Component in red wine may hold answers in Alzheimer’s battle

Study examines whether resveratrol, which is found in red wine can alter or delay the destruction of the brain in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

Living alone with Alzheimer’s is a tough choice for all

Some 800,000 people with Alzheimer’s, roughly 1 in 7 Americans with the disease, live alone in their communities.

Landmark Alzheimer’s summit launched May 14^th

A push to find new treatments and preventions for Alzheimer’s disease began Monday at the largest-ever government-sponsored summit for the disease, bringing together nearly 600 researchers from around the world.

During May we are celebrating our fourth annual Mediterranean Diet Month! This celebration was created by Oldways and the Mediterranean Foods Alliance to generate excitement and awareness about the delicious foods and amazing health benefits associated with this vibrant lifestyle. The Mediterranean Diet emphasizes eating mostly whole grains, plenty of vegetables and fruits, beans, herbs, spices, nuts and peanuts, and healthy fats such as those found in olive oil.

The Mediterranean diet has long been linked to healthfulness and longevity. This diet also has specific benefits for seniors including increased mental acuteness and higher energy levels. Now we know that the positive effects of this diet even extend to reducing your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. In a study of more than 2000 participants ages 65 and older, researchers at Columbia University in New York found that individuals, who consumed a Mediterranean-type diet regularly, were 38 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease over the next four years.

All of this is good information, but how do you make changes to incorporate this diet into your own life? Follow our simple shopping guide! This is especially helpful for seniors, cooking for one or two, to find the best foods for good health:

• Buy fish. Shop at stores that sell fresh fish and will cut small pieces to feed one or two people. The Mediterranean Diet recommends eating fish twice a week, especially fatty fish like salmon, sardines, tuna and herring which are all rich in omega-3 fatty acids that reduce blood pressure and lower the risk of heart disease, which protects overall brain health too.
• Think of meat as a condiment or side dish, rather than the main event at a meal. Mediterranean fruits and vegetables, (such as apples, avocado, broccoli, beets, dates, grapes, carrots, kale, tomato, melon, zucchini, strawberries, potatoes and peppers) and whole grains packed with unique flavors and textures can easily serve as a satisfying main feature. Add only small amounts of lean meat such as beef round, loin or sirloin. Open the package as soon as you get home and cut it up into healthy serving amounts – about 3-4 ounces, or the size of a deck of cards per person.
• It’s easy to meet the Mediterranean Diet’s quota of daily fruits and vegetables by shopping in your local supermarket’s deli section and salad bar where you can purchase small amounts of raw and cooked vegetables, salads and olives. That way, you can take what you need and not have to worry about spoilage.
• Lots of Mediterranean fruits and vegetables can be found in the frozen food aisle. Buy them in bags, which make it easy to take out small amounts at a time and reseal. Add them to soups and stews, or toss with whole grain pasta or rice.
• Your weather may not always be as pleasant as it is in the Mediterranean. Learn about your supermarket’s delivery service. Can it provide you with food during inclement weather or during times when you can’t get out of the house?

Check back later next week for some recipes for seniors which feature healthy Mediterranean diet choices.

This weekend’s guest bloggers are the daughters of Standish Village resident, Claire Sullivan.

This is a poem written by her daughter, Pat:

–

Strangely Familiar by Pat Adams

—

She was dressed in lovely lavender, her favorite color

She said so, time and again, unaware of the repetitions

Wavy white hair framed a face softly lined

with creases that deepened when she smiled

a smile that was as wide as any 1^st graders

It reached up over her pink cheeks to twinkling bluish eyes

both curious and questioning

—

She seemed happy to see these strangers

who seemed somehow to know her

They greeted her one by one

like children lining up for something fun

Each lay a kiss upon her cheek

which to them, seemed so familiar

The kisses surprised her, tickled her sweetness

They joked and chatted, they teased

trying always to make her laugh, to please

As they talked she would buff and buff her fingernails

across the legs of her purple pants

A new tic or maybe a little bit of nervousness

done without awareness like breathing

or staring into space

—

As she spoke, words emerged from her lips

that were incomprehensible

but try as she would

she could not translate this newfangled language

Could not un-garble the unexpected verse

Then she would get silly, clap her hands with delight

and say  “butta ba boom!” as clear as day

They all laughed, happy to see her happy

She’d made a joke!

—

On that note they prepared to depart

cutting the tangled strings from their hearts

Each preparing to move on into their day

“See you later Mom,”

they sang in falsetto as they left

Pushing back the dark clouds swelling

behind their eyes and inside their chests

filing these precious minutes into the back of the day

a secure place to hold them for a while

—

Her smile became confused as she waved good bye

and as the distance between them grew

she would begin anew to buff and buff her fingernails

across the legs of her purple pants

A new tic or maybe a little bit of nervousness

done without awareness like breathing

or staring into space

This is her daughter Claire’s first hand account of her mothers’ experience with Alzheimer’s and what Mother’s Day means to her:

It was July 15, 2008. Dr. Rentas had just completed an evaluation of my mother.  We were facing her at her desk, my sister Patty to my right and my mother to my left when Dr. Rentas stated that she believed this was the first stage of Alzheimer’s disease.  Out of the corner of my eye, I was looking at my mother with disbelief.  She sat tall and stoic and yet it was unbearable to see the fear hiding in her eyes with her straining to hold back water from going over her lids. I saw sadness and denial and she had the courage to ask, “Are you sure? Is there anything I can do? I am just going to have to face this.”  I felt like we were just handed death sentence without a date.  We were losing my mother. She was going to lose her memory of us.  It was unbearable. My body felt like a balloon filling up with heavy waters and I wanted to put my arms around her but knew it would be too much. She might break or maybe the fear was we might.

My father had just passed away in 2007 of Lewy Body Dementia and we were shocked to see my mother begin to unravel.  They had been married 59 years.  She stopped reading her books. She became obsessed with her pocketbook.  For the first time in her life, she was making mistakes in her checkbook.  She was driving fine, shopping, remembering her PIN at the ATM, cooking, making coffee, cleaning her house, socializing down the Cape at the summer trailer park – all the day to day things, but she was panicking over keys, the pocketbook, and she began to accuse us of moving things.  She was having outbursts of anger and blame. And then we could not distinguish the difference between the disease, side effects of medication, and my mother’s grief. We felt powerless.

It took two years of family, including our cousins, taking different shifts to stay with her during the evenings or overnight. My mother would not leave her house for assisted living but as the disease progressed we were able to get her to River Bay under the story that she was accepted into a short-term rehabilitation stay, but River Bay was too big and it was too late.  And then we met Brooke Patterson.

We were told that my mother would need to move into a smaller facility and I had heard good things about Standish Village from the Elder Services.  Brooke came and paid my mother a visit and within a month an apartment opened up.  We moved my mother into her new apartment and we were hovering around her and Brooke told us they could handle her and it was now our time just to be daughters.  My mother was adjusting quickly – the social butterfly that she is, she was named “The Mayor” in the Compass Memory Support Neighborhood and then the honeymoon wore off.  My mother was getting angry to the point of making it unsafe.  She was then transferred for a geriatric psychological evaluation at Quincy Medical Center.  We were horrified and felt like we were all failing my mother, that it was too late for my mother to go anywhere.  Brooke came and visited my mother and assured us that this was not uncommon and that my mother’s medications needed to be evaluated. Then the miracle happened.  My mother’s chemicals were balanced and a new mother emerged – a mother we had been longing for our entire lives.

My mother has always been social, witty, a dancer and harmonizer.  She loved to laugh and cry at a funny joke.  She loved being out talking to neighbors.  She loved a nice glass of wine or a nice cold beer.  She was a person her friends would love to sit and visit on her porch or on the deck of her summer trailer.  But growing up she was not affectionate with us and we longed for her approval, acceptance, and affection.  As daughters we didn’t know her love on an emotional or physical level.  We realized we didn’t receive a death sentence that day in Dr. Rentas’s office. We discovered that Alzheimer’s gave us a gift – the gift of Mom who had been buried under walls of self protection, masking her anxiety and depression that she was suffering from and we didn’t know.  Once her chemicals were balanced we were greeted with hugs, kisses, and her “boom booms” of dance moves or a song.  I never thought I was capable of sitting and holding the warmth of my mother’s hands or to just have her hold me to the point of tears. I never knew her body warmth was so full of love and comfort.  She held my hand in the middle of an activity and she said, “I can feel that – that is perfect love.” I said “I can feel it too Mom.” My mother has had this disease for four years and she has not forgotten her children.  She is never angry – if another resident gets on her nerves she gives us the old “eye roll” – that she has not forgotten either.  Living with my mother’s Alzheimer’s has been a gift of healing love.  We longed to walk into our home growing up, hoping she would be happy to see us.  We walk into the Compass Memory Support Neighborhood and her eyes light up and she says, “These are my daughters everyone.”  She stands up on her walker and wraps her arms around us and doesn’t let go.  Everything we craved as kids is being poured into us now. We are in our fifties and sixties now and it’s not too late.  We are drinking up every drop of love she has and pouring it back.  Alzheimer’s is not death sentence, the sentence has changed, “I know my mother loves me.”  Because of Alzheimer’s and places like the Compass Memory Support Neighborhood at Standish Village, we now have new memories of my mother. We have snapshots of her eyes lighting up when she sees us and the overwhelming sense of a mother’s love.  Mother’s Day means more than it did growing up with my mother.  She doesn’t want gifts from us.  We finally know she just wants us.

Thank you Brook Patterson, Emma, Jeannine, Theresa and all those who have shown such love and support to my mother and the Sullivan Crew.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a heartfelt poem written by daughter Pat.

Device to slow down Alzheimer’s disease

New research suggests a ‘brain pacemaker’ may slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Study: Depression in Middle Age Linked to Dementia Later On

Previous studies have linked depression in older adults with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, but it has never been clear which came first: was depression a risk factor for dementia or an early symptom?

New Alzheimer’s Caregiver Website by MindStart Keeps Minds Active

The launch of a new website for people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias and their caregivers, featuring resources, information and products to caregivers, both family and professional.

When illness makes a spouse a stranger

Rare ailment, frontotemporal dementia, has no cure or treatment.

Daily Activity Tied to Lower Alzheimer’s Risk
New research suggests a correlation between higher levels of daily physical activity and a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Art makes impact on dementia patients
The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y., created “Here and Now” — an art appreciation program for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia that allows the visitors and their caregivers to look at and critique art and engage their minds without relying on memory.

Why does blood pressure matter?

High blood pressure or hypertension leads to a kind of scarring in blood vessels that has been linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. High blood pressure has long been linked to vascular dementia, when cognitive changes are attributed to small strokes. Now scientists believe that a link exists between high blood pressure and Alzheimer’s disease.

The Scientific Facts:

High blood pressure weakens the body’s arteries and causes a type of scarring (called white matter lesions), linked to Alzheimer’s disease. The white matter of the brain acts as a communication system in the brain, allowing brain cells to “talk” to each other. The tiny vessels that nourish the brain’s white matter are affected by even a slight elevation in blood pressure!

Several studies have been conducted to analyze the affects of high blood pressure on the brain. In a Johns Hopkins study tracking close to 1,000 people, the longer people spent in middle age with uncontrolled high blood pressure, the more white matter damage was seen in their brains. In another major study of women age 65 and older, high blood pressure was linked to a higher volume of white matter damage to their brains as shown on brain scans. More research is currently under way to better understand these links.

What can you take away from this?

Take care of yourself! If you have high blood pressure, or if you are at risk for hypertension take steps now to lower it and possibly protect yourself from Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and other memory disorders. Here are a few resources for more information on high blood pressure and hypertension management:

• What is High Blood Pressure
• Treatment of High Blood Pressure
• 10 ways to control high blood pressure without medication
• Other High Blood Pressure Risks

Thoughts on My Grandfather
submitted by Lee Larkin

I think my grandfather had Alzheimer’s disease. At the very least I assume it was advanced dementia. But he died in 1989 long before people even talked about Alzheimer’s, before we knew what symptoms to look for, before we understood how to help someone with memory loss deal with their anxiety. I grieved for him then and I grieve for him now because my family didn’t know how to help him or even how to appropriately communicate with him. He never had a diagnosis and he never received treatment. I think we could have made his last few years more bearable.

Pop was a wonderful grandfather. I grew up right next door. Pop and Nana’s house was always open, the candy jar always full, bright smiles always at the ready every single time we walked in their door – which was often. Every morning Pop drove my siblings and me to school, pampering us with a warmed-up car on cold winter mornings. He could sing Ave Maria and Silent Night so beautifully that hearing the songs today still brings tears to my eyes. I love the smell of cigars because of him. He was kind and gentle but had strong convictions that you couldn’t shake. He taught us how to feed apples to horses. He let us swing out in a wide arc over the local pond on a Tarzan rope we discovered. He served us breakfast and beat us at cribbage for two glorious weeks every summer at his beach cottage. There are so many happy memories.

And then there was the end when he was so ridden with anxiety that he couldn’t sit still. He harped on the same thing over and over again. I now know the term for that is “perseverate” and that it’s incredibly common among people suffering from Alzheimer’s. At the time we dismissed his fears rather than allaying them or “redirecting” him to some other safer topic. We weren’t as patient with him as I like to think we would be now, knowing that he wasn’t in control, he couldn’t just snap out of it.

My grandmother used to tell him he was driving her crazy (which of course he was) and she told the rest of us she was ready to divorce him after 55 happy years. She was only half-joking. I now realize that as the primary caretaker, she could have used more actual support, rather than the knowing slightly-embarrassed smiles we returned.

Pop had Alzheimer’s disease 25 years too early. With new understanding, actual treatment plans, much better supportive living situations than nursing homes, and plenty of readily available advice about how to handle someone with Alzheimer’s, my family would be in a much better position today to help him navigate the disease.

Pat Summitt’s Early-Onset Dementia: Lady Vols Coach Resigns Less Than a Year After Diagnosis
Pat Summitt, legendary Tennessee Volunteers coach recently announced her decision to step aside as head coach. Last year, Summitt was diagnosed with early-onset dementia-Alzheimer’s.

Can Household Chores Help Prevent Alzheimer’s?
According to a new study, even mundane, low-key tasks like gardening, cooking and washing dishes can lower the risk of Alzheimer’s if they’re performed often enough.

This story is from NPR, some additional information on the Alive Inside documentary: For Elders With Dementia, Musical Awakenings.

We had a story like these featured in our Headlines from last week. Here are some additional news stories regarding promising new methods to detect for Alzheimer’s disease.

• New Method May Help Detect Marker for Alzheimer’s Disease Earlier
• Alzheimer’s: New test aids early diagnosis, but worth it to know?