Do people usually remember the current date? I can almost never tell it and it was like this since forever.
Me neither, probably because it's rarely useful to me in day to day life.
Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#32I'm only in my 20's- but reading through this 'early indicator' list [1] has me somewhat concerned about myself. But I don't know how much of that is it just being late and me being convinced I have every neurological disorder I happen to read about. [1] http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_10_signs_of_alzheimers...
The peanut butter test is interesting. For sufferers of early onset Alzheimer's, the range at which you can detect a smell is different between your left and right nostrils. They used Peanut Butter in this test done by the University of Florida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_butter_test
Before someone freaks out over peanut butter, note that according to Wikipedia an attempt to duplicate these results has failed.
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#33I have had two grandparents die after having Alzheimer's for long periods of time. It's odd because it's like watching someone die in slow motion and when the body does eventually die people often look on it as a relief because the "person" you knew inside had actually faded away a long time ago. It's like a song fading to static versus just stopping.
>It's like a song fading to static...
Nicely put. These songs always sadden me. :(
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#34Do people usually remember the current date? I can almost never tell it and it was like this since forever.
These test aren't really about just getting the answer right or wrong, but also about how you react when you can't remember the answer. There's a big difference between going "oh I can never remember that", "...wait...I used to know that" and confidently getting the answer wrong.
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#35My grandmom probably had Alzheimer's because she would always forget what my name was (she'd think she is talking to my little brother) or she would ask the same questions every 5/10 minutes. I can see slight similarities with my dad now. He might repeat the same question within 5 minutes-- this happens when he's really tired. I remember there was a discussion here about preventative drugs? Anyone one had experience…
I could be totally wrong but, I'm pretty sure that that's just a normal aspect of aging. Every single person I know has experienced some level of cognitive decline with age. The name thing is especially common, I find. So I wouldn't go around thinking you have Alzheimers in your family unless you have more reason to think it.
A function of age and number of children, perhaps.
My mother sometimes manages to cycle through all my siblings' names before she gets to me. One time she even threw in the dog's name.. a sad reflection on my position in the family pecking order, perhaps!
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#36My father is a neurologist and he always tells me that until the 90s or so, Alzheimer was mush rarer than other diseases (although the life expectancy was not that much shorter than today). There must be some environmental cause to it and it should be pretty simple to get. We only need some control population with similar life-span, one has no exposition to tv, one hasn't something else.. etc
Let's see: Psychotropics and bacteriocidal antibiotics are both linked with diseases like alzheimers because they are cytotoxic and can lead to oxidative stress and mitochondrial damage. They are also being more and more commonly prescribed. Air's less and less clean. God knows how many chemicals are being added to foods, water, construction, and the environment that are unregulated or poorly studied. I remember seei…
If there's an environmental chemical cause, the 2006 REACH legislation in the EU should provide an interesting comparative study with the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Auth...
I don't think I'd agree that air is less and less clean, incidentally. There have been big improvements in clean technology for cars and other vehicles, big reductions in the use of coal in developed countries, and so on.
And I doubt other environmental pollutants are significantly higher than they were in the age before serious environmental legislation (for instance, before the EPA was created)
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#37I have had two grandparents die after having Alzheimer's for long periods of time. It's odd because it's like watching someone die in slow motion and when the body does eventually die people often look on it as a relief because the "person" you knew inside had actually faded away a long time ago. It's like a song fading to static versus just stopping.
"It's like a song fading to static versus just stopping."
Great analogy, yet also one which may eventually be lost to the mists of time. Much like "disk" icons for "save", younger folks today may have no reference point for what 'radio static' is, or may certainly not in a few years. Between internet radio, self tuning radios, spotify/ipods and satellite radio, "radio static" isn't something I've actively heard myself in many years. Haven't seen a tube TV picture fade away in to a glowing dot in decades either. :/
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#38Do people usually remember the current date? I can almost never tell it and it was like this since forever.
I don't, unless I'm working for someone else. I was in Macy's once, and this angry salesperson was having a bad day, and I just wanted to avoid the dude. Moved to another counter. Well, Mr. Happy came over to ring me up.
I started to write my check and couldn't remember what date, and even what year, we were in.
Actually, why rushed, or don't like a person I interacting with; my memory fails me, or I say things I don't mean. This one car hussler was trying to buy my car, and doing the "dance"--it's just worth this much to me--dance, and I'll half your advertised price. Well he took me by suprised, with the hard bargaining/bad manners in my garage. I just wanted the guy to go. When he walked out he noticed a '68 Karman Ghia(no rust-complete--good orig. condition). He asked how much. I told me $200.00 I told him I mistook his question later, but to this day I wonder why I said 200.00. I sometimes wonder if I'm that guy who that's not too savy, and gave always to much over the years? I remember giving away my inheritance, and look back and regret it. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but I have a feeling this particular family member manipulated me when I wasen't felling well psychologically?
Anyway, I think stress can play with judgement, and memory. To those that prey on weak individuals, or capitalize on someone's misery; you're not a good person--no amount of denial will take the truth away?
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't really assume that. I mean, yes, it's unlikely, but given that most of the research is around prevention of damage, surely it's better to get tested early if you even remotely suspect there is a chance of it being Alzheimer's.
The incidence of dementia for those aged 30-64 is about 54 per 100000. If you have a test that is 90% accurate and someone tests positive, according to Bayes you have 0.5% chance of actually having it. Testing like that seems pointless to me. Working: (0.9 * 0.00054) / (0.9 * 0.00054 + 0.1 * 0.99946)
Except that you are not picked from the whole population at large, but from a subset of it. Namely the subset that (weakly) believes they have dementia. This changes the incidence rate (or likelihood function) probably by at least an order of magnitude.
Re: Slipping Away: Jo Aubin Has Alzheimer's. He's 38
#40My father is a neurologist and he always tells me that until the 90s or so, Alzheimer was mush rarer than other diseases (although the life expectancy was not that much shorter than today). There must be some environmental cause to it and it should be pretty simple to get. We only need some control population with similar life-span, one has no exposition to tv, one hasn't something else.. etc
It could be something trivial like Aluminum in bread and pastries because bakeries switched to faster (compared to iron) aluminum baking trays.