Exercise, Not Pills to Prevent Alzheimer’s
We can do the “hard” work now with the goal of prevention. Or we can struggle finding ways to live our lives with dementia. After years of not finding a cure, the Alzheimer’s Association and other agencies are focused on delaying or preventing the onset of Alzheimer’s. At the very least, we’ll feel better and be healthier as we grow older.
Don’t Just Do the Right Thing, Act Beautifully
If there’s one thing caregivers feel a lot of, it’s guilt. Lest the stress and regret caregivers experience lead to life fraught (unfairly) with guilt; change-instigator, Gustavo Razzetti, helps us to trust our own wisdom. He writes, “being a hypocrite to please others, doesn’t make you a better person. You deny a part of you. At some point, that pressure will have to be released ….” He gathers wisdom of the great minds over the years in this thought-provoking piece that sheds light to “liberat[e] the best version of [our]selves.” Topics covered – moral lenses distort, blame and punish, our violent-self, acting beautifully, instead.
We think we’re smart enough not to be scammed. We’ve lived long enough and seen it all. “… among healthy older adults, age-related changes in the brain can make people more susceptible to financial exploitations… people age 60 and over were about 5 times more likely than younger people to lose money on tech-support scams—based on complaints filed—even though they were less likely to lose money in many other types of scams.” Two tips to avoid scams.
Let’s End Ageism
Ashton Applewhite presented the keynote address at the third annual Aging into the Future conference [TCV Update 11/5/2020 conference site URL no longer available], held in early April at the Los Angeles Convention Center. “It’s not the passage of time that makes it so hard to get older. It’s ageism, a prejudice that pits us against our future selves – and each other.” Applewhite urges us to dismantle the dread and mobilize against the last socially acceptable prejudice. “Aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured,” she says. “It is a natural, powerful, lifelong process that unites us all.”
This video is from her TED talk in Vancouver 2017.
A New Dementia Detected – LATE
[TCV Update 6/27/2023 URL to article no longer available. Click on two more links within the excerpt, below.]
A new form of dementia related to Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal lobe was discovered by analyzing post-mortem brains – Limbic-predominant Age-related TDP-43 Encephalopathy (LATE). “LATE shares pathogenetic mechanisms with both frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTD) and Alzheimer’s disease, but also suggests disease-specific underlying mechanisms,” per the Oxford University Press BRAIN journal linked PDF of the actual study. It is distinguished from FTD in that it strikes older patients. It looks like Alzheimer’s but it isn’t (click on the above title link for this article by AP News). Knowing this is “critical for developing better dementia treatments. Testing a treatment that targets, say, the tau tangles or amyloid plaques of Alzheimer’s won’t stand a chance if patients who only have TDP-43 are allowed into the study.” Guidelines proposed for LATE, the newly defined Alzheimer’s-like brain disorder Recommendations for scientists and public emerge from NIH-funded workshop.
Alzheimer’s Disease International Conducts Important Survey
Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) has commissioned the London School of Economics and Political Science to create the world’s largest survey on people’s attitudes around dementia. Your responses will form the basis for the World Alzheimer Report 2019, to be released in September. The survey will take between 10 and 20 minutes of your time and is available in different languages. The results will benefit people with dementia worldwide. Don’t wait for the June 14, 2019 deadline. Do it now. For those who want to get right to the survey, click on this link: https://lse.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cOWVdTlefxZE7XL
TVC Editor’s note: Completed survey on May 15. Took time to think about my replies. Time: 20 minutes.
Help ADI gain insights to help reduce the stigma of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Knowledge is power.
