(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).

—

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 »

(Please note that this is my per­sonal take at the dis­cus­sions that took place in Dubai as part of the Global Agenda Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy put together by the World Eco­nomic Forum, and builds on the work of my col­leagues, but it does not rep­re­sent a for­mal doc­u­ment or state­ment of posi­tion. Sim­ply put, we would like to engage your brain in defin­ing the chal­lenges and outlining/ exe­cut­ing the solutions).

Con­text: The Chal­lenges of the Aging Society

The world is aging. This is occur­ring in two ways: through shifts in the age struc­ture that will even­tu­ally lead to many more peo­ple reach­ing older ages than ever before, and through con­tin­ued suc­cess in extend­ing life. Less than 100 years ago, life expectancy was between 30 to 40 years. Today, close to 800 mil­lion cit­i­zens are 60 and over.

And aging in health­ier ways. Aging has incor­rectly been asso­ci­ated with decline and decay, when in fact many peo­ple live healthy into older ages. There has been a syn­chro­nous exten­sion in life expectancy and qual­ity of life — the aver­age 65-year-old today is much health­ier, phys­i­cally and men­tally, than the aver­age 50-year-old of 100–150 years ago — when most exist­ing insti­tu­tions were envi­sioned and created.

Healthy life can be fur­ther extended with exist­ing knowl­edge. The fact is the onset and pro­gres­sion of fatal and dis­abling dis­eases, dis­or­ders, and dis­abil­ity can be post­poned using well-researched basic mea­sures of pub­lic health, envi­ron­men­tal and behav­ioural changes, and med­ical tech­nol­ogy inter­ven­tions. The same meth­ods may be used to improve or main­tain men­tal and phys­i­cal functioning.

Our health­care and retire­ment sys­tems are on bank­ruptcy track — their premises are out­dated. Exist­ing insti­tu­tions, poli­cies and atti­tudes do not reflect the points out­lined above, hav­ing been devel­oped for a soci­ety that no longer exists. We need to get on the right track: Read the rest of this entry »