It’s Brain Awareness Week, and here’s another tip you should be aware of: Alzheimer’s disease varies tremendously from country to country, and state to state.
The United States has one of the highest age-adjusted death rates of Alzheimer’s in the world.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some big states have even higher rates of Alzheimer’s than U.S. average, such as California and Texas.
Other large states, including Florida and New York, have rates significantly lower age-adjusted death rates of Alzheimer’s than U.S. average.
Check your state here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/alzheimers_mortality/alzheimers_disease.htm
No one knows what causes Alzheimer’s, but culture has a big influence on brain health. Indeed, the part of the brain that is first affected by Alzheimer’s, the temporal lobe, is the music, language and culture center of the brain.
Yet public funding for the arts lags way behind public investment in sports.
Maybe our brains are trying to tell Americans something: it’s time for a change in our values.
Over the past 20 years, Alzheimer’s rates have plummeted among some groups in the United States and in some western countries, for example Germany. There is good news about the brain: use it or lose it works!
But it’s going to take more than sports and physical fitness to “use it” so we don’t “lose it.” It’s going to take a new approach to the American Dream: life, liberty, and the pursuit of neuroplasticity.
