Chicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence – Since 1991 • Alzheimer’s diseaseChicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence

Update on Dementia – part 2
I had left you last week with what may have seemed to be an optimistic note regarding the latest...
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June 26, 2023
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Update on Dementia – part 1
You may have heard the noise about a new drug for treating Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. It would...
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June 6, 2023
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Another Side to the Story
It was just a year ago that Bruce Willis’ family disclosed that the actor would be retiring from acting...
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February 27, 2023
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How to Say ‘NO’ to Dementia
It was about two and a half months ago that we posted about the diagnostics telling Chris Hemsworth he...
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February 14, 2023
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A Defensive Game Plan for Dementia Outbursts
It’s not just about forgetting or being confused. If you have a loved one with dementia, it is also...
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January 31, 2023
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Would You Want to Know?
National Geographic has a new documentary series, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, starring, of course, Chris Hemsworth of Disney’s Marvel...
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November 29, 2022
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Become a Dementia Detective by “Talking the Talk”
Today we have a guest Post from Christina Padilla, a speech-language pathologist and Certified Dementia Practitioner living and working...
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September 27, 2022
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Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease
September is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, and this is the third of four posts we’ll offer on the subject. I...
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September 20, 2022
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Diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease
September is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, and this is the second of four posts we’ll offer on the subject. A...
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September 13, 2022
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Dementia, Distraction, Delirium and Depression
September is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, so we’re going to be sharing four posts that will help everyone with what...
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September 7, 2022
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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

I like Simple. If you do also, then you will like the American Heart Association’s and American Stroke Association’s “Life’s Simple Seven.” In short, what they find is: what works well for cardiovascular health also shows the promise of working really well to stave off dementia caused by strokes, vascular dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease. If you have an older loved one whom you would like to see have a healthier heart, you will get the added benefit of a healthier brain by encouraging the Simple Seven. And there is a bonus...it also will work for you! The seven steps that have been recommended to improve heath health now also are considered as important to improving your brain’s health. "Life's Simple 7" are considered to help prevent dementia caused by strokes, vascular dementia, and Alzheimer's disease. They have been chosen by AHA and ASA as metrics to help confer brain health. "…the same risk factors that cause atherosclerosis are also major contributors to late-life cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease," commented Philip Gorelick, MD, Mercy Health Hauenstein Neurosciences in Grand Rapids, Michigan, chair of the advisory writing group. The seven steps are a combination of individual characteristics and behaviors that help to foster better brain as well as heart health: 1. Don’t smoke 2. Be physically active 3. Maintain or reduce body mass index to less than a 25 on the scale 4. Have a healthy diet – there are guidelines for this 5. With a combination of exercise/reduced weight have a blood pressure of <120/80 mm Hg 6. Without meds (but with diet and exercise), have a total cholesterol <200 mg/dL 7. Maintain an A1C (fasting blood glucose) < 100 mg/dL Before this most recent analysis, researchers tended to look at brain health and heart health as pretty much different conditions caused by different lifestyle or health behaviors. But "over time we have learned that the same risk factors for stroke that are referred to in Life's Simple 7 are also risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and possibly for some of the other neurodegenerative disorders," Dr Gorelick noted. All of this is a step toward better brain health while at the same time promoting better heart health. This is one of those fortunate opportunities where a person can get two for the price of one. Take better care of your heart and you get better brain health as a bonus. Take better care of your brain, and your heart also gets a benefit. Not a bad bargain for anyone who is a bargain shopper…no coupons required. Be healthy. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago.
We've all used the expression, "Don't lose any sleep over it." Turns out that losing sleep is one thing that can happen a lot more frequently as we age and it often is associated with other serious medical conditions.   The common causes of older adult insomnia are dementia, heart disease, kidney disease, heartburn or reflux, asthma, diabetes, thyroid disease or even prostate issues. So if you are a caregiver to an older adult who has been having trouble sleeping, it is worth paying attention.

And at the same time, insomnia is not always just one kind of condition. Some older adults have trouble falling asleep initially and some have trouble staying asleep. Some insomniacs may wake up several times a night, perhaps because they need to make trips to the bathroom, and some just cannot seem to feel rested in the mornings because they do not get a quality night's sleep.

As we grow older we need less sleep than we did as children or teenagers. Although we as a nation seem to deprive ourselves of sleep by getting up early, staying up late or both, the average adult needs about seven to eight hours of sleep a night to function well. People who say they need less may just have grown accustomed to getting by with less sleep, but they may also have a difficult time focusing during the day or may be cranky or irritable.

Sometimes it may simply be consuming caffeine, nicotine or alcohol, or it can be nutritional supplements or even vigorous exercise too close to bedtime that get in the way of good night's sleep. If you know someone who has trouble getting enough quality sleep, here are some tips that may help without resorting to the pharmaceutical sleep aids we have seen advertised a lot:

1.    It may be the afternoon nap that has to be taken out of the day's schedule in order to feel sufficiently tired to sleep at night...or the dozing off in front of the television after supper.

2.    Make sure the bedroom is dark enough and quiet enough, and move the clock out of sight so that there is not the temptation to keep checking what time it is.

3.    Don't use the bed as place where you eat, watch television or read so much that it is no longer that restful haven at the end of a day.

4.    Try to go to bed at the same time every night, and have some real physical activity each day so that the body will have something from which to be tired.

5.    Encourage your older adult to make a written list of the things they will do the next day so that the mind does not get caught up in the mental list-making that keeps the body awake.

6.    Above all, relax before bed time; it can be helpful to have a calming time that helps to really separate the day's activities from the night's surrender to sleep.
            Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Case Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to ccbishop@creativecasemanagement.com.
In my experience as a geriatric care manager, I field a lot of questions from people who are suddenly faced with caring for an older parent or spouse. For people who become caregivers overnight after a parent has a fall or experiences a significant medical setback of some sort, it can be an overwhelming responsibility. Where does one go to learn how to be a caregiver for an older adult or someone else with special needs? It is easy to tell a person how to become certified as a geriatric care manager (not as easy getting certified) or even a paramedic (again, not as easy getting certified), but how do you become a caregiver right away?

As much as some folks may have a predisposition for being “good with people,” being a caregiver poses some unique challenges and an aspiring caregiver can benefit from some special training. One of the resources I featured last month, Julie Northcutt – President of CaregiverList.com, talked about using summer visits as a time to take stock of the needs of aging family members of other with special needs. She has a new training module that has come to my attention, and I am sharing it with you here, because it may give a lot of you a jump start to caring for older family members or others in your orbits.

In her 10-hour on-line program, CaregiverList.com offers training that meets the requirements of state licensing boards for caregivers, and it also may offer peace of mind. I was impressed with its topical coverage:
- Communicating with Others
- Observation, Reporting and Recording
- Providing Personal Carburetting and Maintaining Good Mobility
- Elimination and Toileting
- Infection Control
- Environmental Hazards and Safety
- Basic First Aid
- Understanding Elder Abuse
At $49 it seems to be a reasonable investment in care for an elder and peace of mind and confidence for the caregiver.

Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Case Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families throughout metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to Charlotte Bishop.
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You may have heard about music therapy, and you certainly have heard the often misquoted: “Music doth have charms to soothe the savage breast.” But does it work? Music therapy, that is. There actually has been a fair amount of research into how music can address some of the issues that trouble people, and some scientists in the Netherlands have scoured the scientific literature to see if music can be of help with patients who have Alzheimer’s. Specifically, they looked to see if a case could be made that music can help relieve the agitation, aggression or depression of dementia patients. In what is termed a “meta-analysis,” they examined a large body of literature to see what others have reported. While they could not control for variables like the size of groups being tested or the therapeutic elements of the settings, they did offer some tentative conclusions:
1. Music does not seem to have a measureable impact on a patient’s agitation. But the researchers suggest that there may be an effect, but since the therapy sessions may have been too long in duration, the effect may have been clouded by patients’ in ability to be stationary for the duration of the tests. The “calm” that was expected also could have been clouded by social interactions among patients in a group setting.
2. The findings were pretty much the same with aggressive behavior. There is no evidence. They could not sort out all the other background noise – not the music – to say with certainty that music reduced aggressive behavior.
3. What did seem more clear is that patients who had been predisposed to depression seemed to have a lifting of their moods with music. While this was a more consistent pattern, it might also have been confounded by the fact that the music therapy took place in a social setting. And isolation is one of the big causes behind depression.
When it comes down to it, we really cannot conclude that one kind of music will always have the same effect on all people. The fact that there were some positive changes across most studies, however, suggests that it is more than a bunch of notes. Music can make a positive difference for people who have cognitive issues…it simply may not be enough. But at the end of the day, we may come back to the traditional rule about not doing harm. If music is not a problem for people, then let the band play on. Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago.
I talked about Alzheimer's disease in my last posting. Maria Shriver, the First Lady of California has experienced Alzheimer’s close up with her father, and she worked closely with the Alzheimer’s Foundation to produce an important report. With the release of “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s,” there has been a lot of buzz about Alzheimer’s.

The report tells us that women are disproportionately more often a caregiver to an older spouse who may have some form of dementia. But women also represent almost two-thirds of those who will have Alzheimer’s disease. It is not genetically-linked. But it is a function of women’s greater likelihood to live to be much older than their male counterparts. With the expected epidemic of Alzheimer's we will see globally in the next three decades, advocates are pushing for more funding of Alzheimer’s research. Currently a new case of dementia is diagnosed globally every seven seconds, and it is expected that there will be about 80 million people with the condition by 2040. As a Geriatric Care Manager, you can imagine that dementia generally and Alzheimer’s specifically are becoming an ever larger part of my work. Our association, the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers has a lot of elder resources and other useful information on how to be aware of the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's.

I also would be very happy to address your concerns or questions in future postings, so please e-mail me at Charlotte Bishop.

Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Case Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families throughout metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to Charlotte Bishop.