
It’s a bit like having a biological window and some people have a big window so that they can actually sustain quite a lot of damage without showing symptoms and others have a very small window so any small amount of damage will result in the expression of symptoms. That’s something which we think is probably building up all your life; you can sort of add to your cognitive reserve all your life.
That’s why social environment, cognitive stimulation, physical exercise and diet are all really good things to engage in from a very early age because the earlier you engage in those the better your cognitive reserve and the better basis for sustaining good brain activity even in the presence of these biological changes that are happening.
Find out more about the publication of Ready, Steady, Retire! Plan Your Way to Success in a Redefined Retirement.
Find out more about the release of my documentary, Boom! Demographics Are Destiny. You can reserve your free tickets for the Cranleigh premiere of the movie here.
