دار بيبليون
Notes from a videoconference by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom, May 2024, about Alzheimer’s and its prevention.
Today, second and last session about Alzheimer’s and its prevention.
Some health tips:
Cinnamon and apple cider vinegar, which limit blood sugar. Alzheimer’s is considered a type 3 diabetes disease.
Vegetable juice, such as carrot, or fruit, but not sweet. This reduces the risks of Alzheimer’s.
On a psychological level:
Using writing from an early age: writing a Journal, expressing our emotions and feelings on paper, etc.: this is an exceptional and very important prevention of Alzheimer’s at an advanced stage. We have a Lebanese proverb, a play on words between Qalam, pencil and alam, pain: he who holds a pencil erases a pain: ours and that of others.
Golden rule: the more languages known and practiced, the better the subject’s mental state and the more it delays the age of Alzheimer’s: it strengthens the brain. We can understand this on several levels. Languages are ways of thinking, with very different sentence structures, as between European and Semitic languages. Word of the Prophet: he who learns the language of a people is safe from their deception. This is my own experience. I have to maintain my classical Arabic as my colleagues at the University have difficulty resuming French or English after a year of stopping. It’s like piano training that is lost if there is no practice. The brain develops like a muscle: the more you make it work, the better it is. -Avoid solitude, the more you are with family, in relationships, the less exposed you are to Alzheimer’s. It is scientifically proven. Story of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “One of my strong memories is my visit to a retirement home, there were forty old people with all the material well-being and health but these people were sad, no one smiled and everyone looked towards the door. A nun agreed with her: “They wait, they dream that one of their family members will come to visit them, and they are disappointed.” This relational poverty and feeling of abandonment considerably promotes Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer’s: we cannot live in the present, invaded by the past, and possibly by anxiety for the future.
A story of psychology that could be a Zen story. We create an illusory vision of the world. A farmer who had lost his axe projected all the signs of the axe thief onto a neighbor. However, one day, he found his axe in his field, and therefore his whole point of view on his neighbor was false.
Bernard Shaw: “The most intelligent man I know is my tailor, because every time I go to his place, he takes my measurements, while all the other people on the street have labeled me once and for all.” People change, but we keep the same attitude towards them.
Golden rule that Plato himself taught in which he joins the wisdom of Ayurveda: “The greatest mistake of doctors is to try to cure the body without curing the mind.”
Jacques Vigne: count the respiratory cycles in groups of 3. Stretch the attention.
When the ego is present, the present is absent, when the ego is absent, the present is present.
-Recite the Om: Concentration gives joy, joy gives concentration.