The Fragile Brain: The strange, hopeful science of dementia

This is an amazing book--a serious, technically very sophisticated introduction to dementia, accessible to the nonspecialist--though you have to know biology pretty well to follow it. (Especially the footnotes, which are critically important and really essential to understanding, but definitely not for the biologically untrained.) It is as good an introduction to the nervous system and the things that can go wrong with it as I have seen. It provides wonderful, clear explanations of highly technical matters, some discovered the same year the book was published. The amazing thing about it--what makes it worth my reviewing (I am not a neurologist)--is the sudden crash around page 155 when we get from what is wrong and what could be right to what to do about it. The last few chapters of the book are truly chilling to a man of my age (76). I have a small but real possibility of dementia ahead of me; most of my family had it, largely from strokes, not Alzheimer's. (I am in a study of Alzheimer's, as a control, to help figure it all out.) The problem is that we know quite a bit about how to reduce the risks of Alzheimer's--but we have almost literally learned nothing in 1000 years. It seems that we can eat well (Mediterranean diet and all that), exercise a lot, have an active social life, exercise our cognitive skills, drink in moderation, and not stress out too much--in other words, exactly what the great Greek, Arab, and Persian doctors of the early middle ages advocated. (Wine and all, in spite of Islam, and the Muslims would sometimes keep Jewish doctors just to make sure there was no anti-alcohol bias.) And they put it so much better. For instance, here is Raghib, around 900:" A table without vegetables is like an old man devoid of wisdom." And good old Ibn Butlan, around the same time, in Sir John Harington's matchless translation ca 1600: "Keep three physicians: Doctor Diet, Doctor Merryman, and Doctor Quiet." And perhaps best of all, Ja'afar ibn Muhammad, about the same time once again: “when you sit in good company, sit long, for Allah does not count against your life the time spent in good company.” This is almost literally true; modern science agrees that your life is longer by just about exactly the time you spend in happy, relaxed sociability.So the good news is that we know a lot that works. The not-so-good news is that we haven't learned much in 1100 years. Lots of details and further data are added, but you could almost as well use Ibn Butlan and Ja'afar as any modern medical guide. I hope we find out more and better before I need it....

Excellent book, as a nurse working in this field I found it gave me some useful insights

An excellent publication; accessible to all readers not only scientists.