Possible Alzheimer's breakthrough? Go, Aussies, go!

MANY thanks to the friend who introduced me to Collective-Evolution, a website dedicated to inspiring "us to begin expanding our way of thinking so we can take conscious steps towards creating BIG change on the planet."  Gotta love a website committed to expanding our minds & lives!

The CE article she posted was about a potential Alzheimer's breakthrough, out of the University of Queenland's Queensland Brain Institute (QBI).  Using a non-invasive ultrasound technique, they are investigating whether removing toxic plaque & lesions from nerve cells commonly associated with the condition's onset might prove an effective treatment, perhaps "reversing the processes that are commonly associated with the onset of Alzheimer's and other dementia-related diseases."   

According to their findings, published in Science Translational Medicine, QBI researchers have developed a way to treat amyloid plaques & neurofibrillary tangles, the two types of lesions scientists  commonly associate with Alzheimer’s disease.  

The article goes into the details, but to sum up the fascinating findings, the QBI team beams non-invasive ultrasound waves directly into affected brain tissue!  

 

The technique, described in full in the article, allows them to clear out toxins tied to Alzheimer's "most severe symptoms."  They report a hope-inspiring 75% success rate in FULLY restoring memory function for the rats used in the initial testing ~and~ the treatment appears to cause NO brain damage to the surrounding healthy tissue (caps are mine).  

 

To date, researchers have found that treated lab mice showed marked memory improvement in three tasks - a maze, recognizing new objects, and remembering places they should avoid.  Wow!  Go, QBI, go!

Imagining a world with an effective treatment for the disease that has touched so many of my friends.  One that is non-invasive, avoids any drug therapies.  Oh, calm, my beating heart!

QBI's press release expresses relatively (for scientists) unbridled hope - “We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics.  The word ‘breakthrough’ is often misused, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach.”

50 million people worldwide are currently affected by Alzheimer's & other dementia-related diseases. Each year, over 7.7 million new cases are reported - that's the number reported, not the total number!  That rate is spiraling as we live longer, making our brains more susceptible to being ravaged.  Scientists expect the reported number to reach 135 million by 2050.  

Researchers at QBI are planning on starting trials soon with sheep & other higher animal models, with human trials targeted to start in 2017.  God speed, QBI.  Aussie Aussie Aussie oi oi oi!!!

Hi ho, triggers!

It continues to be an unexpected blessing of older age, this discovering of things I was too close up to before to realize.  A recent AH HA! moment involves the power of emotional triggers.  More & more, I am able to experience the pull of the trigger toward or away from a wise response.  Has me thinking about the vast majority of triggers that affect me profoundly yet go undetected.

 

All this pondering was triggered by going out with an older friend to a pre-church breakfast a couple Sundays ago.  We ate at West Avenue Grill, one of our favorite restaurants.  I ordered the Veggie Benedict - two (usually) perfectly poached eggs atop grilled portobello mushrooms, spinach & roasted red peppers, their luscious home fries on the side.

For the first time ever, my eggs were not sublime, not cooked to perfect liquidity.  They were, sad to say, hard cooked.  Our server was horrified & immediately reached for my plate, saying he'd put a rush on the corrected order.

I balked.  I wouldn't let him take them back.  

He protested - they were uneatable.  

I stood my ground.

Reluctantly, he bowed to my obstinancy.

It was strange, experiencing my inner determination to eat the hard-cooked eggs.  STRONG.  Unyielding.  Totally irrational.  What was this all about?

In a swoosh of startle awareness, it hit me.  When I was very little, Mom got me to eat all of my eggs by having the yolk be sad - I'd eaten all of the egg white, yet left it alone.  I am, to this day, prone to anthropomorphizing, giving inanimate objects human characteristics.  Giving those shunned yolks human feelings - sadness at being left alone - did the trick every time.  I ate the yolk.

 

Now, sixty years later, I apparently still feel honor bound to eat a yolk, even when improperly cooked.  There's no doubt in my mind I would have agreed to have it recooked - had been a runny egg white.  But the yolk?  I could not do it!

It is rare that I get to experience a trigger as it is setting off an action.  Deeply grateful for those improperly poached eggs.  Due to them, I got to FEEL the depth of an ancient trigger, rooted in a mother just doing all in her power to get her little girl to eat all of her egg.

My grief-struck egg yolk trigger is just one trigger affecting my life.  I'd love to say it's the tip of my trigger ice berg, but strongly suspect it is the tip of the tip.  

How many of us give much thought to the triggers that affect our lives?  To the ones that affect the lives of those we love or work with or are connected to in some other way?  

It used to drive me around the bend that Mom could NOT do certain things, certain very important things.  She'd see the importance of doing them, agree to do them, then not follow through.  For a long time, I took it personally.  Until the day - long ago, thank goodness before she was reunited with her O! Best Beloved - it hit me that something was triggering her response, a trigger she didn't even recognize, maybe couldn't have recognized if it was explained to her by the most brilliant counselor on the planet.

Ever since the Veggie Benedict incident, I've been aware of how many of my responses & actions are triggered by forces & memories far beyond my conscious awareness.   If that is true for me, it is true for all.  

May that realization - that if it's true for me, it's true for all - temper my responses to frustrating moments, the realization that there's more to each situation than meets the eye, that what I see & understand is often - maybe most of the time - a teensy bit of what's what.  May it trigger compassion, tenderness, and a willingness to be kind.

between a rock & a hard place

Arizona Senator John McCain recently spoke out for immigration reform, noting: I think most statistics show that they (immigrants) fill part of the workforce that are much needed. We have, and I’m a living example of, the aging population. We need these people in the workforce legally.

Senator McCain is in agreement with Ai-Jen Poo, who urges America to come to terms with the reality that our aging Boomer population & countless undocumented workers need each other.

The sad truth is that undocumented workers have been used for years to handle the sort of work others deem too beneath them, too disgusting to do themselves.  A shocking number of Americans include the care of our elderly & the dependent in that category - work they would never consider tackling themselves.

So, we have our most vulnerable population - the elderly, the dependent - increasingly relying on workers who are often not able to effectively communicate.  When they most need to feel a sense of connection with those around them, it's almost impossible for them to experience.  

I am not criticizing the workers who take on the day-to-day care of the elderly & dependent.  I am calling out all the people who consider it too demeaning to change a loved ones soiled clothes, who never bother learning how to change a bed, to give a sponge bath, to help them dress.  It mattered to my mother that I knew how to do those things, that John knew how to do them, too.  Yes, parts of it was disgusting.  But she was my Mom, so none of that mattered.

The growing need for support services for our aging population puts us between a rock & a hard place.  We need the "menial" workers who do the work we avoid, but we run smack against immigration policies that force them to stay invisible.  

Yes, we need immigration reform so the people we so desperately need to help our loved ones function are available - and well compensated. But we also need to get far beyond that rock & hard place, to an American culture that compassionately provides the care our elders & the dependent need, helping them with even the grossest needs, being there for them to talk to, to connect with, to help them feel visible & valued. 

honoring a life ~ StoryCorps' Memory Loss Initiative

After setting up their first StoryBooth in NYC's Grand Central Station, David Isay & the other folks at StoryCorps quickly discovered while it's goal was to collect stories from all ages, time & again it was the elderly who were coming by to record their memories, sometimes under their own steam, often brought by family, friends or a caregiver.  

It became clear that the longing to share & record memories of early lives - first loves & first jobs, hard times & joyful, sad & funny & everything in between - went beyond preservation & touched on something deeper.  Many of the older people, many of the youngers who cared for them, yearned to REMEMBER before they forgot.  StoryCorps provides that priceless opportunity.

Responding to this AH HA! realization, in 2006 StoryCorps introduced the Memory Loss Initiative, focusing on recording & preserving stories from people experiencing forms of encroaching memory loss.  David Isay brought Dina Zempsky, who specializes in working with the aging & elderly, on board.  mon board.

What Dina found was that people changed during the 40-minute interviews, transformed by looking back on their life, seeing it as separate & personal, yet part of a greater whole.  They were grateful to know that while they might lose their memories, those recorded memories would never be lost.  

What Dina doesn't mention, but which I know from personal experience to be true, is that recording memories - which begins with recognizing there are memories worth recording, often a stunning revelation for most of us - is usually just the beginning.  Once the sharing begins, it normally continues, with long ago moments shared far away from a recording booth, mother to child, grandparent to beloved younger, friend to friend.  Even just remembered in their heart, in the quiet of a room.

 

Once the sharing starts, it doesn't just stop.

My mother's psychologist was blown away by Mom's Mindwalker1910 e-mails. I will never forget the look on Kevyn's face as she marveled - "Kay, in sharing those memories, you are honoring your life.  There are few things you can do that is as healthy at that."  

Smiling, thinking about the people who read about StoryCorps, who listen to the stories, then start doing some of their own delving into a parent's or grandparent's or friend's stories.  

Mitra Bonshahi, the Memory Loss Initiative's outreach coordinator, notes that they are capturing voices that otherwise wouldn't be heard, would be lost.  And that our aging population is especially at risk of being dismissed, ignored.  

 

We can use StoryCorps app - and others, like GreyMatters - to share & record our loved ones' stories, to help them honor their life.  Even if those precious memories are never archived in the Library of Congress, they'll be caught & captured in our hearts.  

Medicare "Observation Status" (from 04/20/15 FORBES)

 

AARP's new evidence that Medicare's hospital observation rules are a mess ~ an important read, from Forbes.

Excerpt:
Of all the complex rules that plague fee-for-service Medicare, few are harder to understand and potentially more important for seniors than observation status. By now, many older adults have heard the phrase. But they are still not clear what it means.

A new study by AARP sheds some light on the consequences for seniors of hospital observation stays. But they turn out to be a muddle, in part because Medicare pays for hundreds of millions of dollars of skilled nursing facility care that probably should be billed to patients.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2015/04/20/aarps-new-evidence-that-medicares-hospital-observation-rules-are-a-mess/?sf37744911=1

 

 

 

true confession - I love David Isay!

 

John has come to terms with the fact that I love David Isay.  Since we've never met, there's no reason for my husband to be jealous.  Actually, John should love David, too.  David gives people a voice.  That is something that John feels as strongly about as I do.

The MacArthur Foundation certainly loves David, too.  They named him a Fellow in 2000.  What did he do with the award money?  In 2003, he launched StoryCorps. 

David's bio says that he grew up in New Haven, Connecticutt & Manhattan, but I know better - the man is from another planet.  You can try & convince me that he is a mere earthling like the rest of us, but I am not buying it.

He received the MacArthur "Genius" Award due to his work as - of all things - a radio producer.  Radio?  Seriously?  Oh, yeah!  


What an astonishing range of projects, from the Yiddish Radio Project, showcasing (and preserving) the richness of Jewish radio shows from the 1930s-50s to The Execution Tapes, drawn from a trove of tapes recording 23 electrocutions in Georgia (not for the faint of heart). 
  

Not surprising the MacArthur Foundation came knocking on his door.  What did he do with his no-strings award money?  He gave America a voice.

Think of the timing - David Isay is named a MacArthur Fellow in 2000, a year later is 9/11.  And David had the means to make a difference.  Boy, did he ever!

In October 2003, he set up his first StoryBooth - a mini recording studio - near Track 14 in NYC's iconic Grand Central Station.  A simple message was emblazoned across the small, odd-looking structure - Listening is an Act of Love. The legendary Studs Terkel cut the ribbon.

Terkel's connection to the project went beyond its mission of recording stories of everyday Americans - something at which he was a master - to his own roots in the 1930s' Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Writers' Project, David's inspiration for StoryCorps.    

So far, StoryCorps recordings are closing in on 50,000 stories shared from over 80,000 Americans in all 50 states, Washington D.C. & several territories.  

In 2000, David was named a MacArthur Fellow & used his award money to launch StoryCorps.  This past November, he received the TED Award - $1 million dollars, plus the TED community’s wide range of resources & expertise. His "one wish to change the world"?  Take StoryCorps global!. 

Less than five weeks ago, David accepted his award & let the world in on his heart's desire:  “Here is my wish - that you will help us to take everything we’ve learned through StoryCorps and bring it to the world so that anyone, anywhere, can easily record a meaningful interview with another human being, which then will be archived for history. Tonight, I’m going to make the case that inviting a loved one, a friend or a stranger to record a meaningful interview might just turn out to be one of the most important moments in that person’s life — and in yours.” 

 

Once again, David is leading the way, with an updated version of the StoryCorps app, just released in beta version.  Anywhere, anyone with an iPhone can conduct a StoryCorps interview.  The app includes a microphone, instructions, and the ability to send audio files.  As David describes it, the app "Helps you pick questions, and gives you all the tips you need to record a meaningful StoryCorps interview, and then with one tap upload it.”  

Anyone, anywhere - my bet, even on David's home planet, wherever that may be!