dementia views you can use

Friday, November 9, 2018

Dementia-does vitamin E improve lives

Difficulty with activities of daily living often affect Alzheimer's patients. Disruption to daily routine is one of the hardest burdens for caregivers. New research suggests that Vitamin E may slow functional decline in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease. This includes problems with daily activities such as:

Shopping
Preparing meals
Planning
Traveling

It appears to also decrease caregiver burden. There was no added benefit for memory and cognitive testing with the vitamin.

The research was performed by the faculty of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinaiworking with Veterans Administration Medical Centers. The study is published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers investigated vitamin E as α-Tocopherol, an important fat-soluble antioxidant. Mary Sano, PhD, was the trial co-investigator, and professor in the department of psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and director of research at the James J. Peters Veteran's Administration Medical Center, Bronx, New York. She said,

"Since the cholinesterase inhibitors [Aricept/donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine], we have had very little to offer patients with mild-to-moderate dementia."

"This trial showed that vitamin E delays progression of functional decline by 19% per year, which translates into 6.2 months benefit over placebo."

The finding is valuable because vitamin E is easy to purchase at local drugstores and it is also inexpensive. The clinical trial investigators believe it can be recommended as a treatment strategy, based on the double-blind randomized controlled trial.

The Veteran's Administration Cooperative Randomized Trial of Vitamin E and memantine in Alzheimer's Disease (TEAM-AD examined the effects of vitamin E 2,000 IU/d, 20 mg/d of memantine, the combination, or placebo on Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study/Activities of Daily Living (ADCS-ADL) Inventory Score. Cognitive, neuropsychiatric, functional, and caregiver measures were secondary outcomes. A group of 613 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease were in the study, which was launched in August 2007 and finished in September 2012 at 14 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers.

Dr. Sano previously led a study on Vitamin E in patients with moderately severe Alzheimer's disease. She found that the vitamin slowed disease progression in this group of patients as well.

Mount Sinai Medical Center, via Newswise.

Journal Reference:

Maurice W. Dysken, Mary Sano, Sanjay Asthana, Julia E. Vertrees, Muralidhar Pallaki, Maria Llorente, Susan Love, Gerard D. Schellenberg, J. Riley McCarten, Julie Malphurs, Susana Prieto, Peijun Chen, David J. Loreck, George Trapp, Rajbir S. Bakshi, Jacobo E. Mintzer, Judith L. Heidebrink, Ana Vidal-Cardona, Lillian M. Arroyo, Angel R. Cruz, Sally Zachariah, Neil W. Kowall, Mohit P. Chopra, Suzanne Craft, Stephen Thielke, Carolyn L. Turvey, Catherine Woodman, Kimberly A. Monnell, Kimberly Gordon, Julie Tomaska, Yoav Segal, Peter N. Peduzzi, Peter D. Guarino. Effect of Vitamin E and Memantine on Functional Decline in Alzheimer Disease. JAMA, 2014; 311 (1): 33 DOI:10.1001/jama.2013.282834

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Alzheimer's persons need the right amount of coconut oil

Tablespoons	Milliliters	Teaspoons
1 tablespoon =	15 milliters =	3 teaspoons
1/3 tablespoon =	5 milliters =	1 teaspoon

Dr. Newport's Treatment for Her Husband

The following is not medical advice. Be sure to consult your physician before trying this yourself.

You may start with one teaspoon of coconut oil in each meal.
If available, use a mixture of 1/2 coconut oil and 1/2 MCT oil.
Increase the amount gradually, protecting against side effects.
Try to get as much as 3 tablespoons per meal and two tablespoons at bedtime.

For the full one-hour video that covers coconut oil and Alzheimer's in depth, check out Dr. Newport's full-length lecture at TheIHMC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feyydeMFWy4

Dr. Newport's book on Alzheimer's, Coconut Oil & Ketones

Monday, November 5, 2018

In dementia care-How to tum a no into a yes

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Memory-Mood Boosted by Curcumin

Lovers of Indian food, give yourselves a second helping: Daily consumption of a certain form of curcumin — the substance that gives Indian curry its bright color — improved memory and mood in people with mild, age-related memory loss, according to the results of a study conducted by UCLA researchers.

Curcumin, Memory & Alzheimer's

The research, published online in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, examined the effects of an easily absorbed curcumin supplement on memory performance in people without dementia, as well as curcumin’s potential impact on the microscopic plaques and tangles in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Leigh Hopper/UCLA Health

Dr. Gary Small

Found in turmeric, curcumin has previously been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties in lab studies. It also has been suggested as a possible reason that senior citizens in India, where curcumin is a dietary staple, have a lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and better cognitive performance.

“Exactly how curcumin exerts its effects is not certain, but it may be due to its ability to reduce brain inﬂammation, which has been linked to both Alzheimer’s disease and major depression,” said Dr. Gary Small, director of geriatric psychiatry at UCLA’s Longevity Center and of the geriatric psychiatry division at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and the study’s first author.

90 Milligrams of Curcumin

The double-blind, placebo-controlled study involved 40 adults between the ages of 50 and 90 years who had mild memory complaints. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either a placebo or 90 milligrams of curcumin twice daily for 18 months.

All 40 subjects received standardized cognitive assessments at the start of the study and at six-month intervals, and monitoring of curcumin levels in their blood at the start of the study and after 18 months. Thirty of the volunteers underwent positron emission tomography, or PET scans, to determine the levels of amyloid and tau in their brains at the start of the study and after 18 months.

Significant Improvements in Memory & Attention

The people who took curcumin experienced significant improvements in their memory and attention abilities, while the subjects who received placebo did not, Small said. In memory tests, the people taking curcumin improved by 28 percent over the 18 months. Those taking curcumin also had mild improvements in mood, and their brain PET scans showed significantly less amyloid and tau signals in the amygdala and hypothalamus than those who took placebos.

The amygdala and hypothalamus are regions of the brain that control several memory and emotional functions.

Four people taking curcumin, and two taking placebos, experienced mild side effects such as abdominal pain and nausea.

Relatively Safe Form of Curcumin

The researchers plan to conduct a follow-up study with a larger number of people. That study will include some people with mild depression so the scientists can explore whether curcumin also has antidepressant effects. The larger sample also would allow them to analyze whether curcumin’s memory-enhancing effects vary according to people’s genetic risk for Alzheimer’s, their age or the extent of their cognitive problems.

“These results suggest that taking this relatively safe form of curcumin could provide meaningful cognitive benefits over the years,” said Small, UCLA’s Parlow–Solomon Professor on Aging.

SOURCE:

UCLA
The paper’s authors, in addition to Small, are Prabha Siddarth, Dr. Zhaoping Li, Karen Miller, Linda Ercoli, Natacha Emerson, Jacqueline Martinez, Koon-Pong Wong, Jie Liu, Dr. David Merrill, Dr. Stephen Chen, Susanne Henning, Nagichettiar Satyamurthy, Sung-Cheng Huang, Dr. David Heber and Jorge Barrio, all of UCLA.

The study was supported by the Ahmanson Foundation, the Marshall and Margherite McComb Foundation, the McMahan Foundation, Bob and Marion Wilson, the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation Fund for Alzheimer’s Disease Research, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.

Theravalues Corp. provided the curcumin and placebos for the trial, as well as funds for laboratory testing and for Small’s travel to present preliminary findings at the 2017 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Alzheimer's Caregiver's Prayer

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

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

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter
The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

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

SOURCE:
(c) Frena Gray-Davidson
Author of "Alzheimer's 911"
Help, Hope, and Healing for the Caregiver
I'm going to need a lot of help
to become a good caregiver.
I'm counting on you, God, for that.

Help me grow patience for this journey.
Help me forgive myself for all the ways I fail.

Show me how to see that heart within
that longs for unconditional love,
just like me.
Show me how to know that soul
that shines in the light of divine love,
just like mine.
Show me myself in this person.
Show me this person in me.

Help me listen to a thousand repetitions
without getting angry.
Help me to say, "Uh-Huh," instead of
"I already told you that!"
Help me not be frightened or repelled
by a grown-up needing guidance
and help like a child.

Help me laugh when
I find sheets in the oven,
socks on hands,
underwear over pants,
someone undressed and back in bed
I just spent an hour getting up.

Help me be kind, to myslef and others.
To say, "Oh well!" when I lose my temper.
To say, "I'm sorry" when I owe it,
To say, "Never mind" and mean it,
To say, "Oops" and not scold.
Help me remind myself that,
next to the end of civilization as we know it,
this really isn't so much.

Help me forgive this person's illness.
Help me forgive my lack of empathy.
Help me remind myself that
I don't have to be perfect
and, as you know, God,
that's a good thing,
considering.

Help me to journey to the place where
it's enough to be the people we both are.

Help me be amused instead of judgemental.
Help me stop blaming someone for their illness.
Help me be kind
instead of angry and frightened.
Help me give more than I ever got.
Help me grow into the person
who can love everyone exactly as they are,
including me.

Help me be willing
to become my parent's parent
instead of resisting with anger.

Help me learn how to have fn,
how to travel into different time zones
with my parent
who thinks this is 1928 in South Dakota.

Help me understand
that when my 88-year-old mother
asks me when her mother is coming home
it means she needs a mother.
Help me be that mother.

Help me think about the fact
that sometimes everyone feels
like a motherless child.
Help me feel that gap.

Help me know and understand that
as I become what others need
I become that for myself.
I'd be really grateful, Lord,
if you could do all that for me really fast.
Or maybe at least,
you could rush me some patience.

Thank you.

SOURCE:
(c) Frena Gray-Davidson
Author of "Alzheimer's 911"
Help, Hope, and Healing for the Caregiver

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Is Alzheimer's caused by a germ>

Shots Health News from NPR

Excerpt: full article link below...

Dr. Leslie Norins is willing to hand over $1 million of his own money to anyone who can clarify something: Is Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia worldwide, caused by a germ?

By "germ" he means microbes like bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. In other words, Norins, a physician turned publisher, wants to know if Alzheimer's is infectious.

It's an idea that just a few years ago would've seemed to many an easy way to drain your research budget on bunk science. Money has poured into Alzheimer's research for years, but until very recently not much of it went toward investigating infection in causing dementia.

But this "germ theory" of Alzheimer's, as Norins calls it, has been fermenting in the literature for decades. Even early 20th century Czech physician Oskar Fischer — who, along with his German contemporary Dr. Alois Alzheimer, was integral in first describing the condition — noted a possible connection between the newly identified dementia and tuberculosis.

If the germ theory gets traction, even in some Alzheimer's patients, it could trigger a seismic shift in how doctors understand and treat the disease.

For instance, would we see a day when dementia is prevented with a vaccine, or treated with antibiotics and antiviral medications? Norins thinks it's worth looking into.

Norins received his medical degree from Duke in the early 1960s, and after a stint at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention he fell into a lucrative career in medical publishing. He eventually settled in an admittedly aged community in Naples, Fla., where he took an interest in dementia and began reading up on the condition.

After scouring the medical literature he noticed a pattern.

"It appeared that many of the reported characteristics of Alzheimer's disease were compatible with an infectious process," Norins tells NPR. "I thought for sure this must have already been investigated, because millions and millions of dollars have been spent on Alzheimer's research."

But aside from scattered interest through the decades, this wasn't the case.

In 2017, Norins launched Alzheimer's Germ Quest Inc., a public benefit corporation he hopes will drive interest into the germ theory of Alzheimer's, and through which his prize will be distributed. A white paper he penned for the site reads: "From a two-year review of the scientific literature, I believe it's now clear that just one germ — identity not yet specified, and possibly not yet discovered — causes most AD. I'm calling it the 'Alzheimer's Germ.' "

For the full article, go to:
Infectious Theory Of Alzheimer's Disease Draws Fresh Interest

SOURCE:

Shots Health News from NPR

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Complete memory loss reversal

Manchester University

Mefenamic Acid, a commonly used anti-inflammatory drug, successfully treated Alzheimer's in the lab. The University of Manchester showed how this medication completely reversed memory loss and brain inflammation in mice.

NSAIDs & Alzheimer's

Nearly everybody will at some point in their lives take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; mefenamic acid, a common Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug (NSAID), is routinely used for period pain. In research using mice, it completely reversed memory loss and brain inflammation.

The findings are published in a paper authored by Dr David Brough and colleagues, in the respected journal Nature Communications. Dr Brough and Dr Catherine Lawrence supervised PhD student Mike Daniels, and postdoc Dr Jack Rivers-Auty who conducted most of the experiments.

Inflammatory Pathway

Though this is the first time a drug has been shown to target this inflammatory pathway, highlighting its importance in the disease model, Dr Brough cautions that more research is needed to identify its impact on humans, and the long-term implications of its use.

The research, funded by the Medical Research Council and the Alzheimer’s Society, paves the way for human trials which the team hope to conduct in the future.

Around 500,000 people in the UK have Alzheimer’s disease which gets worse over time, affecting many aspects of their lives, including the ability to remember, think and make decisions.

Mefenamic Acid Vs. Placebo

In the study transgenic mice that develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease were used. One group of 10 mice was treated with mefenamic acid, and 10 mice were treated in the same way with a placebo.

The mice were treated at a time when they had developed memory problems and the drug was given to them by a mini-pump implanted under the skin for one month.

Memory loss was completely reversed back to the levels seen in mice without the disease.

Stopping Brain Cell Damage

Dr Brough said: “There is experimental evidence now to strongly suggest that inflammation in the brain makes Alzheimer’s disease worse.

“Our research shows for the first time that mefenamic acid, a simple Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug can target an important inflammatory pathway called the NLRP3 inflammasome , which damages brain cells.”

He added: “Until now, no drug has been available to target this pathway, so we are very excited by this result.

“However, much more work needs to be done until we can say with certainty that it will tackle the disease in humans as mouse models don’t always faithfully replicate the human disease.

Available Drug, Faster to Trial

“Because this drug is already available and the toxicity and pharmacokinetics of the drug is known, the time for it to reach patients should, in theory, be shorter than if we were developing completely new drugs.

“We are now preparing applications to perform early phase II trials to determine a proof-of-concept that the molecules have an effect on neuroinflammation in humans.”

Dr Doug Brown, Director of Research and Development at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Testing drugs already in use for other conditions is a priority for Alzheimer’s Society - it could allow us to shortcut the fifteen years or so needed to develop a new dementia drug from scratch.

“These promising lab results identify a class of existing drugs that have potential to treat Alzheimer’s disease by blocking a particular part of the immune response. However, these drugs are not without side effects and should not be taken for Alzheimer’s disease at this stage – studies in people are needed first.”

Full bibliographic information:

Fenamate NSAIDs inhibit the NLRP3 inflammasome and 2 protect against Alzheimer’s disease in rodent models, published in the journal Nature Communications

Michael J. D. Daniels, Jack Rivers-Auty, Tom Schilling, Nicholas G. Spencer, William Watremez, Victoria Fasolino, Sophie J. Booth, Claire S. White, Alex G. Baldwin, Sally Freeman, Raymond Wong, Clare Latta, Shi Yu, Joshua Jackson,
Nicolas Fischer, Violette Koziel, Thierry Pillot, James Bagnall, Stuart M. Allan, Pawel Paszek, James Galea, Michael K. Harte, Claudia Eder, Catherine B. Lawrence, David Brough*

SOURCE: