What aspects does cognitive health education for the elderly include?

Judging from the practice of domestic communities and medical institutions, the current core content of cognitive health education for the elderly is built around three directions: popularization of cognitive aging knowledge, guidance on cognitive-friendly lifestyles, and coping with cognitive decline risks. The core goal is to help the elderly delay cognitive decline and reduce the risk of dementia, rather than instilling rigid knowledge points.

In the past two years, I have been giving lectures at cognitive intervention sites in the street, and I have met too many elderly people like Aunt Zhang. She is 68 this year. I used to always say that "it is normal for people to have poor memory when they get old." The last time I went shopping for groceries, I didn't even take it seriously, even after paying for the groceries. It was still a lesson that my children forced me to attend. This part of common sense science is actually the most basic content. It is necessary to clearly explain the difference between normal cognitive aging and pathological decline. For example, if you occasionally forget where you put your keys, you don’t need to panic if you turn around and remember them. However, if you forget what you just said and can’t even follow a familiar road, you must seek medical treatment in time. However, there are different voices in the industry on this part. Some psychiatrists suggest that the use of the Simple Self-Screening Scale should be taught directly to the elderly to facilitate their own monitoring. However, many front-line social workers feel that too professional evaluation standards can easily lead to sensitive elderly people being confused. The poor memory caused by poor sleep can make them anxious every day and increase their cognitive load. Therefore, when we preach now, we usually only talk about typical abnormal signals and do not release the scoring details of the scale to avoid unnecessary panic.

It’s not enough to know “what’s good and what’s bad”, you have to know what to do every day, right? We try our best to incorporate this part of the lifestyle guidance into the daily life of the elderly, and we will not make unreasonable requirements. For example, instead of talking about the empty "use your brain more", we will teach them to deliberately memorize new movement rhythms when dancing square dances, memorize ancient poems when raising their grandchildren, and even when playing mahjong, don't always use the simplified version with "Hun'er", and remember more of the cards they have played. These are all ways to use their brains without spending extra money. Diet is actually more controversial. In the past two years, the whole Internet was saying that the Mediterranean diet is good for cognition. We followed it at first. Later, some elderly people reported that eating olive oil for cooking every day caused stomach reflux. Deep-sea fish was also expensive, and ordinary families were reluctant to buy it every day. Later, we made adjustments based on the recommendations of the nutrition department. We told everyone that as long as they usually add more whole grains and dark green vegetables, eat fish two or three times a week, and avoid high-sugar processed snacks, it is enough. There is no need to copy foreign diet patterns. Only what suits you is useful.

There are also many people who think that dementia is an "incurable disease" and there is nothing that can be done about it if it is diagnosed. This is also a misunderstanding that we need to correct. There was a 72-year-old Uncle Li at the previous site. When he was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, he was so frightened that he couldn't eat. We taught him to do 10 minutes of digital connection training every day, and he went to the park to play chess with his old friends more often. After half a year, his cognitive score increased by 2 points, which was much better than the previous forgetfulness. This part of the content also includes how to cooperate with doctor’s treatment and how to prepare for daily care. However, there are now different opinions on whether to teach advance medical directives and guardian designation in advance. Some scholars believe that planning in advance can avoid later family disputes. However, many family members feel that it is unfavorable to talk about these before the elderly are sick, so we usually only teach them individually to the elderly and family members who take the initiative to ask, and will not teach them in a unified class.

In fact, the current cognitive health education is also slowly adjusting. It does not just include professional content, but more depends on whether the elderly can understand and use it. After all, content that can be put into practice is really useful.