irjO said:
Yeah but remember that the Alzheimer is the result of a poor diet through the years, no matter how educated or smart you are if you poisoned your body every day of your life.
Diet does indeed effect the head brain and also directly involves the gut. The gut is just as much a 'brain' as our head brain and both are directly connected via the vagus nerve. The state of one's gut, then, has a profound influence on one's psychological well being.
Chronic stress has also been linked to Alzheimer's:
How chronic stress causes Alzheimer’s, other brain diseases
June 30, 2011
Chronic stress has long been linked with neurodegeneration. Scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) have now found a mechanism: chronic stress (physical or mental) causes overexpression of the RCAN1 gene, in turn leading to neurodegenerative disease.
_http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-chronic-stress-causes-alzheimers-other-brain-diseases?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dfc47262ed-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email
And since high stress levels often correlate to occupations requiring high education levels, here's an author offering a mechanism for relating highly educated people and Alzheimer's:
``The amount of nerve connections and information hubs are likely to be more numerous and more efficient in people who are highly educated,'' said lead author Nikolaos Scarmeas in his study. ``The subsequent impact is likely to be greater than it would be in less educated brains, because of the higher levels of accumulated damage.''
Source: Alzheimer's Progresses Faster in Educated People (Update1)
_http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alzuc18R8oGc&refer=uk
I suppose that still leaves open the possibility that Alzheimer's can still be related to a person who is much more educated, as the anecdotes suggest, and adds to this the suggestion that a person at risk may be one who is very intellectually active in a way that has far out-paced their emotional involvement in life.
An active emotional center does seem to be a key to prevention or symptom improvement--at least for some people. As example, here's a story of person said to suffer from Alzheimer's and showed remarkable improvement by singing; an activity usually described as right-brained and involving emotion:
"I don't know what it is that changes in the brain when people with Alzheimer's sing, but obviously something does change and there is something very beneficial about it. It seems to kick-start something in the brain and has made such a difference to Bill."
How singing unlocks the brain
_http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4448634.stm
So, to tie back in to irjO's question:
...the question that i would like to ask to the Cs (and the rest of the forum) would be: Can affect Alzheimer disease the soul of an individual in any way?
The best I can answer is like this: 'soul' is mostly an esoteric concept and all I can investigate is the physiology of the organism. Personally, I would try and set aside any expectations based on my memories of her and try to be happy to experience my older relative as "a little girl again with her emotions", because she
has emotions! And if memory serves, most of the spiritual traditions require a person to "become like a child" in order to "enter the kingdom", so to speak.
With this in mind, no matter how I may internally consider her, I'd appeal to DCM in my meditations and prayers-from-the-heart to keep her safe and then trust that somehow, all is as it should be, mysterious though it seems.
