As a parent, it’s important to encourage healthy brain development in your child from infancy onward, and to take steps to keep your own brain and body sharp. Part of the benefit is that doing so can help guard against Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia.
November is National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month. More than five million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s or another of the great many kinds of dementia, and two-thirds of them are women.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, a woman’s “estimated lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer’s at age 65 is 1 in 6, compared with nearly 1 in 11 for a man. It’s as real a concern as breast cancer is to women’s health, the association notes, point out that women in their 60s are about twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s during the rest of their lives as they are to develop breast cancer.”
Although we often associate the risk of getting Alzheimer’s with getting older, maintaining a healthy brain should be a lifelong pursuit. By instilling the need for and making good choices, we not only support our own brain growth but also instill in our children some habits that can last a lifetime.
Here are some brain-boosting activities for you and your child that you can start doing today: