Almost every year, foundations have been supporting patients with dementia around the world. In Scotland, one of their packed up activities are Memory Walk, wherein thousands of people in the different part of the country gathered to raise money and walk for their loved ones.
As September is the Dementia Awareness Month, Alzheimer's Disease International celebrates with the theme Dementia: Can we reduce the risk? Alzheimer associations around the world focused campaigns on advocacy and public awareness with a packed month of activities including information provision, Memory Walks and media appearances.
The locations of these events take place on outdoors, as we all know that it is beneficial in improving one's mood, helping people to deal with stress and encouraging healthy sleep patterns.
Aside from fresh air and improving mood, Memory Walk leads the patients and walkers a physically active lifestyle that can have a great impact on their well-being. This leads and reduced the risk of developing dementia and encourage everyone to enjoy exercising in an attractive, safe and friendly environment.
The activity was established because of a statement that was proven to be true -walking "strengthens memory". According to a study in 2011, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, elderly subjects who walked for 40 minutes three times a week for a year experienced a 2 percent average increase in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain that controls memory and emotion.
Correspondingly, Mary Ann, Memory Walker expressed her thoughts on the event. She stated, that "we didn't know one another, but the support and true compassion everyone had for each other renewed my faith in people. It helped me to get through a very hard time."
