Alzheimer's: Mementos Help Preserve Memories

(CNN - October 29, 2009) The Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research suggests in this article that mementos are extremely important for re-introducing "life" back into a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease. When caregivers interview the one they love suffering from the illness, they preserve a special moment in time. That moment is so fleeting -- so precious -- in the life of an individual who suffers from memory loss. As the state of that individual progressively worsens, there may be no turning back to cohesive conversations. The Foundation presumes that by writing in journals, keeping important documents, and creating scrapbooks, family members can help jog the memory of individuals suffering from the disease.

However, I'd like to emphasize how important it is for the family caregivers themselves to keep these mementos. Although they indeed might help "restore" the memory of an affected individual, they also may serve as an incredible means of comfort for family members in the future. They could even serve as the highest form of education by portraying the true nature of the disease.

A True Education

I can walk down the aisles of Barnes and Noble and choose from a plethora of autobiographies written by individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Reading through these books, I could get a fairly good background on the "structure" of the illness: the symptoms, the statistics, the history. I could google "Alzheimer's disease" and read about the complex relationship between plaques and tangles in the brain that leads to memory loss. I could watch "The Notebook." Maybe shed a tear...

But isn't there something missing in this picture? Where are the true voices of the individuals suffering from the disease? Where are the voices of the families, the voices of those that tiptoe through the pressures and provide care for the ailing ones they love?

Autobiographies and movies are scripted. The very nature of these resources hides the meaning of the words they contain. I want the truth.

Any good ideas on how to find answers? How to truly educate the public regarding Alzheimer's disease?

The SAT: Is it all that matters?

Any high school junior or senior will tell you that, either currently or within the past year, the SAT (or ACT in some cases) has controlled his or her life. With college admissions getting more competitive every year, and grade inflation which makes a 4.0 look merely mediocre, students are under more and more pressure to perform on these standardized tests. Many take the tests over and over and over in order to "prove their talent." The Perfect Score provides a satire of sorts highlighting the ridiculous lengths students will go to in order to get the elusive 800. In this movie, these lengths include elaborately coordinated cheating, trespassing, computer hacking, etc. While this movie obviously primarily intends to entertain its presumable audience (young people), it actually provides substantial insight into the SAT-obsessed college admissions culture teens currently face. The characters are absolutely desperate to do well on a single test, which they are convinced will determine the rest of their lives. Is it good that society places such pressure on young people? Will there be long-term ramifications on this generation of young people from the amount of academic pressure they are under? No one can know for sure, but something about teens being driven to cheat as massively as they attempt to in this movie cannot be healthy.

As You Wish...

SWASHBUCKLING PIRATES! KIDNAPPERS! PRINCESSES IN DISTRESS! HEROES SAVING THE DAY! A LOT OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!

The Princess Bride, what isn't there to say about it? It's the classic tale of love and loss, youth and maturity, and... men in black with immunities to poison and with a giant sidekick? As you wish...

The Princess Bride, a movie about a whole lot of things that are decidedly unclassical. Where else can you learn about growing up and finding your true priorities but by going through the evilest swamps or dueling with your arch enemies or surviving the Pit of Despair for your true love?

This movie is the only movie that can teach us about the realities of aging because it's so dramatically real. It teaches us the power of our hopes, dreams and wishes and inspires us to hold on to it even as the world conspires against us and grows old around us. It is all about what you wish...

The Alzheimer's Brain and Its Ethical Dilemma

This image, provided by the Alzheimer's Society, depicts a cross-section of both a healthy brain and one with advanced Alzheimer's disease. So what is actually occurring in the shriveled and broken right side of this brain?

The brain's cortex, hippocampus, and ventricles are the main areas affected. While the cortex and hippocampus shrink, the ventricles expand, causing memory to deteriorate. Plaques, or proteins, and tangles, or dead nerve cells, suffocate the healthy tissue of the brain and reduce the brain's size. (See this image for a magnified picture of healthy brain cells and ones infected by plaques and tangles).

Although often thought to only impact the memory of an afflicted individual, however, these plaques and tangles have a variety of adverse effects. Symptoms of the disease include disorientation in time and space, poor judgement, and sporadic changes in personality.

After considering many of the potentially dangerous effects that an unsupervised, affected individual may have on others, I'm still debating when and to what extent one should intervene in making decisions for an individual with dementia. How will society ever determine when it is appropriate to take basic freedoms, such the ability to drive, away from an individual with Alzheimer's disease? What role must the family play in preventing disaster?

And... Break!

Who was here to see the Stanford victory against Oregon this weekend? It was an epic game, worthy of legends! Toby Gerhart, you make us proud... representing the class of 2010!

With all this focus on the biggest, most experienced star running back, where do the freshmen fit in?As the youngest members of the team, it seems hard for them to have their glory. The article focuses on how the freshmen will need to learn the "veteren" moves and play until "instinct" kicks before they can begin to contend for Gerhart's star place. In college football, it seems, the older age means the more experience and the greater star.

I think that society benefits the older, more experienced players in more industries than we focus public media attention on. Experience is a more well-paid trait then many other qualities, and I'm not complaining at all. Though it seems as though there's that popular obsession with youth and vigor, we're still rewarding the wiser with the bigger dividends. This experience-based rewards program helps support the natural development of its players, and I - for one - don't mind that at all.

The Web Factor

The internet gets blamed for any and all sorts of societal degradation. Obsession with social networking, pornography, plagiarism, and online stalkers all stem from the advent of the internet. But the world wide web definitely has its advantages as well. From making global communication exponentially more efficient to making shopping truly an "at-home" activity, the internet has made life more convenient in a plethora of ways. It has also had a monumental impact in the political world. As Michael Cornfield explains in Politics Moves Online: Campaigning and the Internet, the constant availability of news thanks to the web appears to create "smarter" voters. That is, a voting population that knows more about the political issues up for debate. Interestingly, Cornfield also indicates that these better informed voters tend to be more "independent" voters; they are not affiliated with a specific political party.

This correlation between "informed" and "independent" voters could be extrapolated to hypothesize that, as the internet becomes more and more dominant as a political news sources, large numbers of voters will float away from strict party adherence into independent territory. Therefore, the internet may ultimately have a much larger impact on American politics than merely as a campaigning tool. It may also ultimately prove to be much more of a societal good than harm.

Vitality with a Purpose

This is a follow up on my previous post about the Vitality Project directed by Dan Buettner. This video elaborates more on the "Why" aspect of the project and how people are finding purpose in their lives through this project. One man, David, had just lost his wife a year ago and developed diabetes type II around the same time and was running on a dark path until Vitality Project took shape in his town. This project is about reshaping a community in all aspects: environment, restaurants, relationships, and self-perception in order to produce a more active and engaged community. David mentioned this project has brought purpose back into his life and feels younger and more energized. His outlook on life completely changed for the better and Buettner hopes, through this project, that mental changes like that of David's will contribute to longevity for the community and communities around the world. in Albert Lea, this project has inspired children, adults and the elderly to take control of their lives by adding more years into their lives AND adding more life into those years.

I believe videos, articles, and projects with the positive idea of longevity such as this are the driving forces that will help blur or dismantle people's age stereotypes. This project in particular unites a community with a common goal to better the health of the community. Life does not have to be a linear beginning and end. Life can have multiple beginning for people as long as they find a purpose worth living for in that given time. Through my research, I find that centenarians have this exact ability to find a special purpose in different stages in their lives, which keeps their life inspiring and active.

Longevity Calculator

How long do you want to live? .....

Now how long WILL you live? Take a longevity quiz and dare to find out.

This Northwestern Mutual Longevity Calculator provides a range of questions about your body mass index, drinking and smoking habits, eating habits, stress management and driving record (very fun animations and sound effects included during survey). However, after taking this survey I realized how over simplified the survey itself was and the concept of a longevity calculator was. It estimated I was going to live to 93 years in 12 questions! Only 12 questions. It failed to ask about my medical history, in depth dietary details, family history, lifestyle, exercise habits and mental health (I'm sure I'm missing other factors) I found another survey that asked 40 questions. It asked more specific questions; however I still was not convinced about my predicted age. Longevity is not something you can measure through a survey nor 5 factors that are key to longevity. It's a multitude of factors that are all relative to each individual. Nevertheless, I was amused by the surveys. Check them out and see if you actually reach the predicted age!

Favored Child Transformed to Caretaker?

In browsing through the New York Times's New Old Age Blog, I found this intriguing article on the relationship between a parent's favorite child and who ultimately becomes the parent's caregiver.

A new study, led by Dr. Pillemer, proposes that parents are more likely to choose the favored child to take care of them in their old age. Before making this assertion, Pillemer also cuts away the illusion that every parent loves their children equally. After interviewing seniors, Pillemer discovered that virtually all of his interviewees were able to name a favorite child. Ironically, middle-aged children were often incorrect in their guess of who was the favorite child (most of them picked themselves when it was actually a sibling who won the majority of their parents' praise).

Pillemer's argues that an aging parent will depend on the favored child to take care of them as they face old age, even if that child is troubled or unreliable, because the parent feels more comfortable with him/her. However, I think Pillemer fails to account for the practicality of care-giving. If the favored child lives further away, then it is more pragmatic to depend on the child who is located closer. While I don't have statistics on this, I would imagine that pragmatism is often more valued than intuition when it comes to care-giving in old age.

Coming of Age in the 1920s: "The Damned and the Beautiful"

While we may think that undergoing adolescence today is one of the more painful points in life, rewind 90 years or so to the Jazz Age and the issues those college-age kids had to deal with will shock you.

When I first began my research on the quarter-life crisis in the 1920s (i.e. the issues teens faced in transitioning to adulthood), I expected to find evidence of teens turning to booze and partying as a means of escaping their societal roles a la "The Great Gatsby."

However, I discovered that teens then had a whole lot more on their mind than escape in the '20s. Paula Fass explains in "The Damned and the Beautiful" that teens rebelled in the '20s because the "imminence of death turned youth to pleasure-seeking." The recent end of the war and the knowledge that another one might be approaching thus turned youth to experience crises of the psychological variety.

Reading this, I couldn't help but wonder why people haven't made a bigger deal of coming of age in the '20s or during other war time eras. The quarter-life crisis didn't start gaining attention until the early 21st century, and yet quarter-lifers today aren't traumatized by war or determined to defy society's expectations because of a fear of death. Instead, we defer finding jobs because we have too many options and often because we believe we have too much talent to waste on a career we don't love. Our reasons for postponing adulthood thus seem less legitimate than those of 20-year-olds in the 1920s.

Dear Mr. President

In her song “Dear Mr. President” Pink—a popular hip-hop and rock artist in the 21^st century—questions the unsuccessful governmental measures such as the no child left behind act. She asserts, “How can you say no child is left behind? We’re not dumb we’re not blind. They’re all sitting in your cells, while you pave the road to hell.” She attempts to stress through her lyrics that the government’s insufficient response to problems occurring in contemporary society foreshadows a life of “hard work” for adolescents as adults, giving them a bleak future to look forward to. This contributes to their unwillingness to want to partake in this bleak adulthood. In contrast, Nancy Lesko—a professor at Columbia University specializing in curriculum, sociology of education, and youth studies—would attribute this unwillingness to grow up to the unsuccessful middle school structures which do not adequately cater to and foster young adolescents, and inefficaciously prepare youth for adolescence’s transitional phase. Though Lesko makes a reasonable call for education through her academic argument, she ignores the mainstream source where youth are getting the bulk of their life messages from and fails to address the depth of the emerging adulthood problem.

Release Therapy

In his album revealingly titled Release Therapy, Ludacris—a lucrative, well-respected figure in the rap industry who has been prominent since the 90s—includes a hit single entitled "Slap." In this song, he chronicles all the stresses, failures, responsibilities, and disappointments of being an adult. Like Pink does in her song "Dear Mr. President", he attributes some of these to the shortcomings of the government, exemplified by his exclamation that “President Bush could give a damn about [us]!” With young adolescents religiously following his lyrics and heeding his profuse warnings about adulthood, it is no wonder why they are so scared and uncertain and unwilling to take that big leap into the distant world of adulthood livelihood and all it entails. It is hip-hop artists like him who perpetuate the emerging adulthood epidemic through their dissuading lyrics.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

In this movie, the protagonist Benjamin Button is born old. So he doesn’t grow older, but younger. The movie highlights how aging, regarless of its form, is inevitable. And with it comes all kinds of adventures, transitions, and conflicts. Benjamin shows the tribulations of aging, particularly of aging backwards – simultaneously facing the milestones of both types. What makes this move interesting is seeing how he copes growing in two directions since aging in itself is full of complications. His story is basically a battle between physical aging and maturation. Physical growth seems to hinder the characters’ capabilities: the older their bodies get, the more they are handicapped. Similarly, a baby (or very young child) is helpless. The move is narrated by Daisy, Benjamin’s lover, who is on her death bed telling the sort of her life. It beings with Benjamin’s ‘curious’ birth and proceeds to trace their lives via their interactions with one another. Although their different ages only allow them to meet halfway, at middle-age, their love story transcends the boundaries of age.

Gender Development in Adolescence

A new book I found in the stacks explained to me why gender was so significant during adolescence and highlighted how females are portrayed on TV. Adolescence is that uneasy, expect-the-unexpected time when we go through various changes: biological, cognitive, social, and emotional. On top of that, it is a time that researchers say we feel extra pressured to "conform to traditional gender roles" because our gender awareness is increasing. With all those changes going on, where do teens look to learn how to "be" a woman or a man? The Changing Portrayal of Adolescents in the Media since 1950 presents the media as a significant source of gender socialization. TV shows and commercials (in the past 20 years) subtly give us samples of how a conventional female behaves: more often than males, she is concerned with beauty, romance, and household chores; more often than males, she is seen crying, whining, or making threats. This is interesting because although we live in a society that attempts to equate men and women, there are still residual conventions of femininity. Why are these stereotypes still here? Is it even possible to get rid of these traditional images of women? Perhaps we cannot expect stereotypes to ever disappear because gender is rooted in our biology -- it is something society cannot alter.