Latest by Christine Kennard
Fear and Public Rudeness Still Prevalent in Dementia
Here, on Our Alzheimer’s, we have often discussed the stigma faced by people with dementia. It adds to their burden of coping with a degenerative neurological disorder. A recent study of 2000 people with Parkinson’s disease found that over half of th...
Pass the Carbs I don't want Dementia?!
Medical advice has, for a long time, said that we can reduce our risk of dementia by keeping a healthy weight. The mantra was, and still is, that obesity is the enemy and ups our chances of dementia in old age. But now a large scale cohort study says ...
A Dementia Dilemma: Inability to Recognise and Communicate Pain
Pain is a common but complex experience that differs from person to person. Pain is always a subjective experience. So when someone has dementia how does this affect their experience of pain and how they express their reaction to it? How can caregive...
Author Terry Pratchett Dies after Battle with Alzhemer's Disease
Terry Pratchett, a prolific writer of over 70 books died this morning aged 66. An energetic supporter of assisted death (he disliked the term assisted suicide), he sought changes in the law so that a loved one could not be prosecuted if they helped e...
Dementia and the Strange Case of the Misfolded Protein
Some images are hard to shake off. During the late 1990s I vividly recall driving past burning heaps of dead cattle for mile after mile; the scene was medieval. The cause of this carnage was a disease that quickly became known as ‘mad cow’ a fatal an...
Seven Facts About Alcohol and Dementia
Alcohol is thought to be a potential contributor dementia and other mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. Here are seven interesting facts about alcohol and dementia. 1. Drinking too much alcohol causes damage to the cerebellum (al...
6 Takeaways on Alzheimer's From the Movie 'Still Alice'
This is the week when we discover if the movie Still Alice, achieves Oscar status. Julianne Moore stars as Columbia University linguistics professor Dr. Alice Howland, who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Julianne has already won a ...
When Does Caregiver Stress Begin: and What to do About it?
By 2025, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, an estimated 190,000 Americans will have Alzheimer’s disease. A proportion of sufferers will eventually be looked after in some kind of care facility. Between the point of diagnosis and the years of ...
Can we Describe the Behavior of People with Alzheimer's Disease as Criminal?
There are many illnesses that cause changes in our behavior. Sometimes people suffering from serious neurodegenerative diseases such as frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease commit a ‘crime’. Their disease may be of a severity that means th...
Inability to Balance on One Leg May Predict Dementia
Most of us take for granted the ability to get up and down from a chair or go about daily tasks using even if using the most modest activity levels. Yet our inability to do such things can say a lot about our brain health and may even say something a...