The longer you live, the greater the risk

I was detailed by the boss to attend the Trust's AGM.  He in turn had been told to provide a stall publicising the activities of our chaplaincy team, but left himself no time to prepare the accompanying display materials, so that one fell to me at short notice.  I'm not complaining about that, it was challenge to meet against a deadline, the sort of thing that sets my creative juices running, and I didn't let the side down.

It was an experience to gather in a large function room at the local football stadium, a relatively new and impressive structure that dominates its surroundings, a former dockland area.  I don't really do football and have never before stepped into one of its shrines.  I use the word advisedly. It felt like entering a sacred space, confronted by relics, icons of the the game's heroes, the grandeur of the layout instilling awe and signalling how much this activity signifies to its devotees.   The club is their religion, the players their saints; which I suppose is why their personal lives and moral standards off the pitch are assumed to matter.  To me it was all as bewildering as it would be for a cradle atheist to visit Durham Cathedral and be unable to fathom why people lavished so much effort on giving glory to an imaginary being.  

The main presentation, before the unavoidable financial statement and Chief Exec's address, was on the subject of dementia, more particularly on reducing one's chances of getting it.  There was more than a whiff of denialism in this, for despite occasional spasms of excitement in the rubbish press, all experts know that Alzheimer's in particular strikes at random and we have NO idea how to prevent it as yet.  The same is not quite true of vascular dementia, which is associated with strokes and there are certainly ways to lengthen the odds against that affliction.  Even then it's a lottery: if there was ever a person who did everything right in terms of stroke prevention it was my mum, and she had a couple that blighted that last three years of her life.  I don't always feel that the medical profession has accepted the 100% death rate among human beings, but harbours the sneaking suspicion that if a person ate all the right foods, took exactly the right amount of exercise, quit smoking and didn't mess with drugs, they would outlive Methusaleh.

Even if there is some evidence that certain lifestyle choices do reduce the risk of dementia, those same choices also tend to add to life expectancy; and here's the irony.  Look after yourself and you'll live longer, but the longer you live, the more likely you are to contract dementia.  My wife's parents died relatively young, which was of course regrettable and maybe connected with their high-fat diet; but when she looks at what my dad is going through, and what I'm going through on his behalf, she's half glad of what she was spared.