Alzheimer’s and Dementia Resource-National Institute on Aging
Click to download the book as a PDF or order a print copy.
Check Out this Easy-to-Use Guide
from the National Institute on Aging (NIA)
If one of your family members or a friend receives a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, this book, Caring for a Person with Alzheimer’s Disease, offers an enormous amount of information and support. It’s organized well, overs a range of resources, and even uses an easy-to-read typeface.
From the NIA Website
This comprehensive, 104-page handbook offers easy-to-understand information and advice for at-home caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease. It addresses all aspects of care, from bathing and eating to visiting the doctor and getting respite care. And it’s filled with resources.
Examples of the Information Provided in Caring for a Person With Alzheimer’s
- Learn more about caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s with advice on everything from memory issues to holidays to travel to coping strategies
- Get more specifics about the medical facts.
- Learn how to seek and find additional help for you and your family member.
- Find out how to help a caregiver remain healthy and strong.
- Explore a range of safety tips.
- Get information about the progression of the disease and the last states of Alzheimer’s disease.
Here’s to the Health of Remembering — Even After Forgetting
If you find yourself forgetting things (and taking more time to remember them than you want), read Dr. Bill Thomas’ post, Tip of the Tongue, over at his Changing Aging blog. He writes about the brain and presents a broad range of research findings that address memory, forgetting, remembering, age, and ageism. As we grow older and despite forgetting, Dr. Bill emphasizes, most of the information is still in our brain as we move toward elderhood, though we are a bit less efficient at retrieving it quickly.
Best Quote from this Changing Aging Blog Post
It turns out that younger brains are good at quickly recalling bits of information (like a name or where you put your car keys) because they have a relatively straightforward filing system. Older people, by dint of long experience, “store” memories within a more diffuse network of brain systems.
At least once a day I have a tip-of-the-tongue experience, and almost always, the thought that I was trying so hard to remember pops into my head sometime later in the day. My parents, age 89 and 85, have the same experience. I do not worry about it, and I encourage them not to worry too much about it, because we almost always remember the information in a relatively short time (or we know where to go to find it).
I stopped worrying about forgetting after I attended a parents’ weekend lecture some years ago at Brown University — in a large lecture hall, standing room only. The lecturer, a professor and brain researcher whose class my daughter was taking (and whose name I cannot remember just now), shared some interesting and reassuring facts using a metaphor of old-fashioned library card catalog.
Important Lecture Points With Some of My Editorial Notes Read more »
Alzheimer’s Drug Researcher Becomes a Patient – Loses Job
This short article over at Caring.com reminds us that Alzheimer’s is not just a disease for older and elderly adults. Moreover the story reminds us that our stereotypes and dysfunctional thinking, when it comes to people who are coping with serious diseases, can do much harm.
Exercise, Computer Use, and Cognitive Impairment
A research study published in the May 2012 issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings finds an association between computer activities, physical exercise and reduced mild cognitive impairment.
Listen to lead author and neuropsychiatrist, Yonas E. Geda, M.D., discuss the study.
The article Computer Activities, Physical Exercise, Aging, and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Population-Based Study (PDF) reports on an ongoing population study that randomly sampled 926 individuals in Olmsted, Minnesota between the ages of 70 and 93 (abstract). The article is freely available at the Mayo clinic Proceedings site.
Participants were judged to be free from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) by a medical examination and expert consensus panel. This CBS Interactive HealthPop blog post describes more about the research. Individuals who participated in this part of the larger study of normal aging competed questionnaires about the frequency and intensity of exercise and frequency of computer activities. Individuals were also asked about caloric intake.
According to the article, the data indicate an association between increased frequency of computer use and lower mild cognitive impairment. A similar association was observed between increased frequency of exercise and lower mild cognitive impairment. Individuals who indicated both moderate computer use and moderate exercise appeared to have an additive interaction, lowering their odds of mild cognitive impairment even further.
In the article the authors point out that: Read more »
Understand More About Age-Related Memory Loss
Learn more about the book.
Just about everyone — aging parents and adult children — worry about memory loss, though many of us turn our angst into jokes about senior moments. This book looks interesting. While I don’t always learn cutting edge new information by reading these Harvard health publications, I often find the chock full of information that keeps me well-informed about how I can affect my personal health.
Here are two paragraphs from the book’s description at the Harvard health site.
There’s no getting around the fact that the ability to remember can slip with age. Many of these changes are normal, and not a sign of dementia. Improving Memory: Understanding Age-related Memory Loss helps you understand the difference between normal, age-related changes in memory and changes caused by dementia.
The report also offers tips on how to keep your brain healthy, and how to help improve your memory if you’re living with age-related memory loss. One of the key components of this memory-saving program is to keep the rest of your body healthy. Many medical conditions—from heart disease to depression—can affect your memory. Staying physically and mentally active turns out to be among the best prescriptions for maintaining a healthy brain and a resilient memory.
You might also be interested two other posts
A Daugher’s Long Goodbye: A Book Review by Mom and Me
When my mom picked up A Daughter’s Long Goodbye: Caring for Mother at the church library, she brought it home and quickly read it cover to cover. Then she suggested that I read it — well actually she instructed me to do so.
Caring for Mother, written in 2007, is not easy reading. Virginia Stem Owens describes seven long years of different types of caregiving — and her mother’s suffering — sharing observations and descriptions of decline, hallucinations, distant medical personnel, and an aging father with his own suffering and medical problems.
Often she writes with a touch of irony, but never with self-pity. Owen’s mother, suffers from Parkinson’s which leads to dementia. Eventually care at home is no longer possible, and her mother spends years in a nursing home. Every bit of it is still relevant today, more than five years after the book’s publication.
Here’s what my mother wrote to me after I finished Owens’ book.
This book traces the experience of an aging adult daughter who describes seven years of caregiving, watching mother slip into deeper and deeper dementia. The daughter’s deeper understanding develops in the process of caregiving. Read more »
Paul Allen Donates Another $300 Mil to Brain Research
Visit the Allen Institute website.
It’s a good day for brain research.
(Paul) Allen has charged the Institute with tackling some of the most fundamental and complex questions in brain science today. The answers to these questions are essential for achieving a complete understanding of how the brain works, what goes wrong in brain-related diseases and disorders, and how best to treat them. Read more »
Staying Sharp in Middle Age and Keeping It that Way
For weeks I’ve been intending to post a link to A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond, a New York Times article that appeared on January 19, 2012. The article, by Patricia Cohen, addresses mental fitness of people as they age and examines the reasons that brain power changes as people grow older.
Visit the MIDUS site.
Especially interesting is the research of a Brandeis University psychologist and principal investigator, Dr. Margie Lachman and others on aging research. Midlife in the United States (Midus) is tracking more than 7,000 people between the age of 25 and 74 as they age through midlife and into the elder years.
Some Interesting Points
- A college degree is associated with a slowdown of the brain’s aging process and longer life.
- The work of the brain that depends on accumulated information and experience gets better over time.
- Using a computer may improve mental functions in some ways.
- Less educated people appear to be able to make up for some deficits in middle age by reading, writing, and doing word puzzles.
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and for a while all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
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As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on work at AsOurParentsAge.wordpress.com and AsOurParentsAge.net
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing As Our Parents Age. To learn more about this blog go to the AsYourParentsAge About page.Connect with Marti on LinkedIn
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