Battling Alzheimer

Initially, it was chalked up to age. It was almost expected that a person with Alzheimer’s disease also suffered from diabetes or some other illness. The thought was that the person was aging and the other disorders were a function of an aging body and not necessarily related per se to Alzheimer’s disease.

Then the researchers started to consider the fact that people with Alzheimer’s disease were often battling other health issues such as: heart disease, stroke and especially diabetes.

More →

I feel guilty. Here I’m writing for a blog called “Battling Alzheimer’s” and instead of telling you about the newest drugs, or the latest theories, I’m telling you about washing dishes with my grandmother.

But when I look at the research into new drugs and new preventions, and when I remember my grandmother, I keep thinking that a lot of the researchers are all wrong. They look at Alzheimer’s disease as if it were an infection that you can vaccinate against or take a pill for. Most of the solutions they’re promoting require you to put something into your mouth. I don’t think the mouth is the key to Alzheimer’s. I think the mind is.

More →

Robert T. DeMarco at I am an Alzheimer’s Caregiver says he missed the early signs of Alzheimer’s in his mother. He says that if he had known sooner, “This would have allowed me to get her in an exercise program, get her proper nutrition, and insured that she was taking her medication as prescribed. I learned in the last four years how important these factors are in the quality of her life.”

What should you do if you knew that Alzheimer’s disease was developing in you or a loved one?

More →

Alzheimer’s is a disease of fragility. A mind can handle all sorts of problems, but when the brain has too many stresses, it starts to show symptoms. For goodness sake, you and I show mental weakness when we’re sleep-deprived, don’t we? Or food-deprived, or feverish, or overly-worried? For someone who already has plaques and tangles and brain damage from a stroke, it may take less to push them into confusion and delusions than it would for you and me.

Even soft drinks aren’t safe. In Life without Memories, I read that sugared drinks seem to make laboratory mice more forgetful and increase the amount of “amyloid plaque deposit” in their brains, the most typical physical evidence of Alzheimer’s disease. Read the article in the Journal of Biological Chemistry if you don’t believe it. My grandmother drank a lot of decaf sodas, which we hoped would keep her from losing weight. But later she usually asked for plain water.

More →

By Linda J Bruton

There are some exciting results from recent clinical trials and research that shows that you may be able to reduce the risks of Alzheimer’s disease by following a heart healthy diet regimen.

There is no cure for Alzheimer’s but recent studies indicate that prevention of Alzheimer’s disease may be possible by including nutrient rich foods in the diet.

More →