hi i'm pamela d wilson if you are with me you are here for module six of stay at home creating a plan for loved ones with memory loss i'll do a quick introduction and you'll see me pop in and pop out of the slides so you know that i am here and it is just not some voice talking at you throughout this webinar program i'm going to begin the slideshow and turn off my video camera here we go so module 6 creating a plan for loved ones with memory loss we're going to talk about early
indications progression and recognizing signs of memory loss and in this part how midlife health affects cognition but first let's do some housekeeping i do this at the beginning of every program if you've heard this before bear with me i will be brief throughout this module you'll hear me use the terms elderly parent or elderly parents you can substitute that term with spouse husband wife partner grandparent friend or the term that you use for the person who receives care the outline for this module is in the materials for the online program if you are here your
workplace may offer digital and other caregiving support programs for you as a working caregiver many caregivers come here to manage through the aspects of being a caregiver and working and caring for yourself and your family if you're taking this program individually or on your own congratulations on being proactive and interesting and learning more about caring for an elderly parent and caring for yourself for us caregivers taking care of ourselves is so important let's start by talking about the objectives of this program called creating a plan for loved ones with memory loss at the end of
this program you should be able to recognize how mid life health affects cognition identify steps to diagnosing memory loss initiate conversations about dementia and memory loss within your family so that you can support short and long-term care planning and also learn and adopt new approaches to respond positively to the changes that occur in elderly parents diagnosed with dementia there are a series of webinars in this program go through them one at a time come back watch them again i encourage you to make notes so in this segment particularly we are going to be talking about
midlife health and how it affects cognition so for this part the goal is that you should be able to understand how health in midlife so anywhere from 30 all the way up affects cognition and memory as we age i want you also to be able to think about and identify health conditions of your elderly parents and conditions that you might have in midlife that can contribute to memory loss and other chronic diseases the question i like to start with is how does life health affect cognition there are research studies that indicate that changes in the
brain and cognitive decline begins as much as 20 years 20 years before a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment dementia or alzheimer's disease cognitive declines related to memory are connected to chronic disease our midlife our middle years anywhere from 30 to 50 to 60 is the time when most of us will have more than one chronic disease like heart disease diabetes copd asthma arthritis midlife is also the time when neurodegenerative diseases begin to appear neurodegenerative disease it's an umbrella term that means a range of conditions that start to affect how our brains work memory loss dementia
alzheimer's they are all brain diseases and alzheimer's represents 60 to 70 percent 60 to 70 percent of dementia cases let's talk about the most common types of dementia alzheimer's and vascular dementia that we'll talk about in detail are the two most common subtypes of dementia increases in the diagnosis of dementia normally and i say normally begin at the age of 65 with about 50 of people age 80 and older having the diagnosis and i do use the torm normally because as we go through this program you'll hear me talk about early onset dementia which can
happen as early as age 30. i want to talk about helen's story and i'm going to turn on my video camera so that you can see me down here so helen is a client of mine who was married and when i became involved it was because her husband was overwhelmed with having to take care of help they had probably i want to say three or four children who were very devoted but they worked they had their own jobs they couldn't be there all the time and the husband was very unfamiliar with alzheimer's he hadn't gone
to a lot of educational programs she would have behaviors and he wouldn't know how to react in talking to him about helen and how her diagnosis of alzheimer's came about it was a very interesting story this story mirrors the research that indicates that memory loss alzheimer's dementia begins in very small stages anywhere from 10 to 20 years before that diagnosis so helen was diagnosed with alzheimer's disease and she started to experience changes in what we call executive function and working memory skills and i'll explain this one of the things that helen did for years was
to write create and distribute the church newsletter for their church her husband noticed about 10 years before her diagnosis that she started to have problems with this task that she could do in her sleep she would get the newsletter put together she would send it out she would respond to people it was so easy for her little bits and pieces started to happen over time helen would have difficulty typing the newsletter or she would turn the computer on and there would be some kind of a glitch and she would have to go get her husband
to help with something that went wrong with the computer then as time progressed the newsletter dates were missed it would start going out late or there would be a lot of typographical errors in that newsletter the idea of executive function and working memory that we'll talk about are things that those of us who don't have memory loss or any cognitive problems they're activities that we do in our sleep and we don't even think about you know you drive to work you don't get lost you wake up you take a shower make breakfast maybe you take
vitamins you drop the kids off at school you go to work they're things that we do routinely that our brain just makes work so i'm going to turn off my video we're going to go to the next slide and continue and talk a little bit about executive function so what exactly is executive function let's talk about it so executive function skills relate to our ability to pay attention to organize to plan to prioritize to begin and finish a task and executive function is also our internalized speech it's the way that we talk to ourselves like
oh i have to remember to do this or i goof that up or wow i did really great at that executive function is also represented by verbal working memory which is that ability i talked about with helen to remember how to complete a task in helen's story it related to creating finalizing proofreading and distributing that newsletter other examples could be a recipe maybe you make a great spaghetti dinner and you do it without even thinking you don't use a recipe book you throw everything together and it turns out great for older people who begin to
have issues with verbal working memory your mom or dad may all of a sudden forget how to create a recipe or maybe dad was great at mowing the lawn and all of a sudden he's having trouble with that lawnmower these are problems that begin to happen chronic disease and modifiable risk factors are something very important to consider for all of us i want to talk about how chronic disease progresses to states of memory loss higher vascular risk is linked to more trouble with our brains even in adults who physically look healthy this means that if
you or an elderly parent have vascular risk factors that we'll talk about in a minute you're more likely to have memory loss or alzheimer's or dementia when you are older heart disease is a main vascular risk factor the vascular system it's also called the cardiovascular system it circulates all the blood the oxygen all the nutrients that we get through eating through our body and to simplify this what a vascular risk factor is is something that relates to smoking high blood pressure a high pulse pressure a high pulse pressure is the difference between the top number
which is systolic in a blood pressure reading and that bottom number the bottom number is called diastolic a high pulse pressure is the difference between those two numbers so it's high when the difference between the top number and the bottom number is more than 60. pulse pressure can be high because we have high cholesterol because we have fatty deposits that build up in our arteries and if we want to add to the risks of vascular dementia and heart disease let's add diabetes high cholesterol a high body mass index your doctor uses that as a screening
tool to determine if you have excess weight that can lead to health problems the good news about all of this is if you identify these conditions early they're modifiable which means that you can change them with your own actions exercise diet managing your weight being more proactive about health our diagnoses do not have to lead to frailty and illness in old age if they do it's because we chose not to be proactive i like to compare maintaining our bodies to maintaining a car so if you think of a car and everything that keeps it running
all the fluids oil your radiator fluid brake fluid transmission fluid power steering fluid the air conditioning coolant your windshield washer fluid if any of those runs out or becomes dirty your car doesn't run as well think of the vascular system or the cardiovascular system of the body in the same way it clogs up from cholesterol and anything that inhibits the blood flow can result in unexpected health problems also drinking fluids is important especially for older adults dehydration meaning not enough fluids is very common in older parents and it can result in problems many elderly adults
will go to the emergency room because they are dehydrated or they're not eating well enough and they have a condition called delirium which is mental confusion let's talk about ischemia because this relates to vascular problems ischemia it's another medical speak term i call all these medical words medical speak terms because doctors and health care professionals will use them and most of us as consumers have no idea what they're talking about so what is ischemia it's a lack of circulation or blood flow to any part of the body ischemia of the brain is a lack of
blood flow through the arteries of the body and our blood vessels up to the brain when blood flow to our brain is weak or clogged or long-term this results in vascular dementia the same type of ischemia though can result in other parts of our body and cause health risks my mom who i'll talk about in a moment suffered ischemic attacks of her brain that results in many strokes and a medical speak term for a mini stroke is a tia i watched them happen with her they came and they passed so quickly that if you didn't
know what they were you probably wouldn't notice that it's kind of like a glitch in a an electrical system because of my mom's health issues her vascular system her arteries veins clogged from many many years of chronic health conditions so i want to introduce you to my mom rose and i'm going to bring on the camera so this is my mom rose and how many of you remember those beehive hairdos back in gosh probably the 70s and 80s my mom god bless her was a lifelong smoker because when she grew up she was born in
1926 and if you were in your own 20s 30s 40s smoking back then was a really cool thing to do and many people smoked she had a poor diet but back then we weren't really talking about what a poor diet was or what a good diet was there was no differentiation between you should eat this and you should avoid these things because of the smoking and diet and not really being active she had severe cardiovascular issues and if you remember cardiovascular issues are issues of the heart from the time that i was young in my
teens i remember her not feeling well going to the doctor all of the time being in and out of the hospital when i was in my late teens and early 20s when i had a car and i could drive i was the child who got the phone call on sunday night saying can you come can you take me to the emergency room i'm not feeling well her heart issues were so severe that by age 60 which in my opinion is young she had to have quadruple bypass surgery so four arteries to her heart were clogged
so significantly that she was having almost daily issues with dizziness and not feeling well nine years later she passed away but during this time she had severe gastrointestinal issues and by that i mean stomach issues so she burped she was nauseated all the time she had hiatal hernias and i want to talk about this because i recently did a radio program that can provide some very helpful information that you might not be aware be aware of so let me turn the camera off and advance to the next slide i do a radio show every wednesday
night that turns into podcasts and this particular podcast is called tired of caring for elderly parents the radio show is just one of the many fun and interesting projects that i am so blessed to create every week if any of you smoke this podcast features an interview with dr brooks cash he's a very experienced gastroenterologist currently working in houston at the university of texas health science center and the mcgovern school of medicine he was a navy doctor for a long time career navy in this podcast he shares information that most consumers don't know about smoking
and he talks about the relation between smoking and digestive problems if you or someone that you know smokes this information can help you prevent health issues today and in the future because i will admit that when my mother was having all of these heart problems her heart disease her stomach issues none of the doctors while they did say her name was rose they would say rosie you should stop smoking it's not good for you and she eventually did but none of them talked about the relationship between smoking and indigestion smoking in what we call today
gerd which is gastro reflux disease smoking and hiatal hernias smoking and irritable bowel syndrome nobody was talking about it back then and i i just don't know if we didn't know enough back then today we know so much so what consumers don't know about smoking is in this podcast i highly encourage you to go to my website to find it website is pamela d wilson.com scroll to the media tab look for the caring generation radio show and look for this picture of the podcast so the results of smoking and how this relates to ischemia is
that individuals who smoke experience ischemia of blood vessels that cause plaque buildup in the arteries this ischemia goes down to the stomach and other body parts so as i talked about people who smoke will experience chronic indigestion irritable bowel syndrome many other stomach conditions smoking also increases the risk of smoke of strokes and strokes are caused by clogged blood vessels and clogged arteries let's talk about some age-related sensory concerns and cognitive function and how this happens so as we age there are indications of neurological changes in our brain and these include a loss of hearing
changes in our vision and changes in our smell you would wonder why this happens and how it relates to our brain well if you think about it our brain is in our head our hearing our vision and our smell are all senses that are close in location to that brain any one of these concerns is associated with worse cognitive function with memory loss in middle aged adults beginning in middle aged adults and research confirms that all of these changes hearing loss vision and smell can be reflective of changes in the brain however they may not
always result in a diagnosis of dementia if you have vascular risks like we talked about the likelihood is higher that you will have dementia when you age so let's summarize the information that we just talked about for all of us being a caregiver we can see changes in our health early in life if we pay attention the benefit is that we have the opportunity to seek red regular medical care by going to annual doctor appointments receiving preventative care all of those can help prevent cognitive diagnoses later in life but we do have to be proactive
i know many people don't like to go to the doctor every year it's a good way to catch conditions before they happen and before they go too far identifying health concerns early before they become substantial and long lasting is the easiest way to be proactive in managing health risks and risk factors for dementia for our elderly parents who already have these diseases if we as the caregiver are proactive and we begin noticing changes in ourselves and we notice changes in our elderly parents making sure that our parents attend regular doctor appointments regular health screenings preventative
health screenings all of that is extremely important in maintaining their health rather than believing that aging and getting old means that we will all become frail that we will all become sick and that many of us will experience memory loss life doesn't have to be that way we'll talk about care forward thinking throughout this program because it is something that i am a firm believer about i'm a firm believer in prevention and taking care of ourselves thank you so much for joining me for this section on midlife health and how it affects cognition i will
see you in the next webinar
