Top secrets on how to be a better caregiver (part 2)

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Aging Care
Trust. When you are providing the most intimate care to an elderly person, they must trust you completely. And you must trust yourself. Have faith in your ability to be a caregiver. No one is perfect. You're in unknown territory. There are no rule books to prepare you for the role. Make decisions based on the situation and perform your role with confidence. It can be frightening, but you have to have the courage to do the best you can. And most importantly, seek help when you need it!

Arm yourself with knowledge. Learn all that you can about your loved one's condition. There is a lot of information out there. Many before you have had to deal with the same condition or ailment that your parent suffers from. Find information from healthcare professionals, the internet or friends who have gone through similar situations. Knowledge is power. It can guide you and instill confidence. Furthermore, when you demonstrate that you are competent to make decisions about their care, your loved one will relax and become more compliant with the regimens that you develop.

Do it from the heart. You may have taken on the role of caregiver because there was no one else to do it. You got the job whether you wanted it or not. But if it's yours, commit to it. Don't view caring for an elderly parent as an obligation. Approach caregiving as something you do from your heart. Your job is important. You are having a positive impact on the life of another. Caregiving is a selfless act. Make it something you want to do…not have to do. It's always easier to do something that you want to do.

Have humility. Even though your elderly parent is impaired, he or she still has an opinion. They can still teach important lessons about life and love. Be willing to learn from your loved one and avoid arrogance that may come from frustration. Don't disregard their opinion without giving it some thought. Take time to consider their point of view. Respond to your parent as the individual human being they were before they became "the patient."

Look for non-verbal clues. Body language is a big part of human communication and interaction. Your elderly parent may be visibly uncomfortable or agitated, but unable to express what is wrong. If you take the attitude of "well, if you're not going to tell me what's wrong, then I'm not going to worry about it," you might be missing a critical health problem or care need. Be sensitive to subtle non-verbal cues. Your loved one's responses, no matter how simple, open the door for you to more accurately understand what they need, or how much they need.

More soon

Top Secrets on How to be a Better caregiver

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professinals,

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Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get an easyceu or two

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Aging Care

These concepts can help get you in the right "mindset" for caregiving – and we hope make your life a little easier.

Remember the person inside. Your parent is likely different mentally and/or physically than the way you remember from years past. To respond to your parent's needs, you have to know him/her – and you do, probably better than most people. Your parent may have changed, but they are the same person on the inside. Always keep that person in mind as you give care.

Re-think personal boundaries. When it comes to personal boundaries – what can be talked about and what physical assistance can be given – flexibility and complete honesty is key. Topics that may have been taboo at one time -- like toileting and bodily functions – are now essential subject matter. Your parent may have trouble bathing or getting on and off the toilet. However, they are probably embarrassed to talk about it or get help. If so, be the one to the start the conversation. Be candid, empathetic and honest. Help them feel comfortable about communicating their feelings to you, then have the courage to tell them how you feel. Once the topic is addressed or the assistance is given, it will likely become a non-issue. So face it head on.

Have patience. Patience really is a virtue when it comes to caregiving. There will be times when everything your parent does is annoying, frustrating or downright dumb. But don't take it out on them. Remove yourself from the situation for a moment, take a deep breath and address the situation once you calm down. This is very important to maintaining your own mental health. Stress and pent-up frustration take a big toll on caregivers.

Come back soon for more tips on Secrets of Successful Caregiving

November is Alzheimer's awareness month

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November is Alzheimer's awareness month
What are you doing to find out all you can about this mind robbing disease and related dementias?
Visit this blog often to find out the latest news.
Here is what the president had to say
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America
During National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, we recognize the dignity and courage of the men and women living with Alzheimer's disease. We also honor the devoted family members and caretakers who bring them love and comfort, and we underscore our dedication to finding a cure for this tragic disease
...read the whole proclamation
Become an Alzheimer's advocate

Costs of Alzheimer's Disease Tops $600 Billion Worldwide

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Voice of America

The total worldwide costs of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, rose to more than $600 billion this year, according to a report issued by the World Alzheimer's Association.

The study estimates 35.6 million people were diagnosed worldwide in 2010 with dementia, notably Alzheimer's disease, at a cost of $605 billion in care and treatment for patients, as well as lost productivity of those with the disease and caregivers.

According to the study, 46 percent of people with dementia live in high income countries, almost 40 percent in middle income countries and 14 percent in low income countries.

Experts say the number of Alzheimer's cases will likely double during the next 20 years to 65.7 million in 2030 and to more than 115 million cases in 2050.

President of the Alzheimer's Association Harry Johns says the societal cost of Alzheimer's will skyrocket in the next 40 years, and yet there is relatively little funding for research in the world and the United States, which carries the highest burden.

"Alzheimer's research funding is at $469 million and that is up against that $172 billion it is costing us today for dementia care alone," he said. "And by the middle of the century, if we can not change the course of the disease, the cost of care annually will exceed one trillion dollars, that is cost us one trillion dollars, that is with a "t.'" It will cost us one trillion dollars."

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurological disorder caused by the death brain cells that robs people of their memory, thinking and cause erratic behavior. The incurable disease eventually leads to incapacitation and death.

Johns says Alzheimers is usually associated with people in their seventies and eighties. But he says the number of people under age 65 getting diagnosed with the disease is increasing as the population of many countries goes up and some of the economies of lower and middle countries improve.

Johns says it is important for people to get diagnosed early in the course of the illness.

"Diagnosis can mean a difference in their functional lives even though we do not have a treatment today that slows or stops the disease," he said. "Diagnosis can make a difference in their lives because of the drugs that are available, diagnosis is a positive."

Why Do Memory Problems Strike Men Harder? (part 2)

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abcnews

Why Do Memory Problems Strike Men Harder?

“This is the first study conducted among community-dwelling persons to find a higher prevalence of MCI in men,” said study author Ronald Petersen, MD, PhD, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “If these results are confirmed in other studies, it may suggest that factors related to gender play a role in the disease. For example, men may experience cognitive decline earlier in life but more gradually, whereas women may transition from normal memory directly to dementia at a later age but more quickly.”

For the study, 2,050 people between the ages of 70 to 89 in Olmstead County, Minn. were interviewed about their memory and their medical history and tested on their memory and thinking skills.

The study found that nearly 14 percent of participants had mild cognitive impairment, about 10 percent had dementia and 76 percent of those tested had normal memory and thinking skills. A total of 19 percent of men had mild cognitive impairment, compared to 14 percent of women.

“The finding that the frequency of mild cognitive impairment is greater in men was unexpected, since the frequency of Alzheimer’s disease is actually greater in women. It warrants further study,” says Ronald Petersen, M.D., Ph.D., neurologist and director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “If we consider the 16 percent prevalence of mild cognitive impairment in individuals without dementia, then add the 10-11 percent of individuals who already have dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, we’re looking at 25 percent or more of the population aged 70 or older who have dementia or are at risk of developing dementia in the near future. With the aging of America, these numbers are staggering and the impact on the health care economy, as well as on individuals and their families, is quite impressive. The need for early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention is increasingly important.”

Why Do Memory Problems Strike Men Harder?

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abcnews

A new Mayo Clinic study found that the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment was 1.5 times higher in men than in women. The research, part of the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, also showed a prevalence rate of 16 percent.

The research is published in the September 7, 2010, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Doctors are looking very closely at a possible clue to explain the prevalence of MCI in men.

Study author Ronald Petersen, MD, PhD, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said, "When we look at the men who have Mild Cognitive Impairment, they tend to have more of the vascular risk factors than women do, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking."

Study after study comes back with the implication that what is good for the heart is good for the brain, and this one seems to add the insight that the women simply have more heart-healthy habits than the men. The good news is that heart-healthy habits are well-understood. People can take a lot of well-established preventative measures to help protect themselves and improve their odds.

The Study Said...... come back to dementia views soon to read more about
Why Do Memory Problems Strike Men Harder?

The life of the brain: The promise of restoration (part 3)

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thestar.com

Kenneth Kidd
Feature Writer
DALLAS-And if there's a research community that could use a dose of very good news, it's the Alzheimer's crowd.

Roughly 500,000 Canadians over the age of 65, about one in 11, now suffer from dementia, more than half of those as a result of Alzheimer's disease.

By 2038, the number of people with dementia is projected to more than double as the huge baby boom generation moves squarely into its sunset years. (In Canada, the oldest baby boomers turn 63 this year, while those at the absolute peak of the boom are turning 49 and 50.)

Put another way, within a generation, roughly one in three Canadian households will have an extended family member suffering from dementia.

Progressive and ultimately fatal, Alzheimer's can be as emotionally draining for family members as it is confusing and debilitating for those afflicted with the disease.

The other dispiriting fact is how research into Alzheimer's is so far adhering to the old undergraduate mantra: the more we discover, the more we realize how much we don't know.

First described in 1906 by a German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer, the disease kills off neurons and the connections between them, resulting in the familiar loss of memory and language skills.

As Alzheimer's moves to other parts of the brain, confusion, mood swings, irritability and social withdrawal often ensue.

Two proteins, beta amyloid and tau, have so far been identified as the leading culprits in bringing about the death of cells. Both proteins occur naturally in healthy brains — even if the precise role of beta amyloid is uncertain — but something happens to tilt the balance.

Enzymes normally help clear away excess beta amyloid. In the brains of Alzheimer's patients, however, beta amyloid molecules start sticking together to form toxic clumps and, eventually, larger agglomerations called plaques.

Tau is a bit trickier in that it normally performs some essential tasks, such as maintaining what amounts to the transport system that ferries needed chemicals between the body of the cell and its nerve endings.

With Alzheimer's, the tau instead starts to pile up in thread-like tangles, effectively choking the cell to death.

Many researchers believe beta amyloid also plays a role in developing these tangles, that it has a sort of cascading effect.

But with Alzheimer's, things can get...more next time on dementia views about The life of the brain: The promise of restoration

The life of the brain: The promise of restoration (part 2)

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thestar.com

Kenneth Kidd
Feature Writer
DALLAS—Until the 1960s, the received wisdom was that once you became an adult, you had your full complement of brain cells. Hence your mother's stern warnings about protecting the only brain cells you'd ever have.

We've since learned that all mammals, including humans, give birth to new brain cells throughout their lifespan. But not all of those cells survive to become fully fledged neurons.

Somewhere along their journey to getting wired into the brain, they essentially commit suicide, a process called apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

For the most part, this is just the natural state of affairs. Biology isn't always efficient, discarding much of what it builds. Human embryos, for instance, wouldn't develop fingers if the cells between their digits didn't go through apoptosis.

The trouble is, as we age, the rate of programmed cell death in the brain increases. More and more of those new cells simply don't make it through the 30-day process of becoming fully connected neurons.

In effect, our brains lose some of their ability to repair themselves.

This, however, wasn't what Pieper was seeing in Room K3.406.

The relative multitude of new neurons that he eventually detected were the product of mice whose brains had been treated with a chemical compound dubbed P7C3 or, in subsequent tests, a derivative of P7C3 that proved even more effective.

The drug wasn't making the mice produce more cells, but it was somehow protecting more of those cells from apoptosis.

“Instead of 70 or 80 per cent dying along the route, only 40 or 50 per cent are dying,” says Steven McKnight, another University of Texas biochemist who worked on the study, published last month in the journal Cell.

This could have profound implications in treating what for many is the most terrifying brain disease associated with old age: Alzheimer's.

And if there's a research community that could...more next time on dementia views about The life of the brain: The promise of restoration

The life of the brain: The promise of restoration

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professinals,

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Here are more interesting dementia brain boosting activities





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Thestar.com

Kenneth Kidd
Feature Writer
DALLAS—Dr. Andrew Pieper isn't sure how many hours he spent in room K3.406, a windowless space not much bigger than a broom closet, except that it all amounted to “quite a lot of time.”

This, it turns out, translates into many visits per week over the course of three years, enough to peer through a microscope at roughly 27,000 very thin sections of the brains of lab mice.

Or, to be precise, the so-called dentate gyrus in the hippocampus region of their brains.

The hippocampus is associated with memory, and the dentate gyrus is one part of the brain that generates new neurons, or nerve cells — the little building blocks that get wired into the mind's complicated circuitry.

Pieper, a biochemist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, had the “very tedious” task of detecting those new neurons, employing a series of antibodies to help amplify their telltale signal.

He found a great many nascent neurons, and this is very good news.

Until the 1960s, the received wisdom was more next time on dementia views about The life of the brain: The promise of restoration

Mental Stimulation Postpones, Then Speeds Dementia (part 2)

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Allison Augbry

His(Yaakov Stern) theory is that mentally engaged people build up a "cognitive reserve" that may help them compensate when the initial brain changes associated with dementia and Alzheimer's begin to develop.

"One simple idea is that perhaps they have more flexibility in how they approach tasks," Stern says. So, if the disease begins to disrupt or damage one network in the brain, they may be able to engage alternative networks in the brain to solve problems or do tasks.

Delay Followed By Speedy Decline

So for those who are mentally engaged, it may take many more years for the symptoms of the disease to appear. But once they do, the course of the disease seems to speed up. Researchers say there's a bit of a silver lining here: knowing that the disease will likely progress more quickly.

"We think this is very good news," Wilson says. "It suggests that cognitive activity extends your period of cognitive independence as long as it possibly can."

And it will likely shorten the battle at the end of life. This means Alzheimer's patients may be less of a burden to caregivers and loved ones.

Mental Stimulation Postpones, Then Speeds Dementia

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Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get an easyceu or two

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Allison Augbry

When it comes to staving off dementia, new evidence suggests that the "use it or lose it" dictum holds true — at least for a while. But it also appears that mentally stimulating lifestyles may speed up dementia once it hits in old age.

"We do think that a cognitively active lifestyle is protective up to some point," says Robert Wilson, a professor of neurological sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

But the protection doesn't hold up indefinitely.

New Evidence

Wilson and his colleagues recruited 1,157 people age 65 and older from the Chicago area. When the study began, none of the seniors had dementia. During face-to-face interviews, each was asked how often he or she participated in stimulating activities. "Things such as reading a newspaper, listening to the radio, going to a museum, or playing a board game such as chess or checkers," Wilson says. Then they gave each person a score on a cognitive activity scale. The more frequently people engaged in stimulating activities, the higher their score.

More than a decade later, researchers followed up with cognitive evaluations and diagnostics. They found that among the seniors who didn't have dementia, the rate of cognitive decline was reduced by 52 percent for each point on the cognitive activity scale. But the results were much different for those who developed Alzheimer's disease — their rate of decline increased. The average rate of decline per year increased by 42 percent for each point on the cognitive activity scale.

Findings Fit With Theory Of 'Cognitive Reserve'

"Someone who's brilliant and engages in a lot of activities might reduce their risk of Alzheimer's disease for a while," says Yaakov Stern, professor of clinical neuropsychology at Columbia University

His theory... come back to dementia views soon to see

Link found between PTSD and dementia

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NavySeals

A report by Health Day News shared the results of a study conducted by researchers at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston.

According to the study, which was published in the September issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are more likely to develop dementia, when compared with their comrades who do not have the disease. The results, according to the researchers, remained significant even after other dementia risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke were factored in.

Dr. Mark Kunik, a psychiatrist and the senior author of the study, said the following in a news release: “Although we cannot at this time determine the cause for this increased risk, it is essential to determine whether the risk of dementia can be reduced by effectively treating PTSD. This could have enormous implications for veterans now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The study involved an analysis of the data from 10,481 veterans, aged 65 and older, who were examined at least twice the medical center from 1997 to 1999. Outpatient data was gathered until 2008.

Of these patients, 36.4 percent were found to be suffering from PTSD. Of those with PTSD but did not have combat injuries, 11.1 percent developed dementia.

The significance of the results of the study was noted by Dr. Soo Borson of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, who wrote an editorial to accompany the study. He wrote: “Confirmation of a causal link between PTSD and cognitive impairment in late life would have enormous global implications in a world facing a rising societal burden of dementia, a shrinking workforce to sustain its economies, and the difficulties of containing human violence.”