Gerda Saunders served as the University of Utah’s associate director of Gender Studies until she retired in 2011. That year, her colleagues gave her a leather-bound notebook as a farewell gift. Nine months prior to leaving her job, Sanders was diagnosed with cerebral microvascular disease, a precursor of dementia. She was only sixty-one. In her…
Dementia is a cruel disease. The often slow descent into irreversible mental decline is horrific and traumatizing. Challenges abound at every stage, and not surprisingly, caregivers are at the forefront of the battle. To make matters worse, there’s no known cure for Alzheimer’s. For caregivers, hope often proves elusive. Fortunately, there are many books on…
Do I Want to Know if I Will Have Alzheimer’s Disease? Whether or not one is likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, or any other disease for that matter, may not be something people want to know. In a Washington Post article entitled, “Would You Want to Know if You’re Likely to Get Alzheimer’s Disease?” we…
Elderly Substance Abuse It’s something that we never associate with the elderly, but it does, in fact, exist —- it’s substance abuse. According to the NYS Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS), this is a “hidden national epidemic”. While 60% of substance abusers in younger demographics are diagnosed, only 37% in the…
The New York Times reported on a fascinating study published in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience in an article entitled, “Can Exercise Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk?” by Gretchen Reynolds. They examined people aged 65-89 who possess a gene related to Alzheimer’s development, APOE epsilon4 allele (e4 gene for short). They looked at the hypothesis that even…