Wii a Useful Tool for Alzheimer's Caregivers

Back in May I wrote about Wii Fit suggesting it would be an excellent tool for older people and those suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

The game satisfies two needs: social interaction and exercise.

Recently, I am reading articles about how Wii is being adopted by Senior centers and assisted living facilities all across the country. The game of choice seems to be bowling. Wii bowling provides moderate exercise and allows groups to get together much like they would at a bowling alley.

Ninetendo offers hundreds of games that can be played with Wii. You can exercise your body and even exercise your brain with Wii Brain Academy.

The Wii game My Fitness Coach would be particularly effective for both the person suffering from Alzheimer's and their caregiver. I know from personal experience with my mother that exercise is both necessary and important. I have written here many times about the immediate positive effect exercise has on my mother.

Dear Caregiver, you could use this tool to improve socialization by inviting friends and neighbors over to play along with you.

Friends and family of caregivers, Wii is a great gift. Perhaps you could consider "chipping in" and purchasing this for a loving caregiver or suffering family member.

Don't get detered by the name of the game. If you are older you can sit in a chair while doing the majority of the exercises. When my mother attends the Silver Sneakers program at Gold's gym she sits for most of the exercises. Keep in mind, my mother is 92 years old and suffers from Alzheimer's.

My Fitness Coach is like having a personal trainer right in your home. You can get coaching on 500 exercises including strength training, cardio fitness, and flexibility training. The game includes includes nine diiferent environments and music. If this sounds intimidating you can always go with Wii Fit. Wii Fit is less rigorous, contains hundreds of exercises, and also has a Body Mass Module. Wii Fit uses the Wii Balance Board.

I believe Wii is a wonderful tool that can be used by caregivers to satisfy personal and caregiving needs. Wii could improve your day. There are hundreds of games--so you can have fun. Both you and the person you are caring for will benefit.

What is Wii
Wii Sports (includes: Tennis, Baseball, Golf, Bowling and Boxing)
Wii Big Brain Academy
Wii Play inlcudes: The shooting gallery, Mii-matching game, billiards, air hockey, tank battles, table tennis rally, Mii poses and a cow-riding race)
Wii FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Exercise may improve function in dementia patients

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Organized exercise designed to increase strength, flexibility, mobility and coordination may improve overall physical function among nursing home patients with Alzheimer's disease, researchers report.

Alzheimer's disease patients who have physically deteriorated are less able to perform activities of daily life, which, in turn, affects their quality of life. Despite the well-known physical benefits obtained from exercise, Professor Alejandro Lucia and colleagues in Spain found comparatively little research has focused on exercise training among patients with Alzheimer's disease.

To address this, Lucia, of the Universidad Europea De Madrid, and collaborators compared the outcomes of 16 Alzheimer's disease patients who were randomly assigned to receive normal care involving no programed exercise or to a12-week exercise program as part of their nursing home care.

Each group consisted of five women and three men of similar functional capacity at the start of the study. Participants' average age was 73 years in the normal care group and 76 years in the exercise group, the investigators report in the International Journal of Sports Medicine.

Exercise sessions, held 3 days each week, included 75 minutes of warm-up and cool-down stretching, inside walking, joint mobility activities, elastic exercise-band resistance training, and coordination exercises using foam balls.

Lucia's team reports the exercise group had significant improvements in measures of upper and lower body strength and flexibility; agility and balance; walking abilities; and endurance. Exercise participants also showed greater ability to independently perform activities of daily living such as rising from a chair, transferring from bed to chair, bathing, or dressing.

By contrast, the normal care group showed no changes over the 12-week period.

These findings show that shorter duration exercise programs "are sufficient to induce significant improvements in patients' functional performance and independence," the investigators state. Adherence to the training program was nearly 100 percent, they add.

While more evidence of efficacy is needed from larger study populations, Lucia and colleagues suggest similar programs could be included in the overall nursing home care of Alzheimer's disease patients.

SOURCE: International Journal of Sports Medicine, October 2008.

Follow the Alzheimer's Reading Room on Twitter

Subscribe to The Alzheimer's Reading Room--via Email

Bob DeMarco is a citizen journalist, blogger, and Caregiver. In addition to being an experienced writer he taught at the University of Georgia , was an Associate Director and Limited Partner at Bear Stearns, the CEO of IP Group, and a mentor. Bob currently resides in Delray Beach, FL where he cares for his mother, Dorothy, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. He has written more than 500 articles with more than 11,000 links to his work on the Internet. His content has been syndicated on Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Pluck, Blog Critics, and a growing list of newspaper websites. Bob is actively seeking syndication and writing assignments.

More from the Alzheimer's Reading Room

• How do you get Dimebon?
• A Simple Three Minute Test Can Detect the Earliest Stage of Alzheimer's Disease
• Five Ways to Keep Alzheimer's Away
• Ten Million Baby Boomers likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s during their lifetime
• Alzheimer's A Wonderful Moment in Time--Mom Dances for the first time in years
• 2009 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures
• The Mini-Cog Test for Alzheimer's and Dementia
• What is Dementia?
• Is it Really Alzheimer's?

Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)

Book Review: The 36-Hour Day

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease and Memory Loss in Later Life

This best-selling book is the "bible" for families caring for people with Alzheimer disease...offering comfort and support to millions worldwide. In addition to the practical and compassionate guidance that have made The 36-Hour Day invaluable to caregivers, the fourth edition is the only edition currently available that includes new information on medical research and the delivery of care.

The new edition includes:

new information on diagnostic evaluation-resources for families and adult children who care for people with dementia-updated legal and financial information-the latest information on nursing homes and other communal living arrangements-new information on research, medications, and the biological causes and effects of dementia.


Tami Greene said...

This book has been the single most helpful tool my family has been given to help us help my mother as she progresses with Alzheimer's Disease. While other books have touched on many of the topics in this book, no where else have we found as much practical information on how to avoid confrontations with her; ways to improve her daily living; ideas to keep her involved with us and to provide meaning to her life; questions to ask her doctors; types of resources that are available (depending on your area); what to expect as the disease progresses; and how to help each other as we take on the many different roles needed to provide care for her.

I highly recommend this book to others; in fact, I have purchased multiple copies to share with family members and donate to my local library - that's how helpful and important this book is!

Arthur Jones said...

This is a excellent book and reference for those learning to deal with Alzheimer. Plenty of resources and ideas of what to look for when caring for someone with this disease. You can get a good idea of what to expect and how to help those suffering with this devastating disease. Easy to understand and read. Can't recommend this book enough.

Alzheimer's Activities: Hundreds of Activities for Men and Women With Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders

Memory And Thinking Problems Decline Among Older Americans

clipped from www.alzheimersanddementia.org clipped from www.medicalnewstoday.com A new US study suggests that brain health is improving among older Americans as demonstrated by a decline in thinking and memory problems in this group. The researchers said improved cardiovascular care, better education, and being financially better off could be the main reasons. The researchers found that: About 40 per cent of the decrease in cognitive impairment over the decade ending in 2002 was likely due to increases in education and personal wealth. They found this by comparing two groups of seniors, one at the start of the decade and one at the end. School attendance requirements, graduation rates in high school, enrollment rates in college or technical school, all went up in the period when the adults in the study were children and young adults. 72 per cent of people aged over 65 living in 2003 had a high school diploma compared with 53 per cent in 1990. The proportion of college-educated elderly also went up during that time, from 11 to 17 per cent.

Alzheimer's and Brain Fitness

I mentioned before that daily exercise has a dramatic effect on the quality of my mother's daily life. I first started taking her to Gold's Gym about three years ago. I did this after reading about the potential benefits of exercise for Alzheimer's patients. I feel confident in saying that exercise has had a dramatic positive effect on her daily life, and that exercise is a critical component in staving-off the horrid effects of Alzheimer's disease.

A growing body of research indicates that regular aerobic exercise can boost your brain's memory and cognitive processing speed by stimulating a process called neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons in the brain). I am including two articles that I believe you will find of interest.

That is 91 year old mom in the picture. She is pictured here riding a bicycle at Gold's Gym in Delray Beach, Florida.


Lobes of Steel
The New York Times
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

The Morris water maze is the rodent equivalent of an I.Q. test: mice are placed in a tank filled with water dyed an opaque color. Beneath a small area of the surface is a platform, which the mice can’t see. Despite what you’ve heard about rodents and sinking ships, mice hate water; those that blunder upon the platform climb onto it immediately. Scientists have long agreed that a mouse’s spatial memory can be inferred by how quickly the animal finds its way in subsequent dunkings. A “smart” mouse remembers the platform and swims right to it.

In the late 1990s, one group of mice at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, near San Diego, blew away the others in the Morris maze. The difference between the smart mice and those that floundered? Exercise. The brainy mice had running wheels in their cages, and the others didn’t.

Scientists have suspected for decades that exercise, particularly regular aerobic exercise, can affect the brain. But they could only speculate as to how. Now an expanding body of research shows that exercise can improve the performance of the brain by boosting memory and cognitive processing speed. Exercise can, in fact, create a stronger, faster brain.

This theory emerged from those mouse studies at the Salk Institute. After conducting maze tests, the neuroscientist Fred H. Gage and his colleagues examined brain samples from the mice. Conventional wisdom had long held that animal (and human) brains weren’t malleable: after a brief window early in life, the brain could no longer grow or renew itself. The supply of neurons — the brain cells that enable us to think — was believed to be fixed almost from birth. As the cells died through aging, mental function declined. The damage couldn’t be staved off or repaired.

Gage’s mice proved otherwise. Before being euthanized, the animals had been injected with a chemical compound that incorporates itself into actively dividing cells. During autopsy, those cells could be identified by using a dye. Gage and his team presumed they wouldn’t find such cells in the mice’s brain tissue, but to their astonishment, they did. Up until the point of death, the mice were creating fresh neurons. Their brains were regenerating themselves.

All of the mice showed this vivid proof of what’s known as “neurogenesis,” or the creation of new neurons. But the brains of the athletic mice in particular showed many more. These mice, the ones that scampered on running wheels, were producing two to three times as many new neurons as the mice that didn’t exercise.

But did neurogenesis also happen in the human brain? To find out, Gage and his colleagues had obtained brain tissue from deceased cancer patients who had donated their bodies to research. While still living, these people were injected with the same type of compound used on Gage’s mice. (Pathologists were hoping to learn more about how quickly the patients’ tumor cells were growing.) When Gage dyed their brain samples, he again saw new neurons. Like the mice, the humans showed evidence of neurogenesis.

Gage’s discovery hit the world of neurological research like a thunderclap. Since then, scientists have been finding more evidence that the human brain is not only capable of renewing itself but that exercise speeds the process.

“We’ve always known that our brains control our behavior,” Gage says, “but not that our behavior could control and change the structure of our brains.”

The human brain is extremely difficult to study, especially when a person is still alive. Without euthanizing their subjects, the closest that researchers can get to seeing what goes on in there is through a functional M.R.I. machine, which measures the size and shape of the brain and, unlike a standard M.R.I. machine, tracks blood flow and electrical activity.

This spring, neuroscientists at Columbia University in New York City published a study in which a group of men and women, ranging in age from 21 to 45, began working out for one hour four times a week. After 12 weeks, the test subjects, predictably, became more fit. Their VO2 max, the standard measure of how much oxygen a person takes in while exercising, rose significantly.

But something else happened as a result of all those workouts: blood flowed at a much higher volume to a part of the brain responsible for neurogenesis. Functional M.R.I.’s showed that a portion of each person’s hippocampus received almost twice the blood volume as it did before. Scientists suspect that the blood pumping into that part of the brain was helping to produce fresh neurons.

The hippocampus plays a large role in how mammals create and process memories; it also plays a role in cognition. If your hippocampus is damaged, you most likely have trouble learning facts and forming new memories. Age plays a factor, too. As you get older, your brain gets smaller, and one of the areas most prone to this shrinkage is the hippocampus. (This can start depressingly early, in your 30’s.) Many neurologists believe that the loss of neurons in the hippocampus may be a primary cause of the cognitive decay associated with aging. A number of studies have shown that people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia tend to have smaller-than-normal hippocampi.

The Columbia study suggests that shrinkage to parts of the hippocampus can be slowed via exercise. The subjects showed significant improvements in memory, as measured by a word-recall test. Those with the biggest increases in VO2 max had the best scores of all.

“It’s reasonable to infer, though we’re not yet certain, that neurogenesis was happening in the people’s hippocampi,” says Scott A. Small, an associate professor of neurology at Columbia and the senior author of the study, “and that working out was driving the neurogenesis.”

Other recent studies support this theory. At the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, a group of elderly sedentary people were assigned to either an aerobic exercise program or a regimen of stretching. (The aerobic group walked for at least one hour three times a week.) After six months, their brains were scanned using an M.R.I. Those who had been doing aerobic exercise showed significant growth in several areas of the brain. These results raise the hope that the human brain has the capacity not only to produce new cells but also to add new blood vessels and strengthen neural connections, allowing young neurons to integrate themselves into the wider neural network. “The current findings are the first, to our knowledge, to confirm the benefits of exercise training on brain volume in aging humans,” the authors concluded.

And the benefits aren’t limited to adults. Other University of Illinois scientists have studied school-age children and found that those who have a higher level of aerobic fitness processed information more efficiently; they were quicker on a battery of computerized flashcard tests. The researchers also found that higher levels of aerobic fitness corresponded to better standardized test scores among a set of Illinois public school students. The scientists next plan to study how students’ scores change as their fitness improves.

What is it about exercise that prompts the brain to remake itself? Different scientists have pet theories. One popular hypothesis credits insulin-like growth factor 1, a protein that circulates in the blood and is produced in greater amounts in response to exercise. IGF-1 has trouble entering the brain — it stops at what’s called the “blood-brain barrier” — but exercise is thought to help it to do so, possibly sparking neurogenesis.

Other researchers are looking at the role of serotonin, a hormone that influences mood. Exercise speeds the brain’s production of serotonin, which could, in turn, prompt new neurons to grow. Abnormally low levels of serotonin have been associated with clinical depression, as has a strikingly shrunken hippocampus. Many antidepressant medications, like Prozac, increase the effectiveness of serotonin. Interestingly, these drugs take three to four weeks to begin working — about the same time required for new neurons to form and mature. Part of the reason these drugs are effective, then, could be that they’re increasing neurogenesis. “Just as exercise does,”Gage says.

Gage, by the way, exercises just about every day, as do most colleagues in his field. Scott Small at Columbia, for instance , likes nothing better than a strenuous game of tennis. “As a neurologist,” he explains, “I constantly get asked at cocktail parties what someone can do to protect their mental functioning. I tell them, ‘Put down that glass and go for a run.’ ” .

This Is Your Brain on Something Other Than Exercise

The human brain undergoes neurogenesis — the creation of new cells — throughout a person’s life, although the amount depends on a variety of factors, not just exercise.


Researchers ID Brain Network That May Help Prevent or Slow Alzheimer’s Disease

These highlighted spots of activity represent a brain network. People with more cognitive reserve may use such networks more efficiently or use alternative networks to deal with Alzheimer's pathology. These highlighted spots of activity represent a brain network.

Columbia University researchers have uncovered some clues about why "mental exercise" appears to provide protection against Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

A team from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) identified a brain network within the frontal lobe associated with cognitive reserve, the process that allows individuals to maintain function despite mental decline due to aging or Alzheimer’s disease.

The finding may illuminate how higher levels of cognitive reserve – thought to replenish by regular engagement in mentally stimulating activities such as taking classes, gardening and volunteering – provide such protection. Researchers hope the results of the study lead to advancements to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or other age-related memory conditions. The study, published in the current issue of Cerebral Cortex, was led by Yaakov Stern, a professor at the Taub Institute for the Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Division of the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at CUMC.

To obtain the data, researchers gave participants, categorized as young (between 18 and 30 years old) and elderly (between 65 and 80 years old), one of two different memory tasks, one involving a series of letters and a second involving a series of nonsensical shapes. Individuals completed the tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Researchers designed the activities with increasing difficulty to allow observation of the participants’ brain activation, as the tasks got progressively harder. Findings demonstrated that individuals with higher levels of cognitive reserve were able to activate this network in the brain while working on more difficult tasks, while participants with lower levels of reserve were not able to tap into this particular network.

Related links

Interview With Dr. Stern: Complex Brain Circuits May Protect Against Alzheimer's, In Vivo, Dec. 14, 2005

Related research by Professor Stern:

The Concept of Cognitive Reserve: A Catalyst for Research

“With the identification of this brain network – located within the frontal lobe – that is active during the performance both of these verbal and spatial tasks and probably other types of tasks as well, we believe we have accomplished an important first step towards improving our understanding of how cognitive reserve is expressed within the brain,” said Stern, a professor of clinical neuropsychology in the Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry and Psychology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

“The network was found more often in younger participants, signifying that the network may degrade during the natural aging process,” said Stern. “If this degradation process can be slowed or halted, it may benefit the millions of people living with devastating memory decline.”

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease and Memory Loss in Later Life

What If It's Not Alzheimer's: A Caregiver's Guide to Dementia

I missed the early signs of Dementia (Alzheimer's)

Looking back, there is little doubt in my mind I should have realized my mother was suffering from dementia sooner. Sadly, I didn't have the proper education, information, or frame of reference. Most people tend to ignore the early symptoms of the disease believing they are simply signs of "old age". Anyone who ends up in my shoes knows and understands that a person in the early stages of Alzheimer’s can function normally--even drive a car. Only when they deteriorate or some "event" takes place do we wake up to reality.

Sometimes these changes can be quite subtle but if detected raise a “red flag”. Behavior changes slowly in the elderly and as they begin to suffer cognitive impairment these changes are hard to detect.

If my mother had been enrolled in any of the studies listed below, I feel certain she would have been diagnosed 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.

The woman in the picture is my 91 year old mother (yes the picture is current). She suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. I am her CareGiver.

Sensors could help catch first signs of dementia
Monitors and online tests track subtle changes in daily mobility, behavior

Source Associated Press and MSNBC

WASHINGTON - Tiny motion sensors are attached to the walls, doorways and even the refrigerator of Elaine Bloomquist’s home, tracking the seemingly healthy 86-year-old’s daily activity.

It’s like spying in the name of science — with her permission — to see if round-the-clock tracking of elderly people’s movements can provide early clues of impending Alzheimer’s disease.

“Now it takes years to determine if someone’s developing dementia,” laments Dr. Jeffrey Kaye of Oregon Health & Science University, which is placing the monitors in 300 homes of Portland-area octogenarians as part of a $7 million federally funded project.

The goal: Shave off that time by spotting subtle changes in mobility and behavior that Alzheimer’s specialists are convinced precede the disease’s telltale memory loss.

Simple early signs

Early predictors may be as simple as variations in speed while people walk their hallways, or getting slower at dressing or typing. Also under study are in-home interactive “kiosks” that administer monthly memory and cognition tests, computer keyboards bugged to track typing speed, and pill boxes that record when seniors forget to take their medicines.

More than 5 million Americans, and 26 million people worldwide, have Alzheimer’s, and cases are projected to skyrocket as the population ages. Today’s medications only temporarily alleviate symptoms. Researchers are desperately hunting new ones that might at least slow the relentless brain decay if taken very early in the disease, before serious memory problems become obvious.

So dozens of early diagnosis methods also are under study, from tests of blood and spinal fluid to MRI scans of people’s brains. Even if some pan out, they’re expensive tests that would require lots of doctor intervention, when getting someone to visit a physician for suspicion of dementia is a huge hurdle. And during routine checkups, even doctors easily can miss the signs.

Bloomquist, of Milwaukie, Ore., knows the conundrum all too well. She volunteered for Kaye’s research because her husband died of Alzheimer’s, as did his parents and her own mother.

“It’s hard to know when people begin Alzheimer’s,” she reflects. “Alzheimer people do very well socially for short periods of time. If it’s just a casual conversation, they rise to the occasion.”

‘Typical’ days monitored

Measuring how people fare at home — on bad days as well as good ones, not just when they’re doing their best for the doctor — may spot changes that signal someone’s at high risk long before they’re actually demented, Kaye told the Alzheimer’s Association’s international dementia-prevention meeting last week.

“If you only assess them every once-in-a-blue-moon, you really are at a loss to know what they are like on a typical day,” Kaye explains.

High-tech monitors under study:

Researchers at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine are heading a study that ultimately plans to recruit 600 people over age 75 to help test in-home “kiosks” that turn on automatically to administer monthly cognitive exams. A video of a smiling scientist appears on-screen to talk participants through such classic tests as reading a string of words and then, minutes later, repeating how many they recall, or seeing how quickly they complete connect-the-dot patterns.
An Oregon pilot study of the motion sensors tracked 14 participants in their upper 80s for almost a year. Half had “mild cognitive impairment,” an Alzheimer’s precursor, and half were healthy. Impaired participants showed much greater variation in such day-to-day activities as walking speed, especially in the afternoons.

Why? The theory is that as Alzheimer’s begins destroying brain cells, signals to nerves may become inconsistent — like static on a radio — well before memories become irretrievable. One day, signals to walk fire fine. The next, those signals are fuzzy and people hesitate, creating wildly varying activity patterns.

Study receives unique grant

The pilot study prompted a first-of-its-kind grant from the National Institutes of Health to extend the monitoring study to 300 homes; 112 are being monitored already, mostly in retirement communities like Bloomquist’s. They’re given weekly health questionnaires to make sure an injury or other illness that affects activity doesn’t skew the results.

In addition, participants receive computer training so they can play brain-targeted computer games and take online memory and cognition tests. The keyboards are rigged to let researchers track changes in typing speed and Internet use that could indicate confusion.

Finally, a souped-up pill dispenser called the MedTracker is added to some of the studies, wirelessly recording when drugs are forgotten or taken late.
Electronics giants already sell various medical warning technologies for the elderly, including dementia patients, such as pill boxes that sound reminder alarms at dose time. And the Alzheimer’s Association and Intel Corp. are jointly funding research into how to use television, cell phones and other everyday technology to do such things as guide dementia patients through daily activities.

The next step of companies selling early symptom monitoring isn’t far off, and unbiased data on what really helps will be crucial, Kaye warns.

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease and Memory Loss in Later Life

Grace In The Time Of Alzheimer's

The first morning of my new job I sat in a kid's size wooden chair in the "activity room" of the Alzheimer's unit of the assisted living facility. The 20 or so residents seated in gliders and rockers were clearly waiting for the person in the kid's size wooden chair - me - to do something. Written on the white board beside the piano were promises of all sorts of interesting fun "activities" for the day ahead - exercise, cooking, word games, singalongs and so on.

60 second test could help early diagnosis of Alzheimer's like Dementia

Researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School and Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center have identified a way to diagnose Alzheimer's and other brain diseases. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and various mathematic algorithms, the researchers were able to identify and classify the brain disease in 142 research subjects that had been previously diagnosed. Magnetoencephalography is a non-invasive measurement of magnetic fields in the brain and the tests last between 45-60 seconds.

"This elegantly simple test allows us to glimpse into the brain as it is working," Apostolos P. Georgopoulos said. "We were able to classify, with 100 percent accuracy, the various disease groups represented in the group of research subjects."

This study should be of particular interest to anyone that is genetically predisposed to Alzherimer's and other forms of Dementia.

Currently, brain diseases are diagnosed with behavioral exams, psychiatric interviews, and neuropsychological testing.

Read more about this study being conducted at the University of Minnesota Medical School and Brain Sciences Center on the next page.



Original Source U of M Researchers Discover Noninvasive Diagnostic Tool for Brain Diseases


Additional Source Institute of Physics

Until recently physicians have had to rely on time-consuming and uncertain behavioural examinations to diagnose the onset of brain diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.

Research published next week in the Institute of Physics' Journal of Neural Engineering suggests that we could soon be able to diagnose the onset of many brain diseases by analysing the tiny magnetic fields produced by neuron activity in the brain.

This is a significant breakthrough for neurologists and psychiatrists as it could present a fast and simple screening test for brain diseases, while also helping differentiate between different brain diseases that have similar symptoms.

A team of investigators from the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, US, led by Professor Apostolos P. Georgopoulos, has been analysing the magnetic charges released when neuronal populations in our brains 'couple'. By comparing the patterns of tiny magnetic charges in healthy brains to those afflicted with common diseases such as Alzheimer's, the team has been able to identify the patterns commonly associated with these debilitating diseases.

A process called magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive measurement of magnetic fields in the brain, has been used to examine a total of 142 volunteers during tests which last between 45-60 seconds. The team first studied 52 volunteers to find patterns of neural activity that could identify all the different illnesses.

They then tested a further 46 patients to see whether the patterns found from the first group could accurately diagnose disease within a second group. Here, many of the predictors found from the first set of participants also correctly diagnosed more than 90% of subjects in the second sample.

Professor Georgopoulos said, "We want to continue and acquire data from a large number of subjects - patients and matched controls. The throughput of this MEG test is large so we can continue a high rate of testing and we hope that clinical applications can become a reality in a year or two."

Diagnosing illnesses like Alzheimer's has always been very difficult, particularly in the early stages. Physicians are forced to rely on conversations with patients, memory tests, physical examinations and, occasionally, brain scans. It is sometimes not until post-mortem or after a biopsy that cause of illness can be confirmed.

What If It's Not Alzheimer's: A Caregiver's Guide to Dementia

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease and Memory Loss in Later Life

Magnetoencephalography

Forty Dollar Alzheimer's Association Safe Return Bracelet Saves Life

"When he approached him and asked if he was ok, he recognized the signature on his bracelet which is with the Safe Return program at the Alzheimer's Association, as far as I am concerned that saved his life."


The Alzheimer's Association Safe Return bracelet cost $40. The bracelet carries the name of the Alzheimer's person and a toll free number that can be called if the person is unable to provide their address or phone number.

For more information on the bracelet, call the Association at 1-800-861-7826. Or, go to Safe Return on the Internet.

Bracelet saves Boca Raton man with Alzheimer's

Source WPTV.com

Lou Bigman is known as "Lucky Lou" at the Mae Volen Senior Center in Boca Raton.

Bigman participates in daily activities at the center.

Denise Parsons the Director of the adult day care says Wednesday afternoon once he got home with his wife, he got lost.

"He took his usual walk with his wife, she went into the house he took his walk alone and he didn't come home".

His wife called the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies started a search. A stranger found Bigman wandering around.

"When he approached him and asked if he was ok, he recognized the signature on his bracelet which is with the Safe Return program at the Alzheimer's Association, as far as I am concerned that saved his life."

The bracelet had Bigman's name on it, and a toll free number to call if the person wearing the bracelet had memory impairment.

Dottie Carson with the Alzheimer's Association says this incident, which had a happy ending, is a reminder that these bracelets could save many more people suffering from Alzheimer's.

"There are 200,000 people in the Southeast Florida chapter with Alzheimer's that is from Vero to the Keys and we only have 5,400 people with Safe Return bracelets."

Bigman's family is thankful for the bracelet and thankful deputies would not give up on the search.

Captain Matt Eisenberg with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office says it's nice the deputies were thanked for keeping up the search.

"We appreciate what they did by making sure that their family member did in fact have an Alzheimer's bracelet on."

The Alzheimer's Association says it cost $40.00 to get your loved one a "Safe Return" bracelet.

For more information, call the Association at 1-800-861-7826.

What If It's Not Alzheimer's: A Caregiver's Guide to Dementia

Fruit Smoothie Could Improve Thinking, Memory In Alzheimer's Patients

This article on the smoothie really caught my attention. Why? I drink one of those almost every day. Oddly, when I try to get my mother, the Alzheimer's patient, to drink one along with me she refuses.

A simple fruit smoothie could soon help improve thinking and memory in Alzheimer's patients.



Fruit Smoothie Could Improve Thinking, Memory In Alzheimer's Patients

St. Louis University is the only U.S test center to study whether the drink actually works. The beverage isn't a new drug, but a nutritional drink with a combination of vitamins, antioxidants and lipids that are consumed once a day. The smoothie comes in peach or cappuccino flavors.

Dr. Theodore Malmstrom is one of three researchers looking into what could soon be a very important weapon in the fight against Alzheimer's.

"There is increasing evidence that concentrated components of natural foods can improve memory so those components have been put in a drink and we are hopeful it will help," said Malmstrom.

The goal now is to get actual patients to test it out.

SLU researchers need at least 10 Alzheimer's patients to take part in the study. They are looking for people recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but not currently taking medications.

Patients will be divided in two groups. One group will get a daily supply of drinks with nutritional supplements. The other group will get a similar drink but without the nutritional additions.

Results of the 24-week study will hopefully end with good news.

"There is always great hope whenever you can have new research emerging. One of the Alzheimer's Associations mission (is) to fund research programs so we are very excited," said Stephanie Rohlfs-Young, the outreach director for the St. Louis Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association.

The risk of side effects from the drink are very minor compared to side effects from the five FDA-approved medications that treat Alzheimer's.

For more information, contact Malmstrom at 314-577-8745.

Alzheimer's Disease Rate Rises to More Than Five Million in the United States

Someone Develops Alzheimer's Every 72 Seconds, According To New Alzheimer's Association Report.

The Alzheimer’s Association today reports that in 2007 there are now more than 5 million people in the United States living with Alzheimer’s disease. This number includes 4.9 million people over the age of 65 and between 200,000 and 500,000 people under age 65 with early onset Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.


Read more about this topic at The Alzheimer's Reading Room