Curry a day could keep dementia away - Yahoo! News UK: "Having a curry once or twice a week could stave off Alzheimer's disease, it has been claimed. Skip related contentCurcumin, an ingredient in turmeric, which is used widely in Indian cuisine, is believed to prevent changes in the brain by blocking the spread of amyloid plaques - toxic protein deposits thought to play a key role in Alzheimer's.
Members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists were told at their annual meeting in Liverpool that laboratory and animal studies have already produced strong evidence that curry combats dementia.
A clinical trial is now under way in California to test the effects of curcumin on a group of Alzheimer's patients."
TV series lifts curtain on Alzheimer's - MayoClinic.com HBO Documentary Films and the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health lift a curtain on the lives of those impacted by Alzheimer's disease, as well as the most cutting edge advances from those who treat and study the disease, in a new documentary project.
The "Los Angeles Times" wrote that the 4-part HBO documentary is "an ambitious, disturbing, emotionally fraught and carefully optimistic film exploring virtually every angle of Alzheimer's disease that can be explored on television."
If you haven't already, I invite you to watch these films and offer your reaction, beginning with "The Memory Loss Tapes." After watching, consider sharing your thoughts. What affected you the most and why?
The series is available on HBO, HBO on Demand, or you can watch for free on your computer at www.hbo.com/alzheimer's, where many other resources are available.
Delaying retirement could prevent early dementia, say scientists | Society | guardian.co.uk:
"Working beyond normal retirement age might help stave off dementia, scientists said today.
Keeping the brain active later in life appears to reduce the chances of an early onset of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study of 382 men with probable dementia. The researchers suggest a significant link between later retirement and delayed symptoms.
The findings emerged from a wider study on data from 1,320 people with dementia led by members of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, and funded by the Alzheimer's Research Trust and the Medical Research Council.
The researchers found no link between education or employment and dementia risk, but found that those who retired later prolonged their mental abilities above the threshold for dementia"
I agree that the move towards "extra care facilities" is a positive move I just had to point out the factual error in this report....
Residents celebrate success of care facility (From The Northern Echo): "RESIDENTS of a £4.5m care complex have been celebrating the success of the scheme, which has helped them to stay independent.
Sunnyfield Lodge, near Ripon, opened in May last year and was the first 'extra care' scheme in North Yorkshire.
It has 40 self-contained apartments, and provides 24-hour care for its residents, as and when it is needed."... I wrote "Extra care complexes are truly a great alternative to care and nursing homes.
I have to point out that The Orchards, extra care in Brompton, Northallerton opened in April 2003 and has provided a lovely home with appropriate care since late 2003 for my father in law who has severe dementia ....
http://www.housingcare.org/assisted-living-extra-care-housing/scheme-86560-the-orchards-brompton-england.aspx
The Orchards, which was opened in April 2003, is Broadacres' first purpose-built Extra care scheme. It comprises 34 flats and 3 bungalows, along with a restaurant, landscaped gardens, lounges and health centre. Care staff are on site 24 hours per day.
The Orchards provides a safe and secure home for life whilst at the same time encourages social interaction through the Orchards Social Club which enables members of the wider community to use the facilities for the payment of a nominal fee.
Extra care complexes are truly a great alternative to care and nursing homes. I have to point out that The Orchards, extra care in Brompton, Northallerton opened in April 2003 and has provided a lovely home with appropriate care for my father in law who has severe dementia since late 2003. http://www.housingca re.org/assisted-livi ng-extra-care-housin g/scheme-86560-the-o rchards-brompton-eng land.aspx The Orchards, which was opened in April 2003, is Broadacres' first purpose-built Extra care scheme. It comprises 34 flats and 3 bungalows, along with a restaurant, landscaped gardens, lounges and health centre. Care staff are on site 24 hours per day. The Orchards provides a safe and secure home for life whilst at the same time encourages social interaction through the Orchards Social Club which enables members of the wider community to use the facilities for the payment of a nominal fee.
Second patient benefits from pioneering helmet (From The Northern Echo): "A NORTH-EAST inventor has revealed that a second US patient is benefiting from a prototype antidementia device.
Earlier this year, The Northern Echo exclusively reported that County Durham GP-turned inventor Dr Gordon Dougal had developed a light-emitting helmet which he is convinced can help combat dementia. . . .
Dr Dougal said the unnamed 58 year old American, who is also a university lecturer, got in touch with him after reading about his invention.
In June, Dr Dougal flew to New York to meet the man and agreed to provide him with a second prototype helmet. “He noticed his memory was declining and asked if I could help. I met him in New York, dropped off a helmet and it has worked for him,” said Dr Dougal.
“He has been using it for about six weeks.
“His principle problem is his memory and the helmet has had a positive effect,” said Dr Dougal, who says that the 700 light-emitting diodes in the helmet will help to hold dementia in check and even partially reverse the condition."
The part that perhaps raises most hope and confidence is at the end of the article...
"An early invention by Dr Dougal, which uses the same wavelength of light to heal cold sores, has been approved for use by the NHS."
Sunday Herald: Life: People, Lifestyles & Living Today:
"Dementia has ceased to be a condition that is hidden away in the family closet. Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's descent into forgetfulness has been publicly charted by her daughter, while Terry Pratchett has described his own as an 'embuggerance' but carried on writing. We also live in an era when all aspects of ageing are considered worth fighting.
Does this mean we are any closer to real hope for sufferers? For Jean Rankin, now entering the severe stages of the disease, perhaps not. The carers at her day centre recently told her daughter she was losing more of her personal skills. Her independent life at her Falkirk home is 'hanging by a thread'. The future for her is only further deterioration.
But there is hope. Ongoing research at the University of Aberdeen by Professor Claude Wischik and his company TauRx suggests that within five years a drug that stems the development of the disease may be on the market. Currently undergoing trials, the drug - remberTM - has so far been found to reduce memory loss by 80%. Effectively, it is halting the progress of the condition. What is remarkable about remberTM is that it came from left-field. Most other scientists had been pursuing the theory that the culprit - and, therefore the target for drugs - was protein deposits in the brain called 'amyloid plaques'. Meanwhile, Wischik had been examining another set of protein formations known as 'tau tangles'. He believed that if those tangles could be broken down, the disease could be halted....
Alzheimer's lies at the centre of a battle for the human mind that raged throughout the 20th century. Roth played a role in this fight. Wischik credits him with having "guided a generation of psychiatrists through a period of post-Freudian thought into the age of drugs, when psychiatry understands mental illness biologically".
But the battle began long before Roth - in 1910, just nine years after a woman in her 40s arrived at the Frankfurt Mental Institute exhibiting many of the symptoms associated with what was then called senile dementia. Auguste D, as she was called, had memory loss and delusions. She was in the habit of dragging sheets about her house and would scream for hours during the night. Her doctor, Alois Alzheimer, asked her to write her name, and she would start, then seemingly forget, and say: "I have lost myself."
When she died in 1906, Alzheimer studied her brain and published a paper outlining his findings of plaques and fibrules and their connection with the condition. He made no attempt to suggest this was his own discovery, or indeed anything new in the investigation of dementia. It was his co-worker, Emil Kraepelin - now widely considered the father of modern scientific psychiatry - who, in his 1910 book, Psychiatrie, identified Alzheimer's disease. He cited it as proof, in his battle against the Freudians, that mental illness could be caused by physical changes.
Few nowadays dispute that Alzheimer's is an organic disease. In the past 30 years the battle for a cure has switched from Freud versus Kraepelin to tau versus amyloid ß , the "tauists" versus the "ßaptists". In his dogged adherence to tau, Wischik was pushing against the scientific grain that amyloid was the key....
One of the surprises about remberTM is that it looks as though it may work at almost all stages of the disease. Given this, it could function, like statins, as a preventative. It could halt the development of the tau tangles long before there are any symptoms.
Does Wischik foresee a future in which everyone over 60 will begin popping these pills with their muesli? No. Rather, he hopes that, using diagnostic tests he is developing, those who need the drug will be identified and targeted. The potential market is huge. Wischik's research suggests that more people than were previously realised currently have undetected Alzheimer-type patterns in their brains. He recognises six stages of deterioration. By stage two there is a small amount of memory loss. A person gets demented "somewhere between stage two and stage four". Of the 10m over-65s in Britain, he notes, 6m are at stage two or beyond. "That," he says, "funnels down to about a million who have full-blown Alzheimer's, and even that, I think, is an underestimate."
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New Alzheimer's Drug Rember Hailed As Breakthrough | Health | Sky News: "Scientists have developed a drug that could prove twice as effective as current medicines in treating Alzheimer's."
All too late already for Gan Gan and anyone already diagnosed with Alzheimer's as further clinical tests are needed and it will be at least 4 years before the drug becomes available and it is likely to be used only on those in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
Stages of Alzheimer's: "Stages of Alzheimer's
Stage 1: No impairment
Stage 2: Very mild decline
Stage 3: Mild decline
Stage 4: Moderate decline (mild or early stage)
Stage 5: Moderately severe decline (moderate or mid-stage)
Stage 6: Severe decline (moderately severe or mid-stage)
Stage 7: Very severe decline (severe or late stage)"
The expert rolled out on the TV news reckoned the drug would be used before stage 4 is reached so early diagnosis will be even more crucial.
