“Picturing the ‘patience, love, and devotion’ of Alzheimer’s care” – STATnews
“My mother is feeding my father. He is no longer able to chew his food. My mother prepares mashed food for him.” – JALAL SHAMSAZARAN/NVP IMAGES
by Alissa Ambrose – photos by Jalal ShamsaZaran
“Alzheimer’s disease runs in photographer Jalal Shamsazaran’s family: his aunt, grandfather, and father, Majid, all have been diagnosed.
“So as he documented the final years of his father’s life, in Tabriz, Iran, Shamsazaran recognized his own potential future.
“’Perhaps the character and behavior of my father is a part of my character and behavior in future,’ he told STAT via a translator. ‘I can say that I am photographing myself.’
“Shamsazaran’s photographs depict grief and loss, but also show the strength and love in his family. In the photo above, Shamsazaran’s mother, Aliyeh, tightly embraces her husband during the late stage of his illness. In another, a portrait drawn by a young grandchild is placed by the elder Shamsazaran’s sleeping face — a reminder of the passage of time that a diagnosis like Alzheimer’s makes all the more apparent.”
Continue reading this article at STATnews; click here.
“Diseases like Alzheimer’s happen in two phases” – Futurity.org
Degenerative diseases happen in two distinct phases, according to new research.
“‘The two phases of degeneration haven’t been previously recognized, so it hasn’t been understood, clinically, that you have two different populations of patients,’ says James McNew.” – (Credit: Leo Reynolds/Flickr)
Posted by Jade Boyd-Rice
“The researchers conducted countless experiments over more than a decade, and they’ve summarized all they’ve learned in a simple diagram they hope may change how doctors perceive and treat degenerative diseases as varied as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and muscle atrophy.
“The study in Molecular Psychiatry proposes that very different activities of protein signaling pathways that regulate basic cell functions mark the two phases.
“’We would like clinicians and other researchers to understand that the two phases of degeneration represent distinct entities, with distinct alterations in signaling pathways that have distinct effects on disease pathology,’ says Michael Stern, professor of biochemistry and cell biology in Rice University’s biosciences department.
“’In other words, we think that patients need to be treated differently depending on which phase they are in.'” – Continue reading this article at Futurity.org, click here.
“Having Dementia Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Vote” – The New York Times
“Yes, you can help a cognitively impaired person participate in the election. But heed these two guidelines.”
“Credit…Christina Perry”
by Paula Span
“Edward Kozlowski often told his daughter how his father had walked across Siberia to come to America.
“Born in Chicago 99 years ago, Mr. Kozlowski grew up on Midwestern farms. He left West Point during World War II to enlist in the Army Air Corps and made four flights over Europe on D-Day. A mechanical engineer, he spent much of his career at NASA and at Texas A&M.
“And throughout his adult life, Mr. Kozlowski, a registered Republican, voted in virtually every election. ‘In my family, voting was the highest honor of citizenship,’ his daughter, Judith Kozlowski, said. ‘You owed it to your country to vote; that was always the message.’
“It remains important to Mr. Kozlowski, now a resident of an independent living facility in Chevy Chase, Md. He didn’t want to vote in person this year, wary of exposure to the coronavirus, so his daughter helped him request a mail-in ballot — even though he has developed dementia.
“’Some days he’s right on the mark, sometimes he’s not,’ said Ms. Kozlowski, 68.”
Click here to read this article in its entirety at The New York Times.
“Isolation, Disruption and Confusion: Coping With Dementia During a Pandemic” – California Healthline
“Daisy Conant hasn’t been diagnosed with dementia but exhibits clear signs of memory loss. She gets frustrated reading news about the coronavirus pandemic.”
by Heidi de Marco
“GARDENA, Calif. — Daisy Conant, 91, thrives off routine.
“One of her favorites is reading the newspaper with her morning coffee. But, lately, the news surrounding the coronavirus pandemic has been more agitating than pleasurable. ‘We’re dropping like flies,’ she said one recent morning, throwing her hands up.
“’She gets fearful,’ explained her grandson Erik Hayhurst, 27. ‘I sort of have to pull her back and walk her through the facts.”’
“Conant hasn’t been diagnosed with dementia, but her family has a history of Alzheimer’s. She had been living independently in her home of 60 years, but Hayhurst decided to move in with her in 2018 after she showed clear signs of memory loss and fell repeatedly.
“For a while, Conant remained active, meeting up with friends and neighbors to walk around her neighborhood, attend church and visit the corner market. Hayhurst, a project management consultant, juggled caregiving with his job.
“Then COVID-19 came … ”
To continue reading this article at California Healthline, click here.
“Boomers Show Greater Cognitive Decline Than Earlier Generations” – Next Avenue
Researchers say mental health disorders explain much of the decline
Credit: Getty Images
by Susan Perry
“The American baby boomer generation is not as cognitively sharp during middle age and later in life as previous generations, according to a recent study published online in the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences.
“The findings are ‘clear and alarming,’ say the study’s authors, for they suggest that recent declines in the incidence of dementia in the United States may soon begin to reverse. Cognitive decline can be an early warning sign of dementia.
“‘With the aging population in the United States, we were already likely to see an increase in the number of people with dementia,’ says Hui Zheng, the study’s lead author and a sociologist at Ohio State University, in a released statement. ‘But this study suggests it may be worse than we expected for decades to come.'”
Read this article at next avenue, click here.
“After 40 years, the Alzheimer’s Association sees signs of progress against a devastating disease. Is it real?” – STATNews
“A display at the headquarters of the Alzheimer’s Association in Chicago. KRISTEN NORMAN/ FOR STAT NEWS
by Andrew Johnson
“In 1979, a man named Jerome Stone, frustrated with the lack of options and information about Alzheimer’s disease following his wife’s diagnosis, brought together experts and families affected by dementia to launch the Alzheimer’s Association. One of their goals: find a cure for the disease.
“Forty years later, an estimated 5.8 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, with a new person developing the condition about every minute of every day. There is still no treatment that slows progression of the disease, let alone stops or reverses it. There are increasing doubts whether the prevailing theory explaining the foundation of Alzheimer’s is accurate.
“’I would have thought we’d be further along by now,’ Harry Johns, the association’s CEO, acknowledged in an interview at the group’s headquarters here.”
Click here to read this article in its entirety.
Did you see Google’s Super Bowl “remember” video?
Yesterday’s Super Bowl featured lots of commercials, but this Google commercial stands out.
“One of the biggest standouts came from Google, which showed that its home assistance service can do more than just set reminders or timers for day to day activities. Google’s Super Bowl commercial touched on a man’s memories of his dearly departed wife and how meaningful every nuance of her was to him over the course of their marriage.
“The commercial clearly resonated with viewers and garnered considerable chatter on Twitter, with one user saying ‘I’m in tears. Good job.'” – Yahoo News
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“Google’s lovely Super Bowl ad shows how sad the future will be” – MSN
“The dark road of dementia” – Al Jazeera
“On a car ride home, a woman thinks she is being followed, only to find an unexpected driver in the car behind her.”
[Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]
by Amy Doyle
“I have always tried to keep my fears a secret from my daughter. I want her to believe that I am the fierce woman I pretended to be in college. A poster on my dorm wall said, “Don’t be scared; be scary.”
“This prescription, I am learning in middle age, is limiting not just because it does not fit my particular psychology, but because it ignores the unique powers of most women. That is, we are trusted precisely because we are not scary.
“My daughter learned this lesson with me one night while we were driving 30 miles (48km) away to check out a piano we had seen on Craigslist.”
To read the rest of this article, click here.
“Signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s: When not to worry, and when to see a doctor” – The New York Times
“Forgetting where you parked is not reason for concern. ‘The problem is when you start forgetting that you drove your car to work that day.’”
by Elizabeth Gehrman
“It’s one of our biggest fears — being gripped by a disease that slowly steals the very essence of who we are. And early-onset Alzheimer’s, defined as striking before age 65, seems even more cruel, coming as it does at what is often the height of career success, perhaps as grown children are embarking on their own exciting paths. Stories like Tom Keane’s remembrance of his late wife Laurie Farrell, who was diagnosed with the disease at just 56, resonate on a visceral level.
“It’s important to remember, however, that Alzheimer’s usually affects much older people. ‘At 56, Alzheimer’s is extremely uncommon,’ says Harvard neurology professor Reisa Sperling, director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. While about 1 in 9 Americans will get Alzheimer’s disease, age is the greatest risk factor: 81 percent of patients are 75 or older, while only 3 percent — around 200,000 people in the US — are under 65. Still, it’s good to know what to watch out for, especially since, as Sperling says, Alzheimer’s ‘may go unrecognized in younger people or be misdiagnosed.’”
Continue reading this article at The New York Times, click here.
