Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger talk brain health on World Alzheimer’s Day

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Thursday is World Alzheimer’s Day and Maria Shriver is a tireless advocate who’s been on the frontlines of the fight against the disease for decades.

The cause is a personal one for the former first lady of California. Her father, Sargent Shriver, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2003. He passed away in 2011.

Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger
Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger

“My father was the smartest human being I have ever met, ” she explained on the KTLA 5 Morning News. “I wanted to learn everything I could about how a brain that smart could actually disintegrate like that in real time.”

At one point, her father couldn’t remember his own daughter’s name or remember words for certain objects like a glass.

From the start of her father’s diagnosis, Shriver began her advocacy.

She has previously testified before Congress, written best-selling books, produced award-winning movies and is the founder of the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement.

Two years ago, she started a brain brand called MOSH with her son, Patrick Schwarzenegger.

It all started during the pandemic when Schwarzenegger moved back home with his mom.

“We had we had so much fun. It was actually me, my girlfriend and her – so it was a funny dynamic, but we had a lot of fun,” he explained.

He noticed his mom’s love for protein bars and also took note of the many supplements she was taking.

“I was watching her take these different vitamins and nutrients and superfoods in the morning that her nutritionist and brain health doctors were advocating and I just said, ‘Why don’t you create something that has all these different things combined into one?’ You know (that) really has an ample high amount of protein, high fiber, no added sugar, has your vitamin B12, your D3, your Omegas lion’s mane.”

That’s where MOSH was born.

For World Alzheimer’s Day, the mother-son duo launched MOSH nutritional bars with ingredients key to brain health.

Shriver said it’s important to note that what we put in our bodies is vital for brain health.

“Every brain doctor that I’ve talked to said ‘If you could tell people two things or one thing, tell them to move, move, move, move, and look at what they’re eating,” she explained. “So we advocate a brain-healthy lifestyle. So what you eat, nurture, nourish or destroy, but get up and move your body, move yourself because that helps the brain as well, as well as sleep.”

“I think advocating a brain-healthy lifestyle at this age (as she points to her son), really will determine how well you age forward, my generation is just now catching on.”

For more information about MOSH, head to moshlife.com.

Follow them on Instagram here.

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