Hello, my name is Jitka Vseteckova and I am a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care in the Faculty
of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies at The Open University.
As part of the Ageing Well mini lectures,
we’ll be exploring how important it is, over our lifespan,
to maintain a well-balanced nutrition and hydration as well as a regular physical
and social activity in the older age.
We explore how using this knowledge might facilitate selfmanagement
and delay the ageing processes for as much as we can.
As we know we start ageing the moment we are born,
it demonstrates more significantly when we reach a certain age, the usual benchmark being 65+,
but our ageing starts much much sooner,
and the way ageing demonstrates when we are over 65
depends on decisions, we have been making over our life span.
Today we’ll focus on cognitive stimulation.
Previously we have mentioned the main changes
brought about by ageing.
These were changes in metabolic rate, heart, liver, kidneys,
brain, neural & muscle function
and overall mobility and physical and mental wellbeing.
We have been through how important regular exercise, nutrition and hydration is to both
physical and mental health & wellbeing.
Our cognitive functions are very important, and
we need to help our brain to keep its plasticity, and
capacity for as long as we are able to.
Brain, like muscles really, works better the more it gets stimulated.
Stimulation can be various, through
observing (people, places, nature etc)
trough interacting with people and engaging with
the world we live in and surrounds us.
We can read newspapers, magazines, books, learning new languages, take drawing classes,
computer classes, sewing and other handcraft classes, learning to play musical instruments
(Piano is highly recommended as a brain stimulation as using both hands at different times
really challenges our brain).
• The best way to do it?
engaging with whatever you have around you
will help you to stay well for longer enjoying better physical and mental health.
• Talk to people, go places, nature, or just your street,
being physically active, (by that I mean not just exercise)
but generally moving about walking and taking the stairs
whenever and wherever you can instead of using a car and lifts for example.
We need to remember to keep an eye on our hydration, if we are getting forgetful, we
need to find a way to be remembered, by someone or something.
We need to remember that dehydration, not drinking enough of water
can worsen the age-related memory loss
and mimic early onset dementia symptoms including confusedness.
We need to drink.
If at some point we have a feeling that we forget more
than we perhaps should we need to go and see our GPs.
• We need to keep an eye on possible adverse drug effects and or cumulative effects –
largely due to dehydration. This can affect our cognition, memory and slow us down in general
• We also need to alert our GPs if we feel
we are getting depressed and uninterested in things around us.
Sometimes this may be due to severe dehydration or hormonal
changes associated with ageing
and can be easily helped and reversed.
• We need to sleep as much as we can.
This is not easy as we are getting older, but
we still need the rest so that we can go and be active afterwards.
Regular exercise may help to get better sleep.
• We need to check our B12 vitamin levels,
sometimes B12 deficiency is behind some memory loss problems.
This is treatable and reversible (If picked up early)
• We need to keep an eye on our thyroid function.
The thyroid gland controls in large part, our metabolism.
If the thyroid is hyperactive,
we may feel confused if it is too slow, we feel sluggish and depressed.
Thyroid problems can cause memory loss and forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating.
Appropriate medication can reverse the symptoms (If treated early)
• We should avoid alcohol. Alcohol in larger portions is toxic for our bodies & brains,
dehydrating and contributes to neural cell death,
brain shrinkage and memory loss.
• We need to stay social. Social contact is immensely beneficial
and stimulating to our brain and I will talk about this more in the next lecture.
With plenty water to drink, reasonable nutrition
and being physically active and engaging with the world, people, places, nature around us
we will delay the onset of cognitive ageing and
we will be able to preserve well-functioning brain and body for as much as we can. So,
go get yourselves a drink of water and while you
are on the go why not enjoying a short walk in the
neighbourhood to see what and who is near where you live!
Thanks for watching!
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