brain health

This past year I have been devoted to improving my health, especially as it relates to my cholesterol level.  In a not-so-humble brag, I was able to bring my overall cholesterol down 68 points (and, less importantly, lose 42 pounds) in just over a year's time, so the effort has not been in vain.  Given this new focus and my increasing age, I am starting to think more about how my lifestyle now will affect my quality of life when I am older and how it will affect how long I live.

One concern that I've had for a while is that there's Alzheimer's in my family.  My grandfather on my mom's side had it, and his mother probably had it as well.  While my dad's side of the family is clear of the disease, I take after my maternal grandfather in a lot of respects, so it would make sense that I get this risk factor from him.  This makes the following video hit close to home.


I've gotten the cardio-vascular health issue under control for now, for the first time in my life, and I am actively attempting to learn new things at a far greater volume than I have in past years.  This is the good news for me.  There are other risk factors I haven't addressed, though.  Specifically, I've got downright horrible sleeping habits, and I allow stress to get to me more than I should.  Since my last step toward being healthy in my old age was addressing eating and exercising habits, sleeping and stress habits are the next logical step.

I have always had trouble going to sleep on a good schedule.  Part of that has to be genetic, but part of it stems from the observation I've made about how I handle stress.  I figure I'll need to address how I handle stress if I'm to crack the code of sleeping properly, so that's priority #1 for me now.

So, my question to everyone else out there is what do you do to manage stress, and do you find you get enough sleep during the week?  Do you have any helpful strategies you follow to manage that?