Book Review: Keep Sharp

Build a Better Brain At Any Age by Sanjay Gupta, MD.

Let me make this short and sweet.

This is a decent book if you’re new to reading or trying to understand about Alzheimer’s disease.

The 12-week programme steps are useful if you are a new to beginning an Alzheimer’s prevention programme, or if you’ve ignored every other bit of advice in the media this would be a useful series of exercises. You can read the reviews here on Amazon.

This is a so-so book with little new in it if you’ve been following the research or reading other books such as Bredeson’s The End of Alzheimer’s.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Brain: Meet Your Inner Black Box

Introduction to Alzheimer’s and defining cognitive decline. The author lists 12 myths and offers advice on how to move past these common beliefs. (my note: pretty much available everywhere online)

Part 2: The Brain Trust: How Not to Lose Your Mind

If you’ve been reading about Alzheimer’s, there’s not much new here – eat right, exercise right, sleep right pretty much sums it up.

Part 3: The Diagnosis: What To Do and How To Thrive

I haven’t seen this kind of 12-step programme before so if you’re new to the field or seriously concerned, this would be a good starting point. (This would be the only reason I’d recommend this book – it’s a solid “thing” you can do if you’re concerned.)

Bottom line:

There’s not much new in the way of information but the 12-step programme would be useful if you’re just beginning your prevention programme. Check it out here.

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Book Reviews: ‘Steal Like An Artist’ and ‘Show Your Work’

“Steal Like An Artist” and “Show Your Work” are changing creator’s lives

Here are two book reviews you’re going to want to read if you’re in the creative adventure. I’ve known about Austin Kleon for what seems like a very long time. But, like a lot of things on the Net, his work slipped off my feeds on a technology change and I lost touch with what he was doing.

In cleaning up some other projects, I ran across his name again so I hunted down his website and RSS feed for my news reading system.  

I had read one of his earlier books “Steal Like An Artist” and even had the journal for this.  My search and rummaging through all my bookshelves for the book was in vain until something tickled my memory and I remembered I’d read it through the library.

I purchased the ebook version and reread it.  I found myself understanding it better and I liked it again and (a few years later) it spoke even clearer to me about how we grow from those we follow and those who have gone ahead of us.

The next book ‘Show Your Work’ was written in the same short, pithy, combination of text and graphics. (Note: neither of these books is heavy, long-term reading and you’ll only spend an hour and a bit on your first read-through.)

But if you spend some time thinking about what he’s saying, you may find – as I did – that you need to reread them and then rethink some of your own work.

The Message From ‘Steal Like An Artist’

The message from Steal Like An Artist is that it’s OK to take the basic ideas from another writer because there are no really new ideas left. It’s OK to take those ideas but create them in your own style and delivery system.

To illustrate the above, if the basic idea is “it’s good to have friends and to have friends you need to be a friend,” then how you create that message has to be uniquely yours. 

The underlying message is something we all understand and it’s been written/televised/cartooned/filmed before.

Now, in your turn, you’re creating that idea in your own media and your own words/images/story/medium etc.

And The Message From ‘Show Your Work’

And once done that, you’re ready to read “Show Your Work” because if the message of Steal Like An Artist is to borrow the basic idea, “Show Your Work” states you must then show “the how, the process, behind your creation.”

An example of this might be as I was writing my next book, I’d also write about the methods and processes that I used in researching, writing and promoting my book. It’s a call for transparency to readers/viewers that shows the work and humanity/struggle of the creator.

In Kleon’s framework, the audience truly wants to know the background thinking and work that goes into a creative act. 

Take people behind the scenes of your thinking, planning and work is the basic message. “Think process, not product.”

My Challenge With Book Reviews Of This Kind Of Book

I confess I’m intrigued with the thought of sharing some of the process of creating. The challenge for me is to decide how much and what to share on my various projects.

I’ll have to get back to you about this. Note you can read other posts about books right here

If you have a few moments, please share whether you think this kind of sharing is interesting in the comments below

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Book Review: The End of Alzheimer’s

“The first program to prevent and reverse cognitive decline”

I won’t bore you with the statistics about Alzheimer’s disease, suffice to say the numbers are growing and as the baby boomer generation approaches the age when Alzheimer’s begins to emerge, the numbers will be horrifyingly large.

From a personal point of view, I am within that baby boomer generation and to make matters worse, Alzheimer’s runs on one side of my family. As you might imagine, this has sharpened my focus on the disease and the prevention of it. So when I saw this book pop up on Amazon, there was no question that I was going to buy it. And, I am delighted that I did.

A very quick summary would be that Dr. Bredesen, in his lab at UCLA, has identified 36 molecular variables that can, when combined, create Alzheimer’s in any individual. Those of us with a genetic predisposition will be more likely to have some of these variables go active.

The important thing about this book is that it is scientifically, testable, and all 36 variables can be measured.

And once measured, solutions to all of these can be found.

Table Of Contents

Part One: The Alzheimer’s Solution

1: Disrupting dementia
2: Patient zero
3: How does it feel to come back from dementia?
4: How to give your self Alzheimer’s: a primer

Part Two: Deconstructing Alzheimer’s

5: Wit’s End: from bedside to bench and back
6: The God Gene: three types of Alzheimer’s disease.

Part Three: Evaluation and Personalized Therapeutics

7: The Cognoscopy: where do you stand?
8: ReCode: reversing cognitive decline
9: Success and the social network: to people’s daily routines.

Part Four: Maximizing Success

10: Putting it all together: you can do it
11: This is not easy — workarounds and crutches
12: Resistance to change

And not to put too fine a point on it, there are a great many other things that Radisson agrees with traditional medicine when he says that controlling variables such as stress, and a regular exercise program are critical in pushing back against Alzheimer’s.

Personal Note re Alzheimer’s:

Having all of the tests done is expensive. ($C 4K in 2018) But, given my family history, I took the money and on a recent trip to the US, I worked with a functional medicine physician and had the tests done. Note while I went “all in” my physician indicated there were some that “might’ be avoided because of the cost.

I am not able to describe the feeling of relief when the tests came back with few problem areas.

To be sure, there were some things that needed improvement but I was under the number of variables that indicated the disease was well established. And, by adding three supplements to my daily list, I could drive the test results to almost zero.

But what this means is that I have to maintain my fitness regime, my meditating, and have this testing done every few years to ensure I’m still on track to avoid mental degradation.

You can read the reviews and find the book here on Amazon

I note that fitness and meditation are recommended for a wide variety of anti-aging medical conditions.

From my point of view, the $4K was money well spent. And I know my mom would approve. (at 91, she’s had Alzheimer’s of increasing severity for over 16 years now and is in a nursing home) I do not want to go down that road and if you’ve ever had one of your loved ones take this journey, you too will recognize what level of commitment you’d make to avoid it for yourself.

The bottom line is that I would recommend this book highly to both potential patients and their families.

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