Memory Care with Teresa Youngstrom
Q & A with Dementia
[ Music ] >> Hey, care partners. Welcome back. Teresa Youngstrom with a better approach to memory care. This is our podcast, Memory Care with Teresa Youngstrom. So glad you decided to attend. You know, there are lots and lots of questions that we get as a company and being online and now with the podcast, lots of questions that pertain to Alzheimer's and dementia. So today, we're going to just go over a few of those questions and get you some answers because that's what we should do. So instead of just telling you what I think you might need to know today, we're going to actually give you your questions. So let's get started. The first question I always get is, well, what is dementia? What is dementia? And it's a great question because you hear a lot of different terms for memory loss but a true dementia and it can be difficult to diagnose because there are conditions that mimic a dementia. For example, a urinary tract infection in an older person can make us look like we have a dementia, like we have, you know, memory failure and a brain that's not doing well. But that's treatable. So it's technically, it's not a true dementia and then you might have things like a low B vitamin or a thyroid problem or I had a gentleman come to me and say, I think I've got what you teach and it turned out it was hearing loss. And so I'm always recommending we go and rule out the things that are treatable. But a true dementia, a true dementia would be, first of all, in my terminology because I mean, we can go to the CDC and the NIH and we can go to Wikipedia and give you some technical definitions. But an easy way for you to understand would be when I'm doing things out of the ordinary that are interrupting my mistakes that I'm making. So it's just a collection of your symptoms. We know that individuals are different. And so unfortunately, it isn't cut and dry on the symptoms of dementia because your symptoms will look a different, a little different than mine or my mom's. And so a true dementia, though, means we rule out the other things that are treatable and it means two parts of the brain are dying, okay? It also means that it's progressive, it's chronic. Right now, we don't have anything to stop it and it's terminal, okay? But so is life and, you know, I always tell people we always, everybody's going to get something, we don't get out of here alive. And so, so a true dementia means part, it's definitely a type of brain failure, okay? Now, is dementia a diagnosis? No, not unless we never get a true diagnosis. But what we've learned is that there are more than 120 diagnoses that can give us symptoms of dementia. What's that? More than 120 diagnoses that can give us symptoms of dementia. You mean it's not all just Alzheimer's? No, it's not all just Alzheimer's. And that's why it's important to get it checked out as early as you can to see if we can discern what's really going on. There is good testing, but there are some of these diagnoses that are difficult to discern or test for perfectly. Louis body, I mean, we can look at your symptoms and give a good idea that you might have Louis body, but a true diagnosis is only made with autopsy. And I don't think I'm bargaining for that to figure out which dementia I have. So what is dementia? It's a collection of your symptoms. It's making mistakes. What are some symptoms? Well, your symptoms might be being forgetful, repeating yourself, telling the story over and over, getting lost, maybe forgetting people's names, although that can be part of normal aging. And so I do teach a class on normal versus not normal because our brains are aging, just like our vision. I mean, I've got my contacts in. I don't know about you, but just like our vision changes as we age, so does our brain. We won't be as quick to figure things out as quick as our kids can learn that remote control, right? Is that just a source of great frustration these days? I mean, really, but so maybe we can't learn that quite as quickly, but we can still learn. So that's that's not a true dementia, just because you can't work the remote. But if I've shown you and shown you and shown you and shown you and shown you and maybe then you just you can't seem to grasp new information or retain new information or it seems like the short term memory is damaged. So those are just a few symptoms. You know, you could be defensive, paranoid. Maybe your personality actually changes. So there are lots and lots of different symptoms and a dementia is really a collection of those symptoms. But it's important to rule out the things that are treatable. Because if it's treatable, guys, if it goes away, if I can give you antibiotics in 24 hours, you're back, that's not a dementia. And most dementias don't come on quickly like an infection would either. OK, just a note there. So the next question that we frequently get is what is the difference between Alzheimer's and dementia? So we kind of led into that a little bit. Alzheimer's is a specific diagnosis. OK. And really, the research is still going on because the more I study Alzheimer's, they feel currently the theory is that it's a problem with plaques and tangles. All right. So plaques and tangles in the brain and that kills brain cells. And depending on where in the brain can sometimes tell us what it will indicate what kind of symptoms you have. But there's great testing like maybe an MRI PET scan where you can see the decline in the brain and then you go back six, 12 months later and you can actually see where things are happening. But the difference between Alzheimer's and dementia. Dementia is just a collection of symptoms. It's not a diagnosis. Alzheimer's is a specific diagnosis. Right now, the theory is and it's a problem with plaques and tangles. And it progresses different than say other dementias. A Lewy body can progress more quickly, maybe have more hallucination. Maybe those folks can be on and tracking with us and then flip and be off. And maybe even suicidal, not themselves. It's tricky and it's difficult and and it moves more quickly as far as the brain disease than saying Alzheimer's. So the second question is what was the difference? Alzheimer's is a diagnosis, a specific diagnosis. But dementia is a collection of symptoms, not a true diagnosis. OK, the next question we always get are what are my risk factors? So what risk factors might there be? So a lot of folks want to be able to say it was genetic or is it environmental? Is it a nutritional? But the research that I've done, Guy, says that your greatest risk factor is probably still your age, because even if it has, if it runs in your family, may or may not affect you. Your genes aren't exactly the same as your parents or your grandparents. So may or may not affect you. So the risk factor definitely right now, the greatest risk factor is your age. And I've seen different numbers, but we're thinking that for late onset, they're thinking that by the time we're age 65 in the American population, probably 25% of those individuals have some symptoms of the dementia. And by the time we're 85, I've seen one third and I've seen one half. So it could be anywhere between 33 and 50% of the population in America has symptoms of dementia. But like I said, there can be normal aging in there. And so you walk up to someone in your community, you've known them for 10 years, you've done things with them, you've had coffee. And for some reason, at this moment, I can't find your name. I know the circumstance, I know the context of how I know you. I know that we've got this event coming up that we can talk about. That's not a dementia, OK? But if I've known you for 10 years and all of a sudden, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry, you must have the wrong person. OK, that's a bigger red flag. And, you know, I've had family members even, but a lot of friends, family members, clients, individuals seeking help come to me and say, I think maybe, you know, George is getting this. And I said, OK, well, I would keep a journal. And I really write down what you're seeing because, you know, George could be having a bad weekend, George could have a stomach bug, George could have a migraine, you know, and it could be it could maybe be a virus that's unseen. And then he would be acting different. Or maybe he's got an infection coming on. So I just think we journal and start documenting what they're doing different. And is there really an indication that there's a problem there or not? And then what do you do? Seek out your family doctor. Let's rule out the treatables. Rule out the treatables. Get that thyroid check too. Your thyroid dies. You are not going to act right, but it's treatable. And that's the best thing. And it'd be great if it were just something treatable. OK, so the next common question is what are the causes? We all want to know what causes this, what causes this, what causes this? And you know what, the research is still out. We really don't know exactly what causes this. The early onset, those folks that get it, you know, where it's rare, but, you know, between 30 and 60, it's rare. Those typically have a genetic component to them. And we sometimes there have been rare cases where you've had people even younger. But like I said, super rare and typically have a genetic component to it. And so there are people getting tests to see if they maybe have carry a gene that would lead them to be someone who would, you know, commonly get some type of a dementia. There is testing like that. But if you're wondering about the causes for the late onset, the ones that start after age 60, there are a lot of theories out there. So there are people that think it's our nutrition. Is it our nutrition, you know, is dementia type 3 diabetes, so to speak? Or do we get foggy brain from all the poor or unhealthy carbohydrates that we ingest? I'm not the doctor, but I think there's there's good reason to investigate it. And can you change your eating habits for a cleaner, you know, more of a Mediterranean or more of a healthy diet and get away from the cheap carbs, the processed foods, the GMOs. Can you do that for you and for your health? I vote yes, you know, so could it be nutritional? Could it be hereditary? Yep, we talked about that, but not always, so not always. So could it be something else? Could it be environmental? You know, there are some diseases that affect us because of our environment. Certain cancers, definitely because of our environment. But, you know, it's not it hasn't been determined that that's what it is. What about obesity? We hear a lot about that. You know, is it more common in obesity? Or what about different groups of people? It's true that we see more dementia, more Alzheimer's in African American, American Indian and folks with Alaskan descent. And so why is that? Well, there's more research. I don't know. I don't know at all. I just like to keep researching and finding out so I can bring you more and more information. So, so we have all those factors. No one thing I think is causing this, at least not that we've determined. And so how do you live your life then? How do you protect yourself? Well, I think we need to eat right, drink our water, not all the chemicals. I mean, have you do you read ingredients? Do you read ingredients? If you don't read ingredients, I want you to start paying attention to what you're putting in your body. Even though even though I'm a nurse, I probably wasn't great about ingredients until, you know, late 40s, early 50s. I was a diet coke fanatic being a night shift nurse for 23 years. That's terrible. Those chemicals were not great for my brain. Looking back, I'm sure that that water or even coffee would have been better as long as you know, doctor up the coffee to the point where then it's more of a candy and not something that's healthier for you. So they're those type of risk factors. So I think that there could be a mixture of these things. And since we have different lifestyles, you know, I think that's why it's hard to determine what exactly causes this. We have more than 120 diagnosis that can give us symptoms of dementia. And then we all live our lives in different ways and we ingest different things and different, we have different genes. And so basically you just need to take care of you. Let's exercise. Let's get out and walk if nothing else. Let's walk. Can you do strength training? Maybe that would be a great thing to add. Do you do yoga or an aerobic? What fits your lifestyle? And I think you want to use it before you lose it. What did I say? I said you should use it before you lose it because these bodies, if we're just sedentary, boy, things just tend to not decide not to work so much. And then we go to utilize something and we think we can still, you know, use the push mower or move that help move that refrigerator and we're like, oh, this doesn't work and so well, or jog after a grandbaby. So I want to be preventative in that. I want to stay active. I want to try and be in the gym a couple of times a week. I want to practice intermittent fasting has become a thing. Should you do that? I'm not saying you should do that. I just think it's when I study brain health, I'm learning more about intermittent fasting. And maybe you look into that and see if that's something that would be good or for you or not, you know, run it past your doctor. I never want to step on a doctor's toe. They know what's best for you because they know you. They know your body type. They know your lifestyle. They know what current ailments you have or don't have or have already been through. So I'm just saying food for thought. Let's think about nutrition. Let's think about activity. Let's think about our sleep. I never really appreciated how important sleep was for my brain, but it's very important and how much sleep are you getting or are you, you know, laying in bed with the blue screen in your face until all hours been guilty of that for sure. Not throwing stones here, but do we get our seven, eight, nine hours of sleep? Some of you need more than others to keep your brain healthy. You know, that's when the information in the short term where the hippocampus is. That's when that goes back to the long term and lodges there. So that's important. We got to get some REM sleep in order to help our brain. And we need to help our brain cleanse itself. OK, so we got to have some good sleep. So let's think about sleep. Let's think about going to bed maybe a little earlier. Think about turning off the screens a little earlier. Reading would be much healthier than then doing the screens in bed. I got to the point there's no TV in my bedroom, right? Big steps, but I'm still guilty of looking at the iPad working on that. I am a work in progress. That's that's for sure. Also medications, you know, how how do medications affect our brain? Great question, great questions because certain medicines we need for certain things, whether it's, you know, seizures or your diabetes or your cholesterol or what is it, your heart disease. But it is important to stay up on medications and how often if your doctor has prescribed a medication, what was it for and did it work or did it not work? And it's OK to go back and say, you know what, this where this really worked. It's helping so much. I appreciate this, but this one really didn't do anything. And it's OK to get back with your doctor. We have great systems now electronic charting where we can send the doctor a message to or the nurse practitioner and say, you know what, we've been on this for four or six weeks and just want to let you know this hasn't improved and just wanted to reevaluate. Do we need to come in or, you know, what we should do? I always recommend if you're going to start new medications, start one at a time. You don't want to start three medications. Why would you think right? It'd be very hard to discern which one was helping and which one, you know, makes you feel nauseous or gave you that diarrhea. So I would maybe hold back and start one at a time. And it's good to have your medication list reevaluated every now and then because maybe you were on something long ago and you don't need it anymore. I've had a doctor say he doesn't, you know, do the statins for the 85 year old and I'm like, oh, OK, I didn't know. So it might be good to ask your doctor if there's anything on the list, especially if the list is getting a dozen meds or more long, it might be good to reevaluate what we're doing with the medications. And do we need to make changes in that? So the last question that I get a lot is, is there a cure? Is there a cure for dementia? Is there a cure for Alzheimer's, vascular dementia, lewy body dementia for these other different diagnosis that give us symptoms of dementia? And the answer is right now we do not have a cure. There are lots of tests. There's so much testing going on clinical trials and you can be a part of that. You can be part of a clinical trial. There's a lot of that out there. So talk with your doctor, talk with your neurologist or your gerontologist and find out what kind of testing would be available and if you'd like to participate, but we're going to find it. We're going to find that cure. We're going to find a cure and and who knows, maybe it'll be in our lifetime. That would be fabulous if we could find something to stop this. So anyway, today, lots of Q and A. I just wanted to go over so many of these common questions that we get so that we can keep you up to date on what's going on and keep just let you have as much information at the time as you can. So keep the questions coming. I appreciate the questions. I appreciate the feedback and you letting me know who else you'd like to see on the podcast. OK, I'm Teresa Youngstrom. This is Memory Care with Teresa. Our company's a better approach to memory care. I hope you'll go to our website, Teresa Youngstrom.com. Some great things there and you know what? We're posting the podcast there, too, because we want to make it easy for you to find it. I know the whole computer thing. If you're not computer savvy, I really want you to be able to access things. So tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your family. There's great information on the website in addition to the podcast. But be sure and like and share and subscribe. So when I get another great idea, I can share it with you, too. Thanks so much. And remember, you've got this. [MUSIC PLAYING]