dementia-diagnosis

Taking your brain vitals: Stories from a techno-optimist inventing the future of human performance

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Dr. Cori Lath­an, author of Invent­ing the Future: Sto­ries from a Techno-Optimist

For as long as I can remem­ber, my father loved act­ing. Into his six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, he was quite active in the the­ater. He played Tartuffe in Molière’s Tartuffe, Nick Bot­tom in Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, and the Old Man in Steve Martin’s Picas­so at the Lapin Agile. When he won the role of Scrooge in a local pro­duc­tion of Dickens’s A Christ­mas Car­ol, I was so excit­ed for him that I bought tick­ets way before open­ing night. But he was hav­ing trou­ble remem­ber­ing his lines. Even­tu­al­ly, the direc­tor had to let him go.

To find out what was going on, my mom and dad went to his pri­ma­ry care physi­cian, who referred him to a neu­rol­o­gist. After wait­ing a month for that appoint­ment, the neu­rol­o­gist told Dad to see a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, who was booked anoth­er three months out. When that appoint­ment arrived, the neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist gave him a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive tests, includ­ing writ­ten, ver­bal, and com­put­er based. After anoth­er month, the neu­rol­o­gist called us back in and told my father, “You have mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

“No shit, Sher­lock,” I thought. “That’s why we went to see his doc­tor six months ago.” The neu­rol­o­gist then dis­cussed my father’s oth­er health issues with us, which includ­ed car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, sleep apnea, type 2 dia­betes, and by that point, depres­sion. I then had an inspi­ra­tion. “Dad, when was the last time you used your CPAP machine?” He admit­ted sheep­ish­ly, “I don’t use it. I don’t like it.” [Read more…] about Tak­ing your brain vitals: Sto­ries from a tech­no-opti­mist invent­ing the future of human performance

Alzheimer’s Disease: is our Healthcare System Ready?

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In the midst of much health­care reform talk, not Alzheimer's Disease reportenough atten­tion seems focused on ensur­ing health­care sys­tems’ pre­pared­ness to deal with cog­ni­tive health issues ‑with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease as the most dra­mat­ic exam­ple- which are pre­dict­ed to grow giv­en aging pop­u­la­tion trends.

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day, and the USA Today com­ments on a new report that makes stark predictions:
Glob­al Alzheimer’s cas­es expect­ed to rise sharply (USA Today)

- “The 2009 World Alzheimer’s Report, released today, esti­mates 35 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide are liv­ing with Alzheimer’s and oth­er forms of demen­tia. The fig­ure is a 10% increase over 2005 numbers.”

- “The num­ber of peo­ple affect­ed by Alzheimer’s is grow­ing at a rapid rate, and the increas­ing per­son­al costs will have sig­nif­i­cant impact on the world’s economies and health care sys­tems,” said Har­ry Johns, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion. “We must make the fight against Alzheimer’s a pri­or­i­ty here in the Unit­ed States and world­wide,” he said.

- “The report by Lon­don-based non­prof­it Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Inter­na­tion­al (ADI), an inter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tion of 71 nation­al Alzheimer orga­ni­za­tions (includ­ing the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion), indi­cates that the num­ber of peo­ple with demen­tia is expect­ed to grow sharply to 65.7 mil­lion in 2030 and 115.4 mil­lion in 2050.”

Link to report: Here

The Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion is orga­niz­ing mul­ti­ple Mem­o­ry Walks to raise aware­ness and funds. You can learn more and join Here. (Per­haps a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to orga­nize a “walk­ing book group” as Arthur Kramer sug­gest­ed in the Sharp­Brains Guide?)

The City of San Fran­cis­co, led by its Depart­ment of Aging and Adult Ser­vices (DAAS), con­vened since san francisco2008 an Alzheimer’s/ Demen­tia Expert Pan­el to iden­ti­fy gaps and issue rec­om­men­da­tions to address the grow­ing cri­sis in demen­tia care at the city lev­el, and is about to release a pio­neer­ing plan that may well influ­ence pub­lic health ini­tia­tives in oth­er cities and states. An inter­im doc­u­ment can be found here: 2020 Fore­sight-Strat­e­gy For Excel­lence in Demen­tia Care (pdf)

One of the major areas of focus for that strat­e­gy was Edu­ca­tion & Pre­ven­tion, and below we can share a sum­ma­ry of the pre­lim­i­nary find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions. We will high­light the final report when ready.

ALZHEIMER’S/DEMENTIA EXPERT PANEL 

EDUCATION AND PREVENTION SUBCOMMITTEE 

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The subcommittee’s charge was to con­sid­er how best to edu­cate the San Fran­cis­co com­mu­ni­ty about Alzheimer’s and relat­ed demen­tias to change atti­tudes, beliefs, behav­iors, stan­dards of prac­tice, and out­comes asso­ci­at­ed with the disease.

Spe­cif­ic top­ics addressed include:
· Pro­tec­tive fac­tors relat­ing to demen­tia, includ­ing risk fac­tors and brain health
· Ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of dementia
· Ear­ly access to services
· Com­mu­ni­ty education
· Edu­ca­tion of pro­fes­sion­als and non­pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing physi­cians, psy­chi­a­trists and psy­chol­o­gists, social work­ers, nurs­es, and oth­er care­givers, both paid care­givers and infor­mal care­givers such as fam­i­ly and friends
· Eth­i­cal issues
· Pol­i­cy issues

The dis­sem­i­na­tion of accu­rate infor­ma­tion about Alzheimer’s and relat­ed demen­tias can play an impor­tant role in [Read more…] about Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: is our Health­care Sys­tem Ready?