What's that word? Aphasia?

Clare keeps complaining her brain is going to mush. She can't remember words, forgets where she's put stuff. I explain that it's not Alzheimer's, it's not dementia, it's .. normal. And here's the proof.

From "Variations in cognitive abilities across the life course"

Just for the record: a quarter of your capabilities get blown away by age 60. Then you fall off a cliff.

"Start lifting weights to fight onset of dementia"

From The Times today:

"People with mild memory loss should start lifting weights to help stave off dementia, a study suggests.

"Researchers have found that building up muscle strength helps to improve brain function in adults over the age of 55 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

"People with MCI have a slight but noticeable decline in memory, reasoning and thinking skills and are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s and others forms of dementia.

"Between 5 and 10 per cent of over-65s in Britain are thought to have the condition and up to 15 per cent of these will develop dementia."

I thought at first this might be a typical confounding of correlation with causation - that in reality, people who go to all the effort of weight training are simply a little smarter and more conscientious than their more demented brethren. But no:

"The study published in the Journal of American Geriatrics measured the effect of different exercise programmes on the brain of 100 people aged 55 to 86 with MCI. It found that those who took part in twice-weekly weight-training sessions for six months, in which they were made to work to at least 80 per cent of their peak strength, had significantly improved brain function."

OK, so they measured it.

"Yorgi Mavros, a research associate at the University of Sydney in Australia, and lead author of the study, said: “What we found is that the improvement in cognition function was related to their muscle strength gains. The stronger people became, the greater the benefit for their brain.

“The more we can get people doing resistance training like weightlifting, the more likely we are to have a healthier ageing population. The key, however, is to make sure you are doing it frequently, at least twice a week, and at a high intensity so that you are maximising your strength gains. This will give the maximum benefit for your brain.”

The findings reinforce research from a trial this year in which MRI scans showed an increase in the size of areas of the brain among those who took part in a weight-training programme. The brain changes were linked to the cognitive improvements after weight lifting.

Maria Fiatarone Singh, a geriatrician at the University of Sydney and the co-author of the study, said: “The next step now is to determine if the increases in muscle strength are also related to increases in brain size that we saw."

Clare has taken it all on board with her new 1kg "beauty bells".

So far, it all seems to be working, as far as I can tell.

The Flipper

This is for my convenience later this week ...

Product page here. Elaine & Mike did the ordering for my mother - I'm phone tech-support for the current (Sky) remote! Looking at it though, we could all benefit from this simplified device 90% of the time.

Weird stuff

My car keys went missing today.

We had just entered Morrisons in Cribbs Causeway. My mother was pushing the trolley, there to do her shopping for the week. Just past the PR mist squelching the vegetables I routinely checked in my cardigan pocket. No keys.

Only mildly alarmed, I checked my jeans: wallet still there, mobile phone in the other pocket and that's it. I now entered the unreal world of the totally-unexpected:

• denial ('this can't be happening') combined with 
• aversion ('make this go away!'). 

Where are my car keys???

My rational module took control.

• I addressed my mother thus: "I seem to have mislaid my keys. You carry on shopping and I'll try to find them,"
• I retraced my steps back to where we entered the store, looking carefully on the floor and under the racks,
• I worked on plan B: (call Clare in a minute, get her to drive the 25 miles from Wells bringing the other car key, take my mother & shopping back in a taxi).

Still no sign so I reported my loss to the store people (they also had a fruitless look) and then it occurred to me (far too late) to wonder whether I still even had a car. Back to the car park and there was no-one wandering around flicking a key fob and looking for flashing lights ... my car was still there. ('Should have immobilised it,' said Clare later).

Finally I returned to my mother, now halfway through her shopping. Without hope I looked in the trolley - nothing - then into her two rolled-up shopping bags.

There, in the bottom, my car keys.

So, I had helped my mother out of the car, then retrieved her shopping bags from the back seat, locked the car with the fob (I distinctly recalled this as it's something I mentally check afterwards) ... and then my memory is a blank. My reflex is to put the car keys in my pocket: it's what I do.

Why then would I have subconsciously put them in a shopping bag?

Clare teased, suggesting my mother 'dipped' me, 'planting' the keys for a laugh; my own thoughts turned briefly to quantum tunnelling, but there are just too many zeroes.

Everyone has been very quiet about the D-word.