Common Myths Around Brain Disease - Encore

Lisa Skinner: 00:00:00

Hello to all of you who have tuned into our show, truth, lies and Alzheimer's. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host, and I'd like to shout out a very warm welcome to all of you who have joined us today. The purpose of this show is to talk about every aspect of Alzheimer's disease that's going to include The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, oh yeah. Our goal is to get to the truth, dispel the lies and myths and unveil the secret faces of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia in order for you to understand what it's truly like to live with a brain disease. My goal is to zoom outside the paradigm of it exclusively being a memory loss condition, in order to shift people's understanding of just how dramatically this deep disease impacts the lives of those who have it, as well as their caregivers, family members, and for that matter, anybody who's involved in the life of a person living with dementia. My story started almost 50 years ago when my grandmother began displaying some very usual behaviors, she'd tell me about birds living in her mattress and coming out and pecking at her face, and rats that are invading her home, men that are trying to harm her. And I was taken so aback by these far fetched stories, I didn't know what to do if we fast forward a few years, I ended up becoming a behavior specialist, and I spent nearly 30 years working in the elder care industry, counseling families on how to best live with this disease so they could focus on what really matters, and that's spending quality time with their loved ones. I've also authored several books, and I've recently written a training program on the subject, and believe it or not, I have watched eight of my family members fall prey to one of the brain diseases that causes dementia. I'm also a certified Dementia Care trainer with the Alzheimer's Association. You know, there are so many aspects of living with dementia that are unexpected and can surface out of nowhere at any time. I call these the hidden or secret faces of dementia, and as many of you know, they show up unannounced and are completely unpredictable. That's why it's so important to be prepared for anything that's going to show up on this journey. Knowledge is power, and I'm here to arm you with that knowledge, so you too will have the power to negotiate the many challenges you will face, having a loved one or caring for someone with dementia. So tonight, I am going to enlighten you on the many myths that I have been hearing for the last 3040, years, since being involved in the elder care industry. I don't know how many of you have ever played that game telephone, but if you have, and you remember, it starts out with one person telling a person sitting next to them in a circle of many people, a secret, and then that person whispers what you told them to the next person, and so on and so forth, so on and so forth, until you go completely around the circle. It's always interesting to hear what the message ends up being by the time the last person says it out loud, more times than not, is completely convoluted from what the first person whispered into the ear of the person sitting next to them, and this is exactly what I have seen happen over the decades with myths about dementia. Let's get going on what they are, and I'm going to set them straight for you. The first one is that dementia is inevitable with age. Well, this is not true. Dementia is not a normal part of aging. Implementing healthy lifestyle habits can help protect us against memory loss and from developing dementia. As a matter of fact. Act the National Institutes on Aging, the NIA recommends regular aerobic exercise and a healthy diet with plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables and fish oils and keeping sugar intake low. Our brains despise sugar, also getting the proper amount of sleep, socializing, minimizing our stress, and keeping health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes under control can help reduce the risk of cognitive decline. Number two, Alzheimer's and dementia are the same thing. We talked about this pretty much in detail in last week's episode, but for those of you who missed it, I'll just say real quickly that both Alzheimer's disease and dementia involve cognitive decline, but not all dementia patients have Alzheimer's disease, dementia is one of the main symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, and Alzheimer's is the most common type of dementia. So Alzheimer's disease is the actual brain disease, one of over 100 brain diseases that cause dementia. Now, dementia is a syndrome as well as an umbrella term that's used to describe the symptoms that are caused by one of these brain diseases. And there are many, many symptoms associated with brain disease. So using the term dementia broadly refers to the symptoms, like the symptoms you have that you're feeling when you have a cold or the flu and you're just describing to somebody how you feel. That's what dementia is, and dementia is currently the seventh leading cause of death among all diseases worldwide. Although dementia mainly affects older people, it is not an inevitable consequence of aging. The third myth, a family member has dementia, so you're inevitably going to get it. That's not true. A common myth is that dementia is purely genetic. In other words, if a person's family member has a dementia diagnosis, they are guaranteed to develop dementia later in life. Now I mentioned in my introduction that I have had eight family members to come to one of the brain diseases that causes dementia. Five of those have been blood relatives. Three were through marriage and not related by blood so if this was true, I'm going to have to tell you I am in some serious trouble. But thank goodness it's not. What happens is there are many risk factors that play a role into whether or not a person will develop Alzheimer's disease or one of the other brain diseases that causes dementia. Some of these risk factors are what we call modifiable. In other words, they cannot be changed, and other risk factors are non are I'm sorry, some of the risk factors are modifiable so they can be changed, and these are typically health conditions. There are several risk factors, such as age, ethnicity and genetics, that you can't do anything about. They cannot be changed. And basically, the way this works is the more of these risk factors that apply to you, the higher your risk is going to be of developing Alzheimer's disease. But does that necessarily mean you will, let's say you have every single risk factor going against you. That still does not mean that you will definitely develop Alzheimer's disease, and in our next episode, I'm going to explain in detail what these risk factors are and what you can do today at any age, at any phase of your life to minimize your risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Lisa Skinner: 00:09:38

The next myth is that dementia only affects older adults. Well, this is not true. Age is the highest non modifiable risk factor for developing one of the brain diseases I mentioned that a few minutes ago, but dementia can affect younger adults in rarer cases. Scientists estimate that 38 to 260 people in 100,000 which is equivalent to point o3 eight to 26% of the population will develop early onset dementia in people age 30 to 64 early onset Alzheimer's disease is the rare type of Alzheimer's disease, and it does run in families. And the youngest age I know of of somebody developing early onset Alzheimer's disease was 27 years old. So I'm going to get into more details about that next episode, The next myth, dementia, signals the end of a meaningful life. Many people with a dementia diagnosis actually go on to lead active, meaningful lives, and we're going to go into a lot of detail on how living a meaningful and useful life can continue despite having Alzheimer's disease or dementia, many people do fear, however, that if a doctor diagnoses them with dementia, they will no longer be able to do anything anymore and will completely lose their independence, like going for a walk by themselves. So many people do have the misperception and have misconceptions about dementia. One is that it means that the person is immediately incapable of living a normal life. These myths and understandings only continue to contribute to the stigma and isolation that many people will feel. It is true that these adjustments may come in time as the condition progresses, but in the earlier or milder stage of dementia, no changes may be necessary as the disease progresses, changes to the way an individual leads their life are likely, but that absolutely does not mean that the person cannot lead a fulfilling life. This is typically a very slow progressing disease, with some people averaging eight to 15 years after the onset of the symptoms. Some live longer, like my grandma, for example, she lived 20 years after we even started noticing the disease. And many people can live a decade, several years to a decade, in what's called the pre clinical phase of Alzheimer's disease, where they're really not showing any symptoms, or maybe just some forgetfulness that can't really be distinguished between a brain disease and what a lot of us experience as we as we age, the next myth memory loss always signifies dementia. No, this is not true. Although memory loss can be an early symptom of dementia, it does not automatically mean that it's the beginning of a brain disease. Memory is unpredictable. We all forget things occasionally. However, if memory loss is interfering with one's activities of daily living, then that could be a signal of a more serious condition, and one should speak to their doctor about that. The last myth we're going to talk about this evening is that dementia is preventable, and I'm sorry to say but it is absolutely not preventable. There are risk factors, as I mentioned, that do play a significant part in increasing a person's risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. Again, as I mentioned, some of these risk factors are modifiable, which means they are able to be changed, but others are not. We will discuss this in more detail, how people can lower their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease by implementing certain lifestyle changes in order to minimize those risks. The Lancet Commission's 2020 report on dementia prevention, intervention and care lists 12 factors that do increase the risk of dementia. They are less education, having hypertension, having a hearing impairment, being a smoker, being overweight, suffering from depression, physical inactivity, the. Diabetes, isolation or low levels of social contact, alcohol consumption, a traumatic brain injury that actually can increase one's risk by up to 80% that's huge, and air pollution working on changing any of these might help reduce the risk of developing dementia. Together, the 12 modifiable risk factors account for around 40% of worldwide dementia which could theoretically be prevented or delayed. So tune in next week, because I'm going to be breaking these risk factors down into the details of what exactly they are, both medical conditions, lifestyle conditions and risk factors, and how they will influence Your chances of developing Alzheimer's disease. We're going to talk about what you can control and what you can't and what you can start doing right now, no matter what your age or phase of life, to minimize your risk of developing Alzheimer's disease later on in life. Well, I want to thank you everybody for listening today. You know we have so much to cover in the upcoming episodes, and hopefully it'll be information that you'll find helpful and valuable throughout your journey with this disease. So remember, dementia, awareness happens every day, and kindness is the ability to speak with love, listen with compassion and act with patience. These are all very necessary attributes to have to outlast Alzheimer's disease. One last note, this show is about you, and how my expertise and strategies will help you and your loved one have an easier time while struggling through the disease. Therefore, I'd love it if you send me your comments and suggestions for what topics you'd like me to cover on this weekly show, and thanks again for listening take care of.