Walk to End Alzheimer's

Join the Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer's™ and unite in a movement to reclaim the future for millions. Since 1989, the Alzheimer's Association mobilized millions of Americans in the Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk®; now, they ask you to register for Walk to End Alzheimer's, the nation's largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer care, support and research. Together, we can end Alzheimer's disease the nation's sixth-leading cause of death.

Find a walk and sign up as a team or individual.

Big Head May Lessen Impact of Alzheimer's from MedPage Today

By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today

A big head may protect against some of the ravages of Alzheimer's disease, researchers found.
Alzheimer's disease patients with larger heads had better memory and thinking skills than affected patients with smaller heads for a given level of brain cell death, reported Robert Perneczky, MD, of the University of Technology in Munich, Germany, and colleagues.
This relationship held true at any level of cognitive impairment among patients, they reported in the July 13 issue of Neurology. Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Big head 'helps fight dementia' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Why a big head may help protect against dementia (bbc.co.uk)

Lawmakers Urge Swifter Launch Of Home Health Care Demo

From Medical News Today

Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Obama administration to launch a Medicare home health demonstration project as soon as possible.

"The so-called Independence at Home (IAH) program, included as part of the Democrats' new health reform law, is scheduled to take effect no later than Jan. 1, 2012, but Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) warn that waiting that long would threaten the health of one of the country's most vulnerable populations," The Hill reports. "The lawmakers are pressing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to install the program 'sooner rather than later,' with a target launch within six months." The push may also have a political incentive. "With many seniors wary of the Medicare cuts contained in the Democrats' new health reform law, party leaders are eager to prove that those cuts won't harm the quality of care... It was CMS that, leery of potential complications surrounding implementation, had pushed lawmakers to delay the required launch of the IAH program until 2012" (Lillis, 6/29).

Congressional Quarterly: "Under the three-year demonstration project, people with chronic conditions such as Alzheimer's disease would have primary care provided in their home by teams of providers directed by physicians and nurse practitioners. Seniors with chronic conditions account for 85 percent of Medicare spending and often receive disjointed and badly managed care through the current Medicare system, Wyden and Markey said" in a letter to Medicare administrators. "Organizations that contract to participate are held accountable for producing 5 percent savings in the cost of the beneficiaries' care, but at the same time improving the quality of care and satisfying family members and caregivers. In return, the organization gets a share of the savings beyond 5 percent" (Norman, 6/29).

This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org.

Lawmakers Urge Swifter Launch Of Home Health Care Demo

A Danger to the Community? - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

By PAULA SPAN

So much for the stereotype of those nice, welcoming Minnesotans.

In Woodbury, Minn., a Twin Cities suburb, a proposed assisted living facility that would specialize in dementia care has run into angry opposition from some neighbors in a surrounding residential development called Stonemill Farms.

This is not, in itself, unheard of. Concerns about things like parking and traffic do sometimes surface when communities contemplate new assisted living projects. What’s unusual about Settler’s Pointe, a 45-unit facility that would replace a mostly empty retail strip, is that a number of its adversaries describe it as a potential threat to their children.

Here is Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Jon Tevlin’s description of the controversy.

We’ll pause here for a moment to allow New Old Age readers, so many of whom have up-close experience with parents with dementia and with specialized dementia dwellings, to say: What?

We’ll also pause to acknowledge that only about 50 people signed the petition asking the city to reject the project, and about 75 showed up at a community meeting to oppose it. Stonemill Farms has close to 600 new homes, many clearly occupied by folks who don’t see the old and sick, even those in the 15 apartments slated for people who need “enhanced” care, as a danger to the elementary school across the street or the day care center next door (whose owner favors the new residence).

But the Stonemill Farmers opposed to this project sound scared. In a raft of e-mail messages to the city’s planning department, which made them available to me, they express their shock at finding a “high-density,” “locked-down facility” in their new residential development — perhaps not grasping that such buildings are secured not to protect neighborhoods from marauding old people, but to keep wandering dementia patients from endangering themselves. And maybe the neighbors don’t understand that 45 units, with one staff person for each five residents in the “enhanced” apartments and one to 10 in the others, constitutes a fairly modest size for an assisted living facility, not to mention a high level of supervision.
Continue Reading

Untreated Poor Vision In Elderly Linked To Dementia

from Medical News Today

Elderly people with visual disorders that are left untreated are significantly more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease -- the most common form of dementia, according to a University of Michigan Health System study.

The study used Medicare data and shows that those with poor vision who visited an ophthalmologist at least once for an examination were 64 percent less likely to develop dementia.
Continue Reading

Memory lapses are common and increase with age; when do they signal Alzheimer's? - washingtonpost.com

By Rachel Saslow - Washington Post Staff Writer

Where did I park my car?

What is that lady's name?

Where are my glasses?

Some call these "senior moments" or "tip-of-the-tongue" experiences. They're mundane for many elderly (and not-so-elderly) adults, but when do they become something more serious? How does one know when it's time to get screened for a memory disorder?

"The reason it's becoming such an acute concern for everybody is that baby boomers are starting to get into the higher-risk age group, but the bigger driver for this is the baby boomers' parents," says James Lah, an Emory University neurologist, who is 48 and has parents ages 73 and 81. "That age bracket is very high risk, and seeing it in our parents makes you acutely aware and afraid of that prospect."

The risk of mild cognitive disorder and dementia increase with age; Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia. About 5 million Americans live with Alzheimer's and, in 2008, it passed diabetes to become the sixth-leading cause of death in this country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, partially because of the lack of treatments to stop or reverse it. Some studies estimate that a person's risk of developing the disease doubles every five years after age 65.

Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Dr. Oz's Five Warning Signs for Alzheimer's (abcnews.go.com)
• A call for change in Alzheimer's diagnosis, services (mayoclinic.com)

Observing and talking about pain behaviors

Image via Wikipedia

The University of Alberta and Alberta Center on Aging produced these resources because people with dementia often experience pain that is undetected and under-treated. This does not happen because family and healthcare providers do not care. It happens because people with dementia are often not able to clearly voice that they have pain. Often they express their pain in ways that we do not usually think of as indicating pain. For example, people with dementia who are in pain may rock back and forth, or they may withdraw from people around them. Often these actions do not get interpreted as indicating pain. Family and healthcare providers sometimes feel powerless to help because they do not know what the problem is or what to look for. Three resources are available on this website:

1. An online presentation about pain and dementia
2. Additional materials to give more detail about the topics covered in the presentation
3. A toolkit for organizations who would like to put on a workshop with these materials.

Read More

Mediterranean Diet Plus Exercise Lowers Alzheimer's Risk - Forbes.com

Image via Wikipedia

(HealthDay News) -- Eating a Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes fruits, vegetables, legumes and healthy fats, and increasing physical activity levels can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a new study shows. The latest research, published in the Aug. 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, is more evidence that healthy living can help ward off cognitive decline. Read More