Walking and dementia

The advice generally given by doctors and researchers is that what is good for your heart is also good for your brain. This encompasses physical exercise, including a bit of walking.

In fact, this NHS web page specifically states that you can reduce your risk of dementia by 30% through an appropriate exercise regimen. 

It makes sense to me – improving circulation and strengthening the cardiovascular system must help maintain a good supply of oxygen to the brain. We’re talking brisk walking here, not ambling past a few shop windows or shuffling forward in a queue. 

So it’s always good to report a fundraising activity which happens also to be good for the longer term health prospects of those taking part. There’s a message in it as well as extra funds for research. Some of the exercise-based fundraising is physically very challenging – running a marathon, for example – but it doesn’t have to be.

By coincidence, I have found myself today reporting on two walking activities, one recent and one imminent, which belong towards opposite ends of the scale.

If you want something at the more challenging end, how about a medieval pilgrimage? Three supporters from Northern Ireland have followed in the footsteps of medieval Christians by walking about 800 miles from France, through the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela. 

What their final fundraising total is, we don’t yet know, but they have sent us some great photos and some snippets of their story. 

An 800 mile trek might not be everyone’s idea of a good time (actually, I’d love to do this one day if I ever have the time). However, at the other end of the scale, the Rotary Club of Nailsea & Backwell in North Somerset are offering a day of walks for charity on 23^rd June. The walks range from a 5 kilometre “stroll” to a more challenging 20km route, all through attractive countryside. Those who want to make it a bit more challenging can decide to run instead of walk.

If you live in North Somerset or not far away, why not book a place via the Rotary Club website? You could nominate BRACE as your charity and raise funds for research while doing your own cardiovascular system and brain a bit of good.

The fact is, walking might be good for the walker’s brain, but right now it is proving helpful to the brains of everyone who will one day benefit from research funded by sponsored walking.

More aware of dementia?

Sunday sees the start of Dementia Awareness Week, which is run every year by the Alzheimer’s Society.

It’s an opportunity for all of us to get people talking about dementia, but what is to be gained by making people more aware of dementia? Surely we all know that it exists and that it is a terrible condition?

Perhaps what really counts now is the quality of the awareness rather than just being aware that dementia is a problem. Just as we have moved on from thinking that dementia is part of being old to understanding that it’s a condition caused by a range of diseases of the brain, we need to get beyond the stigma and stereotype that still dog people living with dementia.

If your image of someone with dementia is that of an isolated, bewildered person utterly dependent on others at all times, think again. Most people with dementia can enjoy a reasonable quality of life if they are given appropriate care. Realising that makes it more likely that they will be given that care rather than shut away and neglected.

If you think that medical science can do nothing, you might be surprised to discover the advances that have been made and those which might well lie just ahead of us. Conversely, if you saw a newspaper headline claiming that coffee or Sudoku could prevent dementia, it was hype. The progress of scientific research is slow and painstaking and cannot currently justify the dramatic breakthroughs beloved of headline writers. However, research is slowly changing the way we see dementia and offers real hope of a very different outlook for people who develop the condition in years to come.

So let’s use Dementia Awareness Week to be better informed, not more scared simply because the reality of dementia has seeped into our consciousness. Awareness as the opposite of denial is a gloomy prospect, but awareness as deeper understanding is a different matter altogether.

Committed people

The London Marathon took place last month and we received great photos and an upbeat story from one of our runners, Heidi Simms, last Friday. Heidi happens also to be our most successful fundraiser at this event this year, though there is time for others to close the gap as their fundraising continues.

We really value the huge effort that people put into raising funds through sponsored events. It involves a big physical effort, of course – the training and then the event itself – but it also requires work of a different sort to gather sponsorship. The biggest BRACE fundraiser at last year’s London Marathon, Nina Barrett, gathered a team of friends around her and was very creative with her fundraising, passing an astonishing £6,300.

It’s not just the London Marathon, of course, and it’s not just running. Supporters have cycled, swum, abseiled, parachuted, tackled an assault course, climbed mountains and bounced on a bouncy castle to raise funds. There are more sedentary ways of holding a sponsored event if you feel both motivated and exhausted after reading this list.

The benefit to BRACE is often in the message this sends out as much as in the variable totals raised. I get to meet or correspond with people who are passionate about fighting dementia, usually because a loved has the condition or died with dementia not long ago. Those who help us most – whether in terms of fundraising or the stories they tell – are those for whom the cause is a passion and the activity a means to an end.

One of the most remarkable is Jo Earlam who, like Heidi, comes from Devon. She is committed to running 50 marathons before she reaches 50 and has used much of this prolonged exertion to help BRACE in a variety of ways. Dementia has touched her life with pain and this is her defiant response.

So, we are looking for more defiant people to do things for us. People who can raise money, but also people who are happy to send us great photos and moving stories that can become part of the bigger story we are telling. It doesn’t require athleticism or even much physical effort and it should be enjoyable to those who take part. What would you like to do to help us fight dementia?

There is some helpful advice on our sponsored events page.