Cason Point: Baby boomer egged on in quest for brain fitness

Star staff Sherman Gauley, 90, uses the Dakim Brain Rosetta Stone Fitness device Friday at the Senior Concerns facility in Thousand Oaks. A famous TV ad of the ’80s tried to scare my generation straight.This public-service spot showed an egg. The Stern Announcer then states: “This is your brain.”Next we see a skillet as Stern Announcer declares: “This is drugs.”The ad then cuts to an egg sizzling in a fry pan.“This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” says Stern Announcer, definitely not a man whose sunny side is up.More recently I fear the millennial spot that opens with the shot of the egg. Then it cuts to the skillet just as Stern Announcer says, “This is your brain on Metamucil.”In this case, the egg lies there scrambled, an inert yellow gob glistening in grease.If you ask most of us aging baby boomers what geriatric malady we fear most: heart disease, sagging tattoos or erectile dysfunction, most would answer this way: Alzheimer’s disease.Our parents and their parents were the first generations to live long enough to be beset by old-age infirmities. Rosetta Stone American English Grandparents who read the funnies to us, showed us how to multiply by six and work a crossword puzzle descended so deeply into dementia that they forgot our names and then our faces.Watch someone you love struggle with Alzheimer’s long enough, and it doesn’t take a brainiac to realize physical health without a healthy brain is really no health at all.Researchers gradually are learning more about aging, which would be wonderful if it weren’t such a buzz kill.What is good for the old ticker apparently is good for the gray matter: eating healthy and exercising the body and brain daily. Boooring.To make brain exercise more fun, Senior Concerns in Thousand Oaks recently acquired a video game for the Lipitor and liniment set. Called Dakim, Brain Fitness, this approximately $2,300 machine is designed to assess cognitive function while giving the gray matter a good workout.I confess there have been times of late when I wonder if I am in the early stages of Alzheimer’s or maybe the world’s only surviving brain donor. How much memory have I lost — along with all those car keys, cell phones and sunglasses?The staff at Senior Concerns invited me to try out their new toy in advance of its debut at the center’s Brain Rosetta Stone Chinese Fitness event on Nov. 17.Dakim’s developer avoids the “C” word, said Andrea Gallagher, a Senior Concerns board member. If it were called a computer, it might intimidate some of the folks from the predigital days, she said. So there is no keyboard, no mouse, no nagging Windows Vista to navigate.Instead it uses a simple touch screen.Since it is tucked away in the corner of Senior Concerns’ Hodencamp Road headquarters, those taking the test have some cover. So I did not need to fear Granny going “duh,” as I flubbed my ninth straight exercise.The Dakim system is “The Ed Sullivan Show” meets “Family Feud.” Part variety hour, part game show, it’s entertaining enough that you don’t realize it is testing the six areas of cognitive activity. The games feature pop-culture icons of the big-band era. I figure instead of using Guy Lombardo, Dakim likely will have us boosting our brain power with Mick Jagger and wishing we had passed on the pipe during those Stones concerts.As I whizzed through long-term memory and language questions, the voice of Dakim’s owner, Dan Michel, praised my scintillating synapses.“Someone ate her Wheaties” his disembodied voice declared.But when I blanked at memorizing a series of numbers or words, the voice of Mr. Michel took on a consoling tone:“That is a toughie,” he said.After I completed the exercises, it was pretty clear my short-term memory has shrunk over the decades.Umm, where was I? Oh, yes that is the point, Gallagher said, the machine is designed to focus on the areas where the brain needs to work hardest. Yeah, that buzz-kill thing again.Dementia tends to set in about age 65. So for the earliest of baby [Rosetta Stone] boomers that is only a couple of years away; and the rest of us are only a few senior moments behind them.Since no one is getting any younger, the need for brain fitness certainly is food for thought.