Unafraid of aging

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On June 25, 2012, The New York Times published Karen Pennar’s Unafraid of Aging, highlighting Dr. Linda P. Fried. It was the most recent installment in their series “Profiles in Science.” 

An epidemiologist and geriatrician, Dr. Fried, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, has focused her career on what she sees as the definitive challenge of the 21st century: embracing our transition to an “aging society”  in which, over the last century, our life expectancy has increased from fifty to eighty-plus years.

Pennar’s opening paragraph is the focus of today’s post:

“The signal public health achievement of the 20th century was the increase of the average human life span. Now, as that achievement helps raise the proportion of the aged around the world, what once seemed an unalloyed blessing is too often regarded as a burden — a financial burden, a health care burden, even a social burden.”

“It’s nuts,” said Dr. Linda P. Fried. “To assume defeat from what every one of us as individuals wants suggests we’re not asking the right questions.” She continues that findings from the science of aging should “reframe our understanding of the benefits and costs of aging.”

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Video

Dr. Linda P. Fried (Video by The New York Times06/25/2012)

Linda P. Fried: An interview with the geriatrician and dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University on preventing frailty and the transition to an aging society

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So how did we, as a society, grow to be so ambivalent towards growing older? Why do so many people seem to fear it? And what can we do to turn things around?

Not just to ameliorate that gnawing unease, but to begin to uncover, highlight, and advance the myriad benefits we, as a society, can reap from the huge jump we’ve achieved in average lifespan.

How can we support older adults in maintaining involvement in their communities post-retirement? There is so much to be gained, both by our aging population and society as a whole, if we can find positive ways to encourage lifelong engagement.

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 Dr. Fried has focused her career on what she considers to be the challenge of the 21st century: embracing our transition to an “aging society”  in which, over the last century, our life expectancy has increased from fifty to eighty-plus.

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US unveils a national Alzheimer’s strategy

“The Obama administration declared Alzheimer’s one of the country’s biggest health challenges on Tuesday, adopting a national strategy that sets the clock ticking toward better treatments by 2025 — along with help for suffering families today.” So begins the Associated Press’s article about today’s big announcement.

Science writer Lauran Neergaard continues, “This summer, doctors and other health providers can start getting some free training on how to spot the early signs of Alzheimer’s and the best ways to care for those patients.”

“And scientists are rolling up their sleeves, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told a meeting of the world’s top Alzheimer’s scientists — gathered to decide the top priorities to help meet that ambitious goal of better treatments, perhaps even ways to stall the disease, by 2025.”

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Check out the newly launched official U.S. government website (managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services), another component of this landmark strategy to fight Alzheimer’s:

http://www.alzheimers.gov/

On the front page of the site they state,

“Welcome to alzheimers.gov, the government’s free information resource about Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Here you can find links to authoritative, up-to-date information from agencies and organizations with expertise in these areas.”

The alzheimers.gov site covers a broad array of information about dementia: from treatment options (including clinical trials) to managing finances, from caregiver resources to information on fighting Alzheimer’s.

This site is a good one to bookmark and return to: it also contains important links to resources around the web.

Enjoy poking around!

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UPDATE (5/16/2012)

Reuters wrote a great, detailed piece about the new U.S. Alzheimer’s plan. View it here:

U.S. launches ambitious Alzheimer’s plan

an excerpt:

Among the immediate actions will be funding for a study involving an antibody drug that attacks amyloid — a protein thought to be a cause of Alzheimer’s — in an international study of people who are genetically predisposed to develop the disease early.

The second will test the use of an insulin nasal spray to restore memory in patients with Alzheimer’s.

An earlier, small study of the latter approach by Suzanne Craft of the University of Washington published last year showed memory improvements in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s or a pre-Alzheimer’s condition called amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Funding for the new initiatives will come from $50 million the Obama administration has set aside for the National Alzheimer’s Plan for fiscal 2012.

Another $100 million has been earmarked for fiscal 2013, including $80 million for research, $4.2 million for public awareness, $4 million for provider education, $10.5 million in caregiver support, and $1.3 million to improve data collection.

The national plan, called for in the National Alzheimer’s Project Act signed by President Barack Obama last year, and drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), reflects the input of 3,600 people or organizations. continue reading

U.S. launches ambitious Alzheimer’s plan
Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen ; Editing by David Brunnstrom
Reuters (5/15/2012) 

How we perceive dementia

Recently, I’ve been considering how our society perceives dementia and how we treat those who live with its symptoms.

It seems to me that there are a lot of misconceptions.

Not just the mistaken idea that the words “Alzheimer’s” and “dementia” are interchangeable (they are not the same). There are larger issues: cultural stereotypes about how people with dementia “should” act; our tendency to oversimplify its myriad effects on varied individuals; our willingness to categorize the diagnosis as an immediate and unmitigated tragedy.

It’s also a topic that a lot of people take pains to steer clear of.

Maybe it’s because they’re afraid of it; dementia does bring an element of the unknown that can be hard to accept. Plus, many causes of dementia can’t currently be cured.

But our societal unwillingness to talk about it propagates exaggerations and myths. As a result, it’s rare to find a nuanced view of dementia. This is why I think the writings of individuals like Kate Swaffer and Richard Taylor, PhD are so important: they provide glimpses into the complex world of living with dementia.

More on music for dementia

Last night, National Public Radio aired a story, “For Elders With Dementia, Musical Awakenings,” that sheds additional light on the many applications of  music for people with dementia.

To read last week’s post on the topic, please click here: “The quickening art” – music and dementia. In “The quickening art” we began to look at some of the science that underlies our reactions to music.

In the above segment, Melissa Block interviews Dan Cohen, the social worker featured in the upcoming film Alive Inside, and discusses how the Music & Memory project came about. Music & Memory ran the program depicted in a widely-seen clip from Alive Inside that recently went viral on YouTube: over the past week and a half it’s been viewed more than 5 million times. The clip is included towards the bottom of this post.

Reconnecting

One of my favorite parts of the NPR interview was when Block asked Cohen a question I, too, had been wondering: don’t the headphones just further isolate people?

“The quickening art”: music and dementia

An excerpt from Michael Rossato-Bennett’s forthcoming movie Alive Inside, a documentary about the Music and Memory non-profit project, recently went viral.

The video clip is here:

This is exciting because it’s spreading an important idea: there are easy and affordable ways to help reach people with dementia. Music, specifically, can have an incredible impact on people, even those who seem beyond reach.

Music and dementia

Think of a familiar song. It can be your favorite song or one you heard on your way into work this morning; any song will do. Start to hum or sing it in your head…how does your body react?

Me, I start tapping my toes lightly, inside my shoe. And a lot of the lyrics come back to me, words I didn’t think I remembered. My mind starts to drift to times I heard the song.

People with dementia, even advanced dementia, may have similar responses.

Oliver Sacks, MD (Author | Neurologist) speculates in the PBS video Music and the Brain: Scientist Oliver Sacks on Musical Cognition (May 21, 2009):

There’s no one musical center–there are 15 or 20 different systems in the brain. But, in general, many of the musical parts of the brain, if I could put it this way, are close to the memory parts and close to the emotional parts.

And so music tends to embed itself in memory and to evoke emotions with an immediacy beyond, I think, of any other stimulus with the possible exceptions of smells.

In particular, when people really have chills and thrills and their hair stands on end with music, enraptured, then you can find the particular systems of the brain. Rewards systems are activated, the same systems which are activated when one falls in love, or is overwhelmed with beauty generally.

This is why Henry, in the video at the top of this post, begins to light up and sway and sing when he hears his favorite songs playing. Something about music stays with us. Even when dementia  begins to affect language or coordination, music seems somehow more durable.

NYTimes: Day Care for All Ages

via The New York Times

By combining child- and adult-daycare, inter-generational daycare programs can be great for both groups. Check out this article from 2009 on NYTimes.com.

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“When intergenerational day care appeared on the scene in the early 1990s, some experts predicted it would be the answer for working Americans, 44 percent of whom have both dependent children and aging parents. Not only did intergenerational day care offer convenience for families, it held out a promise to reduce ageism among younger generations and dispel what Vera Roos, a professor of psychology at North-West University in South Africa, described as an assumption that aging is nothing but ‘a kind of extended terminal illness.’

It is not a panacea, but researchers who have studied some of the country’s 300-plus intergenerational facilities over the past decade say the best of them provide some of the best care available for frail seniors.”  Read more at The New York Times

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