The Fraud of Alzheimers Disease : Lets tell a different story

What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About(TM) Alzheimer's Disease: The Complete Guide to The director of the New York Memory and Healthy Aging Services offers sound advice for patients and Might be great on Park Ave., but I always assume a cash only Dr. is a scam artist. . Let Us Help You Fun stories for.
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Right now, every 69 seconds, someone in America develops Alzheimer's disease, and that number will decrease by 50 percent over the next 40 years.

Alzheimer's Disease: Improv Helps Patients Live in the Moment - ABC News

So it's very possible we could go from, as you said, a little over 5 million Americans to upwards to 15 or 16 million Americans. We count about two to three family caregivers that are also directly involved with this disease So you're saying beyond those who directly suffer from the disease or will suffer from the disease, many, many, many millions more will be affected?

If we're looking at 15 million Americans by the middle part of this century, we're talking about 30 to 50 million people total — just in this country alone, and obviously Alzheimer's is not just in the United States — affected by this disease. Families are so impacted by this disease, the spouse, whether it's young children with someone with younger onset, or adult children who have their own kids that they're taking care of and then an elderly parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

It's an incredibly resource-intensive process to be an effective caregiver for someone with Alzheimer's. We have what some call now the "aging of the aged," in that the number of people living to be over 85 is also skyrocketing.

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What are the implications of that? Well it's an irony because as we have become better at treating a number of illnesses and diseases, the population is living longer.

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One of the reasons we didn't see Alzheimer's disease so much in, let's say, the early part of the s, because people were probably average lifespan was around 50 years old. So most people were not living up to the age of the greatest risk for this disease. So as people are living longer — and we're very thankful that we're making progress, have made wonderful progress, in other major chronic and acute health care issues affecting people today — more and more people are living to the age of greatest risk for Alzheimer's disease. We believe Alzheimer's disease is really the critical health issue of the 21st century.

We need to figure this disease out. Since Alzheimer's disease patients need round-the-clock care as the disease progresses, who is going to care for these people? Will there be a shortage of caregivers beyond the family members we talked about earlier? We barely have enough resources today in terms of both, as you were saying, professional caregivers and even family caregivers. I know you asked about professional but with the baby boom generation and a smaller population set following behind that, what has traditionally been the role of the adult children, there's going to be a much greater strain on that population group with a larger cohort of baby boomers who have Alzheimer's disease.

But we will not have enough professional [caregivers] — whether we're talking about aides working in nursing homes or even physicians. Today there are very few geriatricians in America — hard to believe with the growing elderly population in America. We're pleased, there have been a couple important developments. He signed that in January and there now is an advisory committee working with Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius at the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a national plan to look at all the the issues that we have just been talking about, including: We also have just finished a state plan in Massachusetts and just presented it about three weeks ago to Gov.

Deval Patrick and we're looking forward to his adoption of that plan so that we can do similar planning for: What's the top line recommendation out of the state plan? The state plan has a series of recommendations and it includes a couple of key areas, one of which is trying to expand the level of support for family caregivers, so that includes education and training, and ultimately even public and private resources because this is so difficult for families to take care of.

Ernest Saunders

There's a large emphasis on training the professional workforce. I will say, in Massachusetts, we've made great strides here. But we need to make sure that the workforce that is directly interacting with the aging population is dementia-capable, Alzheimer's-capable, and we have a long ways to go on that. And there's a healthy section in the state plan, the draft state plan, I should say, that also talks about the medical community because today at least 50 percent of people with Alzheimer's disease are not even diagnosed.

So we have a lot of work to do, particularly in primary care, to help physicians to understand how to screen and diagnose for this disease and also to understand the importance of doing that as early as possible. Those are a few of the highlights. Well I don't have an answer to that and obviously in today's financial world both on the federal and really almost every state in the nation is incredibly stressed financially.

So the plans that we have developed have a short-, a mid- and a long-range focus and certainly on the short range focus we're not expecting to be a significant expenditure of dollars.

We do believe at some point we are going to come out of these recessionary times and public revenues will start regaining what has been lost and then it's a decision by our policymakers: We believe it is and ultimately has very important payoffs in terms of healthier communities, healthier families and a better quality of life for Americans. We've known about the disease for over years but there's no treatment for Alzheimer's yet. Why has there been so little progress in treating the disease and no cure?

How to understand the difference — and why it matters

Does it have to do with the lack of government support for research? I think that is part of it so I would say yes. It's inadequate if you just look at the population affected by Alzheimer's compared to other health care causes. So we need to raise that investment. I mentioned the National Alzheimer's Project Act. That was passed unanimously, bipartisan in the lame-duck session of Congress in December. It's not a political issue on whether Alzheimer's disease is an important cause because we talked to both conservatives and liberals or progressives.

Alzheimer's Disease: Improv Lets Patients Live in the Moment

Everybody understands that investing today in trying to understand this disease and ultimately bring effective treatments to market for people living with this disease will save millions, in fact, ultimately, trillions of dollars in the future. So it's a wise investment today and that is something that we continue to advocate for and will do so.

We're looking at a disaster. There's no way to sugarcoat that. We're looking at, as we said, 15 million people in the United States of America. We're looking at somewhere on the order of 50 to 60 million people, this is just people with the disease, globally with Alzheimer's disease. Many of the emerging markets internationally: That is why we breathed a sigh of relief at recent action that may spur consumers, especially those in vulnerable age groups, to exercise more caution in purchasing products with no proven health benefits.


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DNA testing on the supplements showed that a whopping 79 percent contained none of the herbs listed on their labels. Just as bad, the tests indicated the supplements often contained cheap fillers such as powdered rice, pine, citrus, houseplants and wheat — the latter despite claims on some labels that a product was wheat- and gluten-free.

Were we surprised to hear about these allegedly fraudulent and potentially dangerous supplements? Recent research by Dr. Sinvani and colleagues also details how the vitamin and dietary supplement industry is a poorly regulated multibillion-dollar business , with the widespread use of supplements raising medical, social and ethical concerns, given the unclear benefits and the associations with health risks. When we see patients, we ask them to bring along all their medications and supplements. Too often, we note that these seniors are taking up to 20 pills each day, but only a handful of these pills are actually prescribed drugs.

Why are seniors spending so steeply on herbal supplements, often hundreds of dollars each month, despite living on limited budgets? For most, the main reason is fear — not just of becoming ill, but of losing their minds. Dementia is the biggest specter among the elderly. Seniors can accept heart disease, diabetes or slowly diminishing mobility, but they cannot accept the idea of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Unfortunately, modern medicine has yet to come up with an effective treatment to truly alter the course of this scourge, which affects more than 5 million Americans. Given that void, the herbal supplement industry has attempted to prey on seniors hoping and banking on the idea that readily available products containing "natural" substances such as seaweed, coral or coconut oil can help them dodge dementia.

Here are some of the worst offenders among herbal supplements purporting to prevent or treat dementia:. It's one thing to lure consumers into buying dietary supplements with false promises of preventing or managing illness. It's quite another to include ingredients in these supplements that aren't even listed on the labels. Because seniors often take multiple prescribed medications for chronic conditions, they are most prone to dangerous drug interactions with, and allergies to, these unmentioned ingredients in supplements.

We truly hope the actions of the New York State attorney general's office lead seniors, and those who care for them, to abandon the use of all supplements unless specifically directed to use supplements by their doctors. Finally, something has been done to help protect the most vulnerable members of society.