Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Physical Activity

3 Jun 2019

24 Hour Extreme Challenge for CHeBA

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au This week at CHeBA we are Team Dr Claire Burley; an adventure-addicted scientist who is passionate about raising awareness of dementia and other brain health related conditions. At midday on Saturday, 8th June, Dr Burley will begin 24 hours of pushing her body to extreme limits in the OCRWC Enduro (Obstacle Course Racing World Championships) in Sydney, Australia. Her goal with this event is to raise money for CHeBA while promoting evidence-based awareness that physical activity has a direct and positive impact on brain health. “I have several… Read More
19 Feb 2019

Turning the Wheels – Cycling Without Age

DR VIBEKE CATTS and HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au CHeBA’s Older Australian Twins Study Co-ordinator, Dr Vibeke Catts, has joined over 13,000 Cycling Without Age volunteers world-wide in piloting purpose-built trishaws, which provide seniors the opportunity to get into the outdoors and (again) experience wind in their hair.  A generous private donation to Montefiore Randwick provided the funds to purchase a trishaw. Throughout 2018, Mr Adrian Boss from BIKEast worked alongside Montefiore’s Leisure & Lifestyle and Volunteers departments to train volunteer pilots and get the… Read More
25 Feb 2015

Keeping Fit to Delay Dementia

MONICA CATIONS By now it is well established that poor cardiovascular and cognitive health in early life can increase the risk of dementia in old age.  But did you know that it could also bring forward the age of dementia onset to midlife?  Evidence is emerging to suggest that fitness as early as the teenage years could be associated with younger onset dementia (YOD). Younger onset dementia is any dementia with onset before the age of 65 years.  It is much less common than dementia in old age, but there are currently around 20 000 people with YOD living in Australia.  Dementia in midlife… Read More

Positive Ageing

PROFESSOR HENRY BRODATY and PROFESSOR PERMINDER SACHDEV In historical times, the elderly were highly revered.  Wisdom and knowledge were respected and ageing was seen as a positive experience.  Over the decades, our opinion of ageing has shifted and certainly in parts of the first-world ageing has become a loaded term.  ‘Being old’ is sometimes associated – particularly by many of the younger generation - with health issues and decline.  From the perspective of everyone at the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), it’s time to stop that trend and re-think the meaning of ageing.  Positive… Read More

Ageing Well - Living Healthier

PROFESSOR HENRY BRODATY, MD, PhD Prevention We all become slower and more forgetful as we age, some of us more than others. When this change is accelerated and interferes with a variety of thinking or cognitive abilities and interferes with our day to day functioning, this is diagnosed as dementia, of which the most common type is Alzheimer’s disease. Surveys of the population indicate that dementia in general and Alzheimer’s in particular, along with cancer, are the health problems that we generally fear most. Rightly so! As we are living longer the chances of developing a dementia… Read More