Word: dementiaism
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Here comes the latest horror story from the ragged frontier of care for the elderly. Like a lot of aging baby boomers struggling with ailing parents, Peter Levang fretted 2 1/2 years ago when his mother Dolores, already plagued with mild dementia, became incontinent. He considered a nursing home--the classic option for those too sick to live alone and too needy to live with family. It seemed a dreary choice. Then Peter heard about a center just 15 minutes from his house. It was an assisted-living facility, part of a new way to live--and die--with dignity...
...M.I.T. whizzes are working on it, though, developing a wearable known as the MIThril System. DeVaul says it will some day work as a "mental prosthesis" for people with memory and recognition difficulties, like those who have suffered a stroke or are in the early stages of dementia. "For a product to be viable in the marketplace, it has to have some sort of specific benefit to humanity," says Schwartz...
These results posed a chicken-and-egg problem: Did higher brain capacity protect the sisters from developing the symptoms of dementia, or were those with lackluster biographies already suffering very early signs of some brain abnormality that predisposed them to mental decline later? That question remains unanswered--but follow-up studies, to be published next month in the journal Psychology and Aging, suggest that exercising what brain capacity you have offers some protection. While all the sisters show age-related decline in mental function, those who had taught for most of their lives showed more moderate declines than those...
...which time Snowdon had accumulated some 100 brains for analysis. He and neurologist Dr. William Markesbery, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Kentucky, were intrigued by an idea advanced by other researchers that strokes and other brain trauma might contribute to the dementia of Alzheimer's disease. Selecting only the brains of sisters who had earned a bachelor's degree--to eliminate any differences attributable to education--they found that among nuns with physical evidence of Alzheimer's in the brain, those who had evidence of strokes as well almost inevitably showed outward symptoms...
There are several drugs on the market that can delay the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, but none that can prevent it. As the Nun Study shows, however, relatively simple changes in diet and lifestyle may help postpone the onset of dementia. Some of these suggestions--like getting a good education or wearing a bike helmet--make good sense in their own right. For others, you may want to consult your doctor--especially if you have a family history of Alzheimer...