Alzheimer Gourmet's 8-step Plan to Avoidance

The folks over at Future Salon recently published this interesting piece on an 8-step program for reducing your risk of Alzheimer's. The article's summary of a presentation by Dr Greg Cole, a noted Alzheimer's researcher, includes many links for further reading and, of course, the 8 steps, or preventives, themselves.

The first one is of particular interest, and a fascinating tie-in to traditional Ayurvedic theory: eating a LOT of turmeric, a featured spice in what we Westerners generically call 'curry'. There are as many types of curries as the day is long, in India and worldwide. The yellow, musky one with a sharp bite that we often stereotype as the One True Curry is characterized by oodles of turmeric. Several sources I encountered say it is also a British invention, in much the same way as 'chop suey' is an American one: an attempt to duplicate some aspect of authentic regional cooking without all the work. Thank goodness for the BBC's guidance on doing curries right. But I digress.

I can take with a certain wry humor item 7, taking 400 mg of ibuprofen daily. Despite our chiropractor's loathing for the stuff, claiming it does liver damage, my normal creaks and crunches have me reaching for those tablets at least a couple of times a week. Sure, I could tough it out, but inflammation begets more soft tissue injury which begets more pain which begets healing inflammation, etc etc. A few years ago I would get the huge bottle (or worse, bottleS, packaged together) of ibuprofen at Costco/PriceClub and think, "There's no way I would ever use this up before the expiration date!" I still hope that a sealed bottle, dropped into a Second Harvest or similar donation bin, meets a useful fate.

I'm also keen on their recommendation of high-omega oily fish, especially sardines. I grew up in a time and place where sardines on crackers were considered a fine lunch. Here in California, people put garlic on just about everything: in their mashed potatoes, scatter the 'stinking rose' in and on steamed veggies, any protein source imaginable, and even roast it to spread on their bread. But OH the looks you get if you open a can of sardines in public! "And your garlic smells better than this HOW exactly?"

I'd best conclude before I end up posting my recipe for curried tuna salad, using the "good bad stuff", eg the spice bin curry blend from the loose bins at Whole Foods, chopped vidalia onion, golden raisins, and a little finely chopped celery and/or cucumber. But that's for another blog, coming soon.