Nancy Dezan at Positive Aging Fair

I first heard Nancy Dezan speak about Alzheimer’s disease at the Positive Aging Fair in early fall. Her topic was “The Mind, Body & Spirit of Brain Health.” I heard her again speak on “Reducing Your Loss of Memory” at the Aging and Wellness Conference and Expo in McLean, Va, about a month later. Nancy is the dynamic Executive Director of the Alzheimer’s Family Day Center, the only adult day center in Northern Virginia devoted completely to the care of Alzheimer’s clients. She is an Alzheimer’s disease educator with an extensive background in Alzheimer’s and an excellent public speaker.

In her speeches, she assured us that forgetting a person’s name soon after being introduced is not a “senior” problem; it’s a problem of not concentrating. In normal aging, everything slows down; cognitive ability slows down around 40.

If you lost your keys every day, that is not necessarily a red flag. But if you don’t know what to do with the keys, that’s a red flag. Everyone with Alzheimer’s knows something is wrong and they feel vulnerable. Hence, they put keys in odd places like the freezer because they know that the keys are valuable, but since there’s no short-term memory, they can’t remember where or why they put it in the freezer.

She referred to the Nun Study which showed that nuns who were always exercising their brain fared the best, not necessarily those that were the most intelligent, because it sparked new neurons. She offered many tips on how to keep the brain healthy as well as the body. What is good for the normal person is good for one with Alzheimer’s as well. She mentioned four risk factors — blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes. High levels of stress can affect the brain and it is especially important for caregivers to reach out and ask for help.

In my next post, I will introduce you to the Alzheimer’s Family Day Care Center.

Ronald P. Culberson

Last week I attended the 23rd Annual Caregiver Conference, Shedding Light on Dementia Care. Ronald P. Culberson, author of Is Your Glass Laugh Full? opened the session. His speech titled, “”Humor and Caregiving: How to Lighten Up When Things Get Heavy,” was well received by the audience of about 200. On a dreary, wet day in Fairfax, VA, what better way to open a conference than a speaker talking about why humor.

In stressing why humor, Culberson said humor is a way to do two things:

1. Manage stress
2. Connect with others

As a way to manage stress, he said if you can laugh in the midst of stress, it cannot overwhelm you. He emphasized that you have to see humor all the time, otherwise you won’t be able to deal with it when you’re stressed. Humor is always there if you’re always on the lookout for it. In our world, however, Culberson said sometimes we seem to love to “out negative” each other.

Second, humor can help us connect with other people. We tend to like people with a sense of humor. When you share humor, funny things happen; it changes the relationship. Hence, humor should be used as a tool.

I bought a copy of Culberson’s book, Is Your Glass Laugh Full? at the conference. Somewhat autobiographical in nature, he shares incidents in his life and presents them in a delightful, humorous fashion. It’s a book that’s difficult to stop reading. Being a primary caretaker is not easy and extremely stressful. I highly recommend this book to remove some of the stress.

If there was a simple recipe for care-taking, life would be a lot easier. But every case is different. For example, I met someone at the conference whose husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He will not cooperate and listen to anyone and hence, she’s unable to bring in outside help. He sleeps during the day and is up all night. This conference was a good chance for her and others to get away for the day and get some ideas from the wonderful attendees, speakers, and vendors.

Sponsored by The Northern Virginia Dementia Care Consortium, I was not aware of it previously (probably because my attention was not focused on Alzheimer’s), but I’m definitely looking forward to it next year.

One of the grestest lessons I’ve learned about humor is that it is all around us, in every corner of our lives. If we keep our humor antennae up and look for laughs we’ll find reasons to smile every day. ~Ron Culberson in Is Your Glass Laugh Full?