Holiday Gift Guides and More

• The Alzheimer’s Association has put out a couple of exceptional guides for helping caregivers and families have a meaningful holiday season with their loved ones with dementia.

  • Holiday Gift Guide - what can you get someone who has dementia? What is appropriate? What is helpful? This gift guide is a fantastic resource finding meaningful presents for someone with dementia.

  • General Holiday Guide - this guide will make it much easier to set up holiday events and create situations that will help your loved one, as well as your other guests, feel at ease.

  • Tips for a calm traveling experience - this guide is not specific to the holidays but gives critical information for traveling with someone with dementia no matter the time of year. Use it during the holiday season, and save it for use throughout the year as well.

• How to be Good Company for Caregivers, People Living with Dementia this Holiday Season (KJZZ Phoenix) - an enlightening interview with Karin VonKay on how best to support and communicate with people who have dementia, as well as their caregivers, during the holidays and all year long.

• Do’s and Don’ts for Visiting Someone with Dementia (Daily Caring) - 4 tips for planning visits strategically, and 21 do’s and don’ts for having a good visit. This is not holiday-specific, but it’s perhaps more important at this time of the year than at any other.

This Week In Dementia Science, Research, and Tech

• Scientists find significant link between internet use and dementia (thebrighterside) - you might be surprised at the findings. We were!

• Novel Nanofiber Vaccine Aims to Prevent Dementia Without Inflammation (scienceblog) - Washington University just received 2.9 million dollars to work on a new vaccine approach for preventing Alzheimer’s disease.

• Finger-Prick Test Brings Alzheimer’s Detection Closer to Everyone (neurosciencenews) - a new method of testing requires just a finger prick of blood. It’s still a few years out, but this development looks promising!

• Alzheimer's May Not Actually Be a Brain Disease, an Expert Reveals (shiningscience) - This would be a huge paradigm shift, and we’ll have to wait and see whether this idea holds up under intense scrutiny.

Unusual Risk Factors for Dementia

Scientific studies are finding some strange connections between our world, our bodies, and our minds. Here are a few risk factors that you can try to mitigate.

• This eye problem is linked to Alzheimer’s disease (knowridge) - problems with our sensory organs are starting to be linked with dementia.

• Hearing Loss and the Dementia Connection (Johns Hopkins) - “Hearing loss doesn’t just mean an older adult needs to turn up the TV. It’s been linked to a range of health problems, including dementia.”

• Alarming: Common Herbicide Linked to Lasting Brain Damage (scitechdaily) - a study that comes out of Arizona State University suggests that a common herbicide can do lasting damage to the brain.

• Study Links Muscle Loss to Alzheimer’s Risk (neurosciencenews) - “Smaller temporalis muscles correlate with a 60% higher dementia risk.”

Boost Your Defenses Against Dementia

We talked about a bunch of scary risk factors above, so let’s talk about a great habit you can pick up to lower your risk of dementia.

Reading books over watching TV linked to lower dementia risk (techandsciencepost) - that’s right! Sedentary behaviors that don’t challenge your mind - things like watching TV - are detrimental. Stimulating activities, however, such as reading, are beneficial in reducing your risk.

Video of the Week

Your ten-dollar word for the week is anosognosia. This is the condition where people with dementia are unable to see that they are forgetful because of the damage to that part of their minds. I go into a lot more detail in this short video, and just for fun I included some outtakes at the end of the video of all of the times I butchered the pronunciation. It’s a tongue twister!

Until next time…

You can find lots more resources from elumenEd and The Dementia Newsletter at these sources:

• The brand new Dementia News Facebook group!

• The elumenEd YouTube Channel

• elumenEd’s Facebook Page

And read back issues of the Dementia Newsletter here!

Stay informed, everyone, and we’ll see you next week.