Editor’s note:
Ken­neth S. Kosik, MD, and Ellen Clegg, authors of a recent book on Alzheimer’s Dis­ease pre­ven­tion and treat­ment, force­fully pro­pose a new frame­work and model for brain care: What about set­ting up “cog­ni­tive shops” as “a sort of one-stop shop­ping for every­thing from Alzheimer’s dis­ease pre­ven­tion to guided care for mild or mod­er­ate dis­ease”. What fol­lows is the thought-provoking con­clu­sion sec­tion from their book “The Alzheimer’s Solu­tion. How Today’s Care Is Fail­ing Mil­lions and How We Can Do Bet­ter” (repro­duced with per­mis­sion), not very dif­fer­ent from the “brain fit­ness cen­ter” model we have talked about in the past.

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Chap­ter 10. CONCLUSIONS

Just as the idea of hos­pice care rev­o­lu­tion­ized death and dying in Amer­ica, the idea of bundling many aspects of Alzheimer’s care under one roof in a cog­ni­tive shop could change the way we approach this dire disease—one that has no cure and leaves no sur­vivors. Cer­tainly, the scope of the prob­lem poses med­ical and eco­nomic risks for the coun­try. These risks, and poten­tial steps for a solu­tion, were charted by the bipar­ti­san Alzheimer Study Group in the spring of 2009. The report, issued by the Alzheimer Study Group co-chaired by for­mer con­gress­man Newt Gin­grich and for­mer sen­a­tor Bob Ker­rey, minces few words. Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: I recently came across an excel­lent book and resource, The Alzheimer’s Action Plan: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Diag­no­sis and Treat­ment for Mem­ory Prob­lems, recently released in paper­back. Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, one of the authors and lead­ing Alzheimer’s expert, kindly helped us cre­ate a 2-part arti­cle series to share with Sharp­Brains read­ers advice on a very impor­tant ques­tion, “How can we help the pub­lic at large to dis­tin­guish Alzheimer’s Dis­ease from nor­mal aging — so that an inter­est in early iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t trans­late into unneeded wor­ries?” What fol­lows is an excerpt from the book, pages 72–78, dis­cussing the Pros and Cons of the most com­mon assessments).

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While no sin­gle test (other than a brain biopsy, which is a very inva­sive and risky pro­ce­dure) can con­clu­sively prove that a per­son has Alzheimer’s, many tests can give us a good idea. A list of all the tests that help us assess mem­ory and think­ing prob­lems appears at the end of this chap­ter. Mean­while, let’s take a good look at the whys and hows of a thor­ough mem­ory assessment.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE AN EXTRA TEST CAN MAKE

To under­stand why get­ting tested (and retested as symp­toms change and the dis­ease pro­gresses) is impor­tant, check out the expe­ri­ence of Kather­ine, who went to the doc­tor com­plain­ing of a mem­ory slow­down. She took five of the most impor­tant neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests, which assess brain func­tion with­out actu­ally phys­i­cally look­ing at the brain. Then she under­went brain scans, a car­dio­vas­cu­lar workup, and blood tests to see what else was going on that might be under­min­ing her men­tal func­tion. Read the rest of this entry »