Geriatric Care Management Blog

If you take a straw poll of any gathering of older adults or their caregivers you are likely to find that what they fear most is not their death, but their loss of their mental faculties.  Yet, about one in every four persons who begins to manifest that cloudy thinking we all fear is some form of dementia may actually have a reversible condition.  And this condition may be brought on by allergy medications or some other prescriptions as well as some over the counter medications. Researchers from the Alzheimer’s Association have reviewed studies from large clinics around the country and report up to 25 percent of people who come to specialists fearing they have dementia really are suffering from bad medicine instead.  Most often the culprit is a family of drugs referred to anticholinergics, drugs that are common to a wide range of medications ranging from anti-depressants and pain killers to antihistamines.  And the cloud that they create in a person’s mind usually is the result of side effects of the medications....

For those of you with a loved one who suffers from dementia of any sort, it is hard to see them fade in their ability to remember familiar surroundings, important experiences from the past or even remember you.  And as if that is not enough to manage as a caregiver, your loved one may also at times become inexplicably angry or aggressive.  So what can you do when dementia becomes violent? It is really critical that you always remember that the dementia is not about you, and it is not even really about the parent who once walked you to school, or down the aisle if you are married, or any of the countless other wonderful episodes in your collective life.  It is about the dementia and you cannot reason with it.   The Alzheimer’s Association, an organization founded to provide optimal care and services to individuals confronting dementia, and to their caregivers and families, offers some very helpful advice.  When you are with a person suffering from dementia, and they become aggressive...

Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting about 5.3 Americans, and it is expected to grow to 15 million Americans with this disease by the middle of this century.  Almost everyone has heard about the condition, and we even see advertisements on television for medicines that may be able to slow the progression of the disease.  What we probably do not hear a lot about is that Alzheimer’s commonly is accompanied by other neurological problems that caregivers and Alzheimer’s patients’ providers should be looking for. While challenging to diagnose in patients with Alzheimer’s or other dementias, depression reportedly affects as many as 20 to 32% of dementia patients.  It is particularly common with those who manifest vascular dementia.  It is hard for providers to diagnose, because the confusion or lack of focus common to depression also are frequently the hallmark of dementia as well.  As a caregiver, be alert to insomnia or hypersomnia as well as agitation or suicidality in patients...

What do hearing aids, exercise, support groups and travel have in common?  They all are ways that individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, specifically, or dementia, generally, can fight these diseases’ progression.  Even more important, they help to fight the personal isolation that accompanies these frightening conditions. We often associate dementias with older adults and the stereotypic confusion that can characterize the individuals with the diagnoses.  But it is not just a condition of older adults as the recent public disclosure of The University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach, Pat Summit, highlights.  Ms. Summit is just 59 as she goes public with her diagnosis, and it helps others to understand that it can happen as early as 30 and 40 years of age.  Younger onset Alzheimer’s Disease technically speaking is the manifestation affecting those under age 65, and there are 250,000 new cases in America every year.  Yet, there are ways to fight the downward spiral of dementia.

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I have written in earlier blog postings about dementia: “preventing” Alzheimer’s Disease, Alzheimer’s from the inside out,  maternal genetic links to Alzheimer’s, and women’s predisposition to Alzheimer’s.  I would like to share some research that shows dementia to be tied to a number of other chronic conditions we often find among the elderly.  This posting is about monitoring and managing other medical conditions in order to reduce the chances of developing dementia, and it underscores one of the most important parts of geriatric care management...

In my experience as a geriatric care manager, I field a lot of questions from people who are suddenly faced with caring for an older parent or spouse.  For people who become caregivers overnight after a parent has a fall or experiences a significant medical setback of some sort, it can be an overwhelming responsibility.  Where does one go to learn how to be a caregiver for an older adult or someone else with special needs?  It is easy to tell a person how to become certified as a geriatric care manager (not as easy getting certified) or even a paramedic (again, not as easy getting certified), but how do you become a caregiver right away? 

As much as some folks may have a predisposition for being “good with people,” being a caregiver poses some unique challenges and an aspiring caregiver can benefit from some special training.  One of the resources I featured last month, Julie Northcutt – President of CaregiverList.com, talked about using summer visits...

I have written in the past about some of the current knowledge on dementias that can affect elders for whom you may be caring.  But one thing we do not always talk about is how decisions made earlier in life can actually help to ward off failing memory function or actually mitigate the risk of dementia.  I am going to share here results from two separate studies that offer some hopeful information for those who wish to start right now in habits that will help to preserve a healthier, older brain later in life.

A group of researchers led by Kirk Erickson reported on the normal course of “brain shrinkage” with age in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The authors talked about the typical shrinkage of a part of the brain that affects spatial memory, the hippocampus.  They conducted a clinical study among 120 adults in which half of the adults were given a walking regimen...

As a geriatric care manager, we have knowledge of Alzheimer’s Disease and its progression, less about its causes and its treatment, but we cannot know Alzheimer’s like a patient with the condition can.  I recently was introduced to the writings of an “expert” who has gained his insights by being an Alzheimer’s patient since he was first diagnosed with dementia which has been presumed to be Alzheimer’s at age 58.  Now 65 years old, Richard Taylor, Ph.D., a psychologist, has written a book titled Alzheimer’s from the Inside Out, and he issues a monthly newsletter on the subject.  The following is an excerpt from his most recent newsletter.  For those who are caregivers or family members of a patient with Alzheimer’s, this may offer some sense of living with the condition from the patient’s point of view:

“I am Richard, an individual living with the symptoms of dementia, probably (maybe) of the Alzheimer's type. This is my monthly newsletter for February, the month of my birth (Chicago, Illinois/Jackson Park...

Scientists have long known that Alzheimer’s Disease has a hereditary component, but new research suggests the predisposition is more often passed on from the maternal side than from the dad who has had Alzheimer’s.  This, according to research reported in the March 1, 2011, issue of the journal, Neurology.   One of you who are following my blog had asked about Alzheimer’s recently, so the timing could not have been better.  As a geriatric care manager, I often counsel sons and daughters of elder parents who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  I now will tell them that in addition to age of onset, gender of the older parent also is a factor when considering one’s own future.  But I can also report that there is very good reason for hope. The researchers whose work was published studied 53 mentally healthy individuals, some of whom had a mother diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, some...