Sunshyne - study of sundowning...surely someone can come up with something that helps with that. My son works in the landscaping at the SD Zoo - trying to come up with plants in the monkey enclosure that the monkeys don't destroy, for example. My DIL is Mama to some of the primates - I didn't realize how many are endangered and can't be on display because they would be traumatized by that. I think I could get you a private tour if you are interested...
frand, from what I've heard about designing primate enclosures, your son has a VERY challenging job!
For those of you who don't know this, the plant collection at the San Diego Zoo / WAP is worth more than the animal collection. The zoo is simply gorgeous, beautifully landscaped to showcase the plant collection, and the exhibits are carefully designed to give the animals a natural environment, lots of room to explore and "enrichment" activities.
bluedaze, I thought we were gonna have FUN. Being on exhibit in the zoo is a little too public for some of the fun I had in mind... Besides, the monkeys will eat your orchids.
Liz -- Marie was kind enough to send me a .pdf of the full article (abstract below). If you'd like a copy, let Joan know and I'll send by email.
Marie-Christine Pardon, Ivan Rattray. 2008. What do we know about the long-term consequences of stress on ageing and the progression of age-related neurodegenerative disorders? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 32:1103–1120
The aim of this paper is to review evidences that stressful events throughout life can have along-term impact on aging and the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. As early as the prenatal or neonatal period, stress can alter the rate of cognitive decline and neurodegenerative changes in the brain in a stressor-dependent manner, with prenatal restraint and maternal separation usually causing damage to the brain, whereas neonatal handling was found protective. The occurrence of negative outcomes of early stress can, however, be reversed by subsequent events known to be beneficial to the aging process. After the early developmental period, it is currently unknown how stress will impact on the aging process, due to a lack of studies. On the other hand, there is evidence of a lack of plasticity of the brain monoaminergic systems in response to stress with age, and of age-dependent changes in the immediate impact of stress, which is greater in subjects vulnerable to age-related cognitive decline. In addition, vulnerability to stress enhances the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in humans and chronic substantial stress in animal models of the disease accelerates both the onset and progression of pathological markers in the brain. In an attempt to integrate these findings, a hypothesis is presented here whereby stress, in susceptible individuals, would precipitate age-related cognitive decline and hippocampal integrity during normal and pathological aging, but will only affect the progression of pathological markers of Alzheimer’s disease in the presence of other risk factors to this neuropathological disorder.
Liz, send Joan an email telling her you'd like the .pdf. She's at
joan@thealzheimerspouse.com
I'll send her the .pdf right now, while I'm thinking about it. She can pass it along, and if you think you might want anything else from me, send you my email address while she's at it.
I definitely have the San Diego Zoo on my plan list for the future (after AD)! I want to stay in San Diego for at least a week and have at least three days to spend at that zoo! Fran, when I can go, I'll let you know! Thank you!
Due to a busy weekend, I have not been able to get online until this morning. I have been reading the discussions to catch up (a whole page worth of discussions, ladies and gentlemen?? WOW!).
Back to the causes for AD - when the Nicorette discussion came up, it got me thinking....how many of our spouses DID smoke? My husband smoked two packs a day 40 years ago; down to one pack a day from the 1970s until three years ago when he finally quit. And his symptoms and stages did go downhill fast after that. Just another curiousity on my part.
No smoking here. My husband thinks it's a filthy habit. He tried once as a young lad, to be "cool" ... and that was more than enough. My mother never smoked, either. Or her mother.
My father did smoke, a pipe when he was younger and three packs of cigarettes a day when he was older, until he had a major heart attack in his mid-40s. No sign of dementia when he died at 79.
My husband smoked 2 packs a day until about 25 years ago. It was his third attempt at quiting. At least one previous attempt lasted several years. This one just lasted.
No smoking here either. My DH did smoke a pipe once in a while years and years ago but spent most of the time cleaning and packing it. Very little actual smoking.
What do I think causes AD? First of all, it must be in the genes. My husband's mother was one of three girls - all three of them had AD. Now my husband has it and I believe his sister is in the early stages. 8 1/2 years ago, my husband fell off the roof of a building and was knocked unconscious. He has never been the same since - a downward spiral.
The medical people at the care home where he is believe he had AD for 1-1 1/2 years before the fall, but was able to hide it. After the fall, he was not able to hide it anymore. The fall probably, though, masked what was going on.
I also had a daughter wonder about his heritage. He is German-Jewish. Is there any corolation with your ancestry ? Anyone else have any ideas on that?
I don't know about a German-Jewish heritage having anything to do with AD. My grandmother is 100% German and at 95 still has all her mental capabilities and there is no dementia on that side of the family
Judi, no one knows what cases dementia. And this isn't ONE disease, it is a group of diseases.
There is no question that my husband has an event driven dementia. He had a car accident BECAUSE he passed out while driving on a highway, BECAUSE his heart stopped. The accident involved a head injury, and broken ribs. He died (his heart stopped) at least 3 and possibly 4 or more times that day before they put the temporary pacemaker and then the permanent one in that same day. Being revived multiple times is, all by itself, a cause of dementia that the neurologists call vascular dementia, but the cardiologists do not. We've got a huge thread about this because Sunshyne had a contact who had contacts.
A good proportion of people with vascular dementia also have Alzheimer's. It is my belief that my husband has both diseases, and his records at the neurologist's office probably say that too. One of the problems with finding out WHY people get dementia is that we don't have tests for Alzheimer's so we can't separate those people out. It is possible to get a firm diagnosis for Lewy Body, but not for Alzheimer's. And since you can diagnose vascular dementia, but not Alzheimer's with any certainly, you can't tell who has both diseases and who only has one.
You can't even "test" by using dementia drugs because it turns one that they work equally well on both Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, and Nemenda works on FTD as well. That is currently in a trial so they can pin that down scientifically, but the trial is going so well that doctor's are already prescribing the drug to FTD patients.
My husband is Hungarian (born there) of a family that knows what it roots are. I doubt if he has any German blood in him at all, although there is some Italian. The family was Catholic and not Jewish, so that is the end of that idea as far as I am concerned.
There are families with genes that cause dementia, but they are a tiny minority. And everyone in those families come down with the disease at extremely early ages - as early as in their 20s and 30s. There doesn't seem to be a gene for the kind of dementia that generally doesn't strike until later in life. Or at least they have not found one yet.
Judi, the only correlation with ancestry is for "early-onset familial AD" (eFAD), which strikes younger people -- in their 30s, 40s, or 50s. It is caused by one of several dominant genes. For a person to have eFAD, one of his/her parents MUST have also developed eFAD at a young age.
There is a risk factor you can inherit, APOE4, which can increase the possibility that you will get AD, but it doesn't really increase it all that much. Some (many? most?) researchers are beginning to think that AD is most often caused by epigenetic factors -- things in the environment, what you eat, etc -- that damage the genes you were born with.
WAG - cell phones and the increased density of radio waves in the atmosphere?
BAck down to earth........my wife was a hairdresser for 25 years. I never liked the smell of the chemicals whenever I was around them and always wondered what they might be doing to her lungs. Never once considered the potential impact on the brain. As all of us have, I've asked a gazzilion questions in my mind what might have caused this. No history in her family. All the Dr.'s here that I asked about the hairdresser chemicals said without hesitation, "nope, that can't be it". And then they moved on to the depression and marraige counseling diagnosis. Thenneck
Well, with doctors like that, I can see where you might need counselling for depression, thenneck!
I used to think the idea that cell phones or power lines etc could cause health problems was absurd (cancer being the one everyone was hollering about), but there seems to be increasing evidence that they might. Never really checked into whether they were suspected of causing AD, although there is a woman on the "other" site whose mission is to convince the world they can. (She goes as far as warning against electric clocks near the bed.) Maybe they are among the environmental factors that can cause damage to the genes...
I will check the 'red blotch' tonight. My DH has been remarkably healthy his entire life. I've wondered about environmental and other toxins...teflon pans, etc, air, pesticides. Seems like WAY too much of a coincidence that such a large proportion of baby boomers (my DH is 58) and others are getting various dementias. Appreciate the Haldol info. DH had a microdiscectomy recently with no ill effects afterward, except from forced inability to do 'tasks' around the house for two weeks that resulted in more TV watching. He had basically no post op pain though so only took one shot for pain about 12-18 hr post op. Now he needs spinal fusion surgery which will probably be longer anesthesia duration and surely will require post-op pain meds. Spinal is not an option though, so we are forging ahead, letting the surgeon see DH's '5 Wishes' (http://www.agingwithdignity.org/5wishes.html) medical requests and asking about a pre-op DNR 'just in case' it all goes very bad. Recommend '5 Wishes' so loved one can put down their wishes (hopefully) before they are not able. Alz Assn has good booklet about things like 'antibiotic' for end stage pneumonia, etc.
Libby, you might consider the following. My father didn't live long enough to get cancer or dementia. He died at age 48. Like a lot of his generation he just didn't live long enough to get a lot of these diseases, but the ones who did live into their 50s, 60s and 70s, did get these diseases.
I'm aware of three of my mother's cousins that got dementia later in life. And those are just the ones where I got to know their daughters or granddaughters well enough to find out what was going on with their parents/grandparents.
For a lot of diseases that seem to be gaining strength, there are two reasons that fit more than anything else. Either we are all living long enough to get those diseases, or they are diseases where we are diagnosing and labeling them differently than people used to even 10 or 20 years ago.
<<For a lot of diseases that seem to be gaining strength, there are two reasons that fit more than anything else. Either we are all living long enough to get those diseases, or they are diseases where we are diagnosing and labeling them differently than people used to even 10 or 20 years ago.>>
Right -- when many of us here were growing up people would just have said, "Poor thing's losing her mind, bless her heart."
I became very aware of this trend to label diseases differently because my grandson got threatened with being labeled as autistic. He isn't autistic. He does have developmental issues. He runs about a year behind in a lot of things, including physical things. He is very bright. He reads well above grade level and does math at grade level. Once he gets a new function he keeps it. And he gets new functions on a regular basis.
He is very loving and interacts constantly with all of the people around him. He talked very late as a result of the developmental issues, but EVERYONE in his pre-school knew who he was, even though he could not talk. At his first regular school placement meeting, he made such an impression on the school guard that he remembered my grandson two weeks later. That school guard probably sees hundreds of children in a week, but he remembered this particular one because my grandson had interacted with him. Autistic kids DO NOT interact with strangers.
10 years ago he would have been diagnosed as learning disabled. That is probably much closer to what is actually wrong with him. It was also what was actually wrong with me as a child along with grief. I outgrew it suddenly at age 11. I went from the world's youngest 10 year old to the world's oldest 11 year old almost overnight. I expect he will do very much the same. Basically he is going to catch up at some point and that will be that.
As the school psychologist who actually did his evaluation, he wasn't autistic and he wasn't retarded, he was JUST YOUNG! He should have stayed in pre-school for another year, but because he needed speech, physical and occupational therapy they wouldn't let him do that. He is literally one of the youngest 3rd graders in the NYC school systems.
My point is that I don't thing we have an autism, dementia or fertility problem that is new. We have kids being diagnosed as autistic that wouldn't have been diagnosed that way 20 years ago. We have people living much longer and surviving major heart events and cancer treatments who would have died 20 years ago, and now live to develop dementia instead. And we have 40 year olds who were sold a lie when they were in their 20s, that it was OK to wait to have kids, and lost their window of opportunity.
I was looking at my husbands hair today to ascertain a possible need for a haircut and noticed a red spot on the nape of his head where he had not had one. This is recent....He has or did have beautiful crystal clear blue eyes. I am interested in finding what common elements that our spouses who have red spots on the head share. There is probably a common thread running through this populatiion. I wonder if we could do some research with our spouses who are exhibiting these shared features. Could we come up with a checklist for these people that includes various factors: environmental, medical, medications, region where they live. etc.? I think this is a trait shared that might be more thancoincidence. What do you think?
joyful, I brought the thread to the top about the red spot. I think you can bring up your post about the red spot and hit "edit" button and copy then delete then go to the red spot discussion and paste it as a new post. Hope that makes sense.
yeah, with SO many new members there are bound to be more red spots now to share!!! all newbies, check the heads of your AD spouse, MANY of us have found the unexplained red spots...my DH still has his and its seeming to creep higher some days more than others. very noticeable with his gray hair now...let us know.. and yes my DH had beautiful clear turqcolored eyes too. divvi
sorry i cant copy and paste with my webtv:) maybe joan can combine it to the right topic..by the way,where ARE those directions you are talking about to move a post Imohr??
Divvi - about 4 or so posts above this one - by me - I haven't did it before but I think it would work. You only have the "edit" area on the post you did yourself, so you can't change someone else's post, except Joan.
My husband has blue eyes, has been healthy most of his life - good weight, cholesterol fine, BP normal - physically he has always been good. He did have surgery for GERDs about 10 years ago; had melanoma on his arm about 6-7 years ago. He did often have headaches over the years. When his neuropsychological test results showed a 4th grade reading level it did not surprise me. His reading and comprehension has always been bad thus he rarely reads - sports page is about it. How he every made it through to graduate, I have no idea. He has always been a hands on learner, not someone who can read and learn.
But he has the family history of Alzheimer disease on his father's side. We know back to his paternal grandparents, their siblings, and his dad's siblings - almost everyone died of Alzheimer's diagnosed at an early age.
What always worried me was the fumes in the print shop. He has run printing presses since he was 15 (now 61). I attributed that to being why he had headaches -deprivation of oxygen due to the chemicals. His dad also worked his life in printing, many of those in a plastics factory.
What causes it: I truly believe the increase is due to, as others have said, people living longer AND what we have done to our environment and food supply. The best defense and maybe the only one left to try to escape is to eat untreated food that are known to contain anti-oxidants and take anti-oxidants. The neurologist the other day wanted us to increase the Vit. E along with increasing the Fish Oil and CoQ10.
Coenzyme Q10. It is under study for treating Parkinson's, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), and AD. Oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction have been implicated in the pathophysiology of all three of these. Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a mitochondrial cofactor known for its antioxidant properties. It has prolonged survival in the mouse model of ALS and has slowed functional decline in Parkinson's disease.
There are many other compounds with antioxidant properties that could have neuroprotective properties (e.g. vitamins C and E, and alpha-lipoic acid). Some of them are active in the cytosol of the cell, and some in the mitochondria. Most of the clinical trials are looking at various combinations of them.
I've followed the Enbrel thread on the other site for a while now, off and on. In the beginning, I was hoping it would pan out to be something legitimate. Now, the thread is good for its entertainment value. Anyone who hasn't looked at it lately--check it out if you have time. Quite a bit of drama!
at the top of this page on aug 9th i had posted that my dh was stage 5. he is now in stage 7. fast progression,what a difference. it is unbelieveable. we were looking at pictures of him on his birthday [jan.1st] today,it was shocking at the difference in just over 2 months time. also about about what causes ad,i agree with people living longer and therefore their chances of getting ad goes up as we age,but what about eoad? my dh is only 53. there is no family history of mental illness,except his paternal grandmother had something wrong with her,some type of dementia, she is the only one,and it is a large family. jav
jav, if they could just find what causes AD, maybe they could work on a cure. I'm sad that we've lost some of our retirement years but you're so young, it's really just not fair.
I think a lot of AD is hereditary. Paternal grandfather, three of three sons. My DH and 3 of his male cousins have AD. At the last count, none of the females. My daughter is banking on it being gender specific. I dount it. But, sure does seem odd that so many in one family has/had AD.
Mawzy--Your daughter could be right. There can be multiple genetic causes for a disease, and each will have specific characteristics that may be slightly different from the others, including how it is passed. It is possible that in your husband's family the genetic cause is on the male gene, or that the female carries the gene but only her male children get the disease--2 possibilities which would explain so many men in one family having AD.
Ditto Mawzy. My husband's father died when he was in his early 40's, but his uncle had it...and a generation earlier, my DH's grandfather had "something" that kept him locked in his room!...and he was apparently quite the wild man..My DH and his sister used to tell stories about how afraid they were of their grandfather!.
My husband did have the APoE4 marker in his blood work, - which we know further substantiates this theory.