Alzheimer's disease | How to control it | How yoga helps to prevent it | Meditation, asanas, pranayama and shat-karma

Alzheimer's disease named after Alois Alzheimer a German neurologist who described the disease in 1906. Alzheimer's disease is a progressive form of presenile dementia that are similar to senile dementia except that it usually starts in the 40s or 50s. First symptoms are impaired memory which is followed by impaired thought and speech and finally helplessness. More than four million people in India suffer from some form of dementia and this number is growing at an alarming rate. It is a brain disorder disease that impacts one’s ability to think and remember; brain cell connection and the cells themselves degenerate and die, the tissue has fewer and fewer nerve cells which results in memory loss and other mind related issues. Alzheimer's disease destroys neurons and its connection parts of the brain including the entorhinal cortex (A part of the brain which, together with the hippocampus, is important for memory functions), hippocampus as well as affecting the cerebral cortex which is assigned for the work of language, reasoning and therefore social behaviour being affected.

Hippocampus: complex neural structure (shaped like a sea horse) consisting of grey matter, located on the floor of each lateral ventricle; intimately involved in arousing an organism to action toward a desired goal, and emotion as part of the limbic system (a system of functionally related neural structures in the brain that are involved in emotional behaviour); has a central role in the formation of memories.

Some symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer's disease are:

Frequent mood swings, impaired thinking, and disorientation which led to withdrawal from work and other social situations.

Finding difficulties of a familiar place, speaking and misplacing things and poor decision making and unable to speak properly.

Day times sleeping, while in the night, their sleep tends to be uneven and disrupted.

Melatonin is a hormone produced in the pineal gland of the brain; and in fact, being responsible for regulating sleep cycles as it is to be produced after sunset or during night, as two hours before a person goes to sleep. So, for a sound sleep at night to be ensure adequate melatonin production in the body. Uttan asana, Hal asana, Sarvang asana, Padahast asana, Padam asana, Tad asana and shirsha asana: these asanas   can help the body to produce melatonin, the growth hormone and testosterone suitably.

Amygdala is an almond-shaped neural structure in the anterior part of the temporal lobe (part of the cerebral cortex in either hemisphere of the brain lying inside the temples of the head) of the cerebrum; intimately linked with the hypothalamus and the hippocampus and the cingulate gyrus (the cortical part of the limbic system); as part of the limbic system it plays an important role in motivation and emotional behavior.

The amygdala is responsible for detecting fear, negative emotion, anxiety and preparing for emergency events and plays a role in the conscious processing of emotions particularly for the emotion of fear. The amygdala plays a part in sexual activity and libido; with pituitary and pineal glands also giving support to it. The amygdala provides the information of previous bad experiences which is stored in the brain promptly, so that the brain can be more alert if such types of incidences should occur again, then the amygdala can take precautionary action. Over exhaustion of the amygdala is not beneficial to human and if fear is continually increasing then one cannot live a normal life. Meditation provides the way to get rid of fear and any bad emotion; in deep concertation the amygdala comes back to its natural existence, because master gland enhances during and controls the amygdala. Ten minutes of keeping in deep meditation is equal to six hours of sound sleep and where oxygen consumption falls to its lower level in meditation proved good results. Meditators gain sufficient prana energy within chakras that result in transcending outer limitation and gaining inner freedom and tranquility.

So, meditation, asanas, pranayama, mudra and shat karma can prevent it, and also to be cured; and, just need to spend 30 minutes a day for it.