Bedtime is often early – 7 or 8 pm – after an early dinner. Around 9, just when I think I will have some undisturbed time to read or write, I will hear him get out of bed and shuffle to the door and peer around the corner at me while I sit at my desk. He will do a silly little wave and announce his first wake up of the night.
Tonight, he came out and sat down next to me as I wrote. He waited until I looked at him and then told me that he wanted to talk to me. Conversations that start like this are often ones I don’t like.
What he wanted was for me to document “his phase” that he was in. It’s a problem that happens at night and this is how he describes it. It’s tension that keeps him awake, a bit like restless leg syndrome. He feels that his blood pressure is high and that he needs to have more magnesium water. He wants very much to sit and resolve this tension but knows that he must do something active to resolve it.
I suggested he take his blood pressure to verify what it was, but the act of getting up and putting the cuff on to take the reading was something he said would cause more tension. He didn’t want to do it but finally relented if I would go get the cuff and put it on him. (And yet he knew the next thing he needed to do was his high intensity exercise, which involved moving too. He admitted the contradiction.)
His blood pressure reading was 167/95 with a pulse of 49. He got up to do his exercises, which consist of mostly arm movements and a little bit of squatting for four minutes, but I doubt he spent that long at it. He insists that it be recorded as his hands begin to tingle, and he feels the stimulation up the back of his neck, and of course, he gets tired and breathes a little heavier. All this is important to note because it shows that you don’t have to have a lot of exercise to get what he calls “nitric acid dump”. This is an exercise protocol he learned from an online coach named _______. After exercise his blood pressure was higher 183/106, pulse 58 which he predicted would happen. After resting for a while and drinking more Mg water his pressure was back down to the pre-exercise reading.
From reading, he has a mental construct of what he thinks is going on in his body. Taking his blood pressure puts pressure on his bladder. Autophagy starts taking place a certain number of hours after he eats and makes him have to clear his throat and spit, makes him have to urinate, makes him need more and more magnesium. Something makes him feel that the whole process is speeding up and requiring more magnesium. He measures how much he thinks he needs by how much he is drinking. He used to sip on one 16 oz. bottle of water with 300 mg. magnesium per day and possibly another one during the night. Now he is asking for at least two and sometimes three. He asks because measuring the minerals is difficult for him. He shakes and spills some.
He believes the night time spitting and urinating are signs of autophagy, which is most certainly clearing the misfolded proteins out of his brain. He feels like a scientist, taking part in a ground breaking experiment, which must be recorded. (I don’t know how to explain the drama involved in his every move, every word of this life changing stuff…)
Hope in the Face of Dementia 