July 2025 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the July newsletter!

‘A Good Death’: A Step-By-Step Guide for Dying

Death is a subject that makes many uneasy. But not so for someone who has cared for more than 1,000 individuals at life’s end and who personally has witnessed the deaths of almost 350 people. A palliative care professional who has more than 20 years of experience (including as an oncology nurse and a hospice nurse), Suzanne O’Brien, R.N., has made peace with death.

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What Is Alzheimer's Disease?

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, a brain disorder that slowly destroys a person’s memory and thinking skills. It is characterized by a loss of cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering, and reasoning — and behavioral abilities to such an extent that it interferes with a person’s daily life and activities. Eventually, people with Alzheimer’s lose the ability to perform simple daily tasks, such as eating or walking. For most people with this specific type of dementia, symptoms first appear in their mid-60s.

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Thinking About Your Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease? Five Questions To Consider

Ask yourself the five questions below to help understand your risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s disease.

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May 2025 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the May newsletter!

A New Alzheimer’s Treatment Method Is Touted as Improving Cognition

In the quest to treat Alzheimer’s disease, every so often, a new drug comes on the market whose maker claims it will offset or at least delay some of the illness’ most insidious effects. Among the most recent drugs is monoclonal antibody lecanemab, written up last November in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results from a study that included almost 1,800 participants were promising and yet still muted.

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What Happens to the Brain in Alzheimer's Disease?

The healthy human brain contains tens of billions of neurons, which are specialized cells that process and transmit information via electrical and chemical signals. These cells send messages between different parts of the brain, and from the brain to the muscles and organs of the body. Alzheimer's disease disrupts this communication, resulting in widespread loss of brain function as many neurons stop working properly and eventually die.

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List of Drugs Linked to Dementia

Dementia is a growing public health concern, affecting millions of people and their families. On Caring's 2025 senior mental health survey, developing dementia ranked as the 6th top anxiety and depression contributor out of 17 overall stressors. As of 2024, approximately 6.9 million Americans aged 65 and older are living with Alzheimer's dementia. This number is projected to nearly double by 2050.

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April 2025 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the April newsletter!

Correcting Your Vision Could Lower Your Alzheimer’s Risk

If you’ve been putting off cataract surgery or taking your time ordering a new pair of glasses, here’s a reason to reconsider: Fixing your vision may help stave off dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. Recent research has uncovered a strong correlation between vision impairment and dementia.

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Should You Correct Someone with Dementia?

For many people, correcting loved ones comes from a place of care and a desire to help others grow intellectually. However, conversations with a person living with dementia require additional skill and sensitivity. Teepa Snow, a dementia care expert and fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association, offers guidance rooted in a key principle: Do not correct.

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The 11+ Early Warning Signs of a Heart Attack

Recognizing the early warning signs of a heart attack is crucial for timely intervention and potentially life-saving action. Despite its sudden and often severe nature, a heart attack typically presents warning signals beforehand, providing an opportunity for individuals to seek medical attention and prevent further damage.

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March 2025 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the March newsletter!

Why Socialization is Critical for Individuals with Dementia

We speak often with family caregivers and are always moved by their loving dedication to providing quality care for their loved ones with dementia. These amazing individuals are selfless in their support, spending hours day in and day out to ensure that their loved one has what they need at any given moment.

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“I Want to Go Home” in Alzheimer’s

If you've ever had a loved one in long-term care like an assisted living facility or a nursing home, the saddest five words you'll ever hear are, “I want to go home.” How do you handle this, you may ask? Delicately is probably the best answer I have for this one. Let's explore expert advice on handling this most challenging request!

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Caring for the Caregivers

Not long after his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Tom Lee picked up a book on caregiving, one of the many he’d devour in those early, frightening weeks, when the future felt suddenly impossible to imagine. Amid all the information and advice, he read a line that stopped him cold. “It said, make sure you take care of yourself, and leave at least 15 minutes to yourself every day,” he remembers.

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February 2025 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the February newsletter!

Caregiving Stress Linked to High Blood Pressure in Younger Black Women

Anew analysis finds that the stress of being a caregiver is associated with an increased risk of developing high blood pressure in 21- to 44-year-old Black women, a group known to have a higher prevalence of the condition compared with women of other racial and ethnic groups.

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Radical Study Proposes a Single Cause to Explain Alzheimer's Disease

A new model of Alzheimer's disease has been proposed, which could speed up efforts to understand and cure the complex condition – while bringing all manifestations of the condition under one unifying theory.

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Stop Competing for Caregiving Control

Laura had heard the cliché about the primary caregiver of an aging parent who is ignored by neglectful siblings. She just sometimes wished it were true for her. In the excitable and opinionated family of seven in which she grew up, everyone needed to have their say on everything. Little wonder, then, that her siblings now constantly questioned whatever decisions she made for their 88-year-old Italian American mother.

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January 2025 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

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The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes

About 170 billion cells are in the brain, and as they go about their regular tasks, they produce waste — a lot of it. To stay healthy, the brain needs to wash away all that debris. But how exactly it does this has remained a mystery. Now, two teams of scientists have published three papers that offer a detailed description of the brain's waste-removal system.

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A protein called Reelin keeps popping up in brains that resist aging and Alzheimer's

A key protein that helps assemble the brain early in life also appears to protect the organ from Alzheimer's and other diseases of aging. A trio of studies published in the past year all suggest that the protein Reelin helps maintain thinking and memory in ailing brains, though precisely how it does this remains uncertain.

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Alzheimer's Disease Fact Sheet | National Institute on Aging

Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In most people with Alzheimer’s, symptoms first appear later in life. Estimates vary, but experts suggest that more than 6 million Americans, most of them age 65 or older, may have Alzheimer’s.

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December 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

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Caring for Veterans: A Harsh Reality for Some

Every year on Veteran’s Day our nation honors those who have sacrificed and served our country. Behind these veterans there are family caregivers who reflect on a very different kind of service and often feel forgotten. Life has not moved forward or gotten easier for many of our nation’s military caregivers, who are silently earning their version of a combat badge, setting aside their own goals and even their identities, long after their loved ones have made it home.

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Know the signs of caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue

Being a caregiver means you provide consistent and often everyday care to a parent, partner, child, other relative, or unrelated person who is aging, ill, or disabled. It’s a responsibility that can become all-consuming and emotionally challenging, to say the least. In addition to stressful hospital stays, office visits, and a wide range of home-care responsibilities, caregiving often brings:

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Alzheimer's timeline shows changes start as trickle, become torrent

A study of cells from 84 cadaver brains suggests that Alzheimer's has two distinct phases, and that one type of neuron is especially vulnerable.

"There's an early phase where there's a very slow increase in the amount of pathology," says Ed Lein, a senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, "then a more exponential phase where suddenly things get really bad."

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November 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the November newsletter!

6 Ways to Help Someone Who Doesn’t Believe They Have Dementia

Family caregivers often ask “how do you tell someone they have dementia”? And in some cases, the answer may be that you simply can’t.

Damage in the brain can cause people with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, stroke, brain tumors, and other cognitive impairments to believe that there’s nothing wrong with them.

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Study suggests resistance training can prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease

Regular physical exercise, such as resistance training, can prevent Alzheimer’s disease, or at least delay the appearance of symptoms, and serves as a simple and affordable therapy for Alzheimer’s patients. This is the conclusion of an article published in Frontiers in Neuroscience by Brazilian researchers affiliated with the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) and the University of São Paulo (USP).

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Advice for Caregivers of Loved Ones with Dementia

George Reed was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in September 2012. A former professor of astronomy, he was angry when his doctor told him. “His intellect was his greatest strength and the core of his identity,” says his daughter Tara, who lives in Portland, OR. Reed's wife, Joan, was unprepared to care for him and relied heavily on two of their three children—Tara and a son—who lived nearby.

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October 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the October newsletter!

Falls put older adults at increased risk of Alzheimer’s

In a study that included 2 million older adults who sustained a traumatic injury, 10.6 percent of patients who experienced a fall were subsequently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Falls also increased the risk of a future dementia diagnosis by 21 percent, according to researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

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5 Coping Tips for the Overwhelmed Caregiver

Caring for an older adult is an all-consuming and demanding job.

This can easily lead to feelings of overwhelm – sometimes it’s just too much.

So we found a great article from Retro Housewife Goes Green with 5 things you can do to improve the situation when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

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When Caregivers Wonder What Their Loved Ones with Dementia Are Feeling

“I wish I knew what was going on in his mind,” my mother would say about my stepfather. He’d be staring straight ahead, hands fidgeting on his wheelchair armrests, without a hint of facial expression. If he was hungry or bored or even in pain, she couldn’t tell. If she asked him directly what he was feeling, he’d just look at her blankly and then turn away without saying a word. 

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September 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers & Educators

Welcome to the September newsletter!

Dementia-Like Conditions

Some causes of Dementia or Dementia-like symptoms can be reversed. Your doctor may identify and treat these causes:

Infections and immune disorders. Dementia-like symptoms can result from fever or other side effects of your body's attempt to fight off an infection.

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Mixed Dementia

Autopsy studies looking at the brains of people who had Dementia suggest that a majority of those age 80 and older probably had 'Mixed Dementia,' caused by processes related to both Alzheimer’s disease [or, other Dementia] and vascular disease. In fact, some studies indicate that mixed vascular-degenerative Dementia is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly.

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Young-Onset Dementia

Young-Onset is often also referred to as "Early-Onset." Yet, it should be differentiated from another commonly used phrase: "Early Stage Dementia," which is more appropriate to describe someone in the early stages of Dementia, at any age.

Young-Onset Dementia is conventionally thought to include patients with onset before 65 years of age.

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August 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the August newsletter!

How Family Caregivers Can Deal With Guilt Over Placing a Family Member in a Nursing Home

When the time came, I knew that my mother needed to move into a nursing home. She knew it, too.

Because of her poor balance, she’d had several falls during the previous year and suffered broken bones that required hospitalizations. It was no longer safe for her to live alone in her apartment, and we could not afford to hire round-the-clock aides to stay with her.

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How Family Caregiving Can Alter Dreams and Goals Deferred

“I don’t want my mother to die,” said Valerie, my 62-year-old psychotherapy client, “but, when she does, I am looking forward to finally getting back to the rest of my life.”

She had put her work and social life on hold for four years to care for her mother, who was steadily declining from dementia.

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11 Ways to Manage Sundown Syndrome​

If your loved one has Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, you may be seeing changes in their behavior in the late afternoon or early evening — a phenomenon known as sundown syndrome, sundowners or sundowning.​

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, as many as 20 percent of people with Alzheimer’s experience sundown syndrome.

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July 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the July newsletter!

The Unique Challenges of Dementia Caregiving

Douglas Scharre, M.D., author of Long-Term Management of Dementia and director of the division of cognitive and memory disorders at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, explains how to manage such often-difficult care.

With Alzheimer’s disease, a loved one can seem lucid one day and unrecognizable the next. Why?

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Health Panel: Adults Under 65 Should Be Screened for Anxiety

If you’re under 65, your next check-up could include a new screening — one for anxiety.

A panel of medical experts is, for the first time, recommending that adults under the age of 65 get screened annually by their primary care physician for the increasingly common mental health condition, even if they don’t have symptoms.

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How to Stop Getting Distracted

At 55, my focus started to fray. I had to ask my teenage daughter to stop chatting during tricky highway merges. I penciled “COUNT!!!” across my community orchestra music, to avoid getting lost in long strings of repeated notes. I wrote multiple to-do lists and forgot new neighbors’ names. Turns out, I was completely normal and there was something I could do about the problem.

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June 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the June newsletter!

10 Warning Signs of Dementia You Shouldn’t Ignore

It’s not unusual to have occasional trouble finding the right word or remembering where you put things. But persistent difficulty with thinking, memory or the ability to perform everyday tasks might be signs of something more serious.

Dementia is a catch-all term for changes in the brain that cause a loss of functioning that interferes with daily life.

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11 Ways to Manage Sundown Syndrome

If your loved one has Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, you may be seeing changes in their behavior in the late afternoon or early evening — a phenomenon known as sundown syndrome, sundowners or sundowning.​

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, as many as 20 percent of people with Alzheimer’s experience sundown syndrome.

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How Menopause Messes With Your Brain

Each year, over one million women in the U.S. go through menopause, which can cause symptoms including hot flashes, weight gain, low or fluctuating libido and sleep problems. But there’s another change that carries even more health implications: an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Nearly two-thirds of those living with Alzheimer’s in the United States are women, a vulnerability that may begin as early as perimenopause, and relates to estrogen.

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May 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the May newsletter!

Inside the brain: The role of neuropathology in Alzheimer’s disease research

Imagine being able to look inside the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease and see the changes that are interfering with that person’s thinking, memory, and other important brain functions. Scientists working in the field of neuropathology are doing just that.

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How Alzheimer's Changes the Brain

In healthy people, all sensations, movements, thoughts, memories, and feelings are the result of signals that pass through billions of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain. Neurons constantly communicate with each other through electrical charges that travel down axons, causing the release of chemicals across tiny gaps to neighboring neurons. Other cells in the brain, such as astrocytes and microglia, clear away debris and help keep neurons healthy.

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Risk factors for heart disease linked to dementia

People with dementia have problems thinking, remembering, and communicating. They may repeat the same question over and over, get lost in familiar places, or have other problems managing everyday life.

Dementia can be caused by a number of disorders, such as strokes, brain tumors, Alzheimer’s disease, and late-stage Parkinson’s disease.

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April 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the April newsletter!

Memory Problems, Forgetfulness, and Aging

Older adults may worry about their memory and other thinking abilities, such as taking longer to learn something new. These changes are usually signs of mild forgetfulness — or age-related forgetfulness — and are often a normal part of aging.

However, more serious memory problems could be due to mild cognitive impairment, dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease, or other factors beyond normal aging.

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What Is Dementia? Symptoms, Types, and Diagnosis

Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering, and reasoning — to such an extent that it interferes with a person's daily life and activities. Some people with dementia cannot control their emotions, and their personalities may change. Dementia ranges in severity from the mildest stage, when it is just beginning to affect a person's functioning, to the most severe stage, when the person must depend completely on others for basic activities of daily living, such as feeding oneself.

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Can I Prevent Dementia?

As you age, you may have concerns about the increased risk of dementia. You may have questions, too. Are there steps I can take to prevent it? Is there anything I can do to reduce my risk? There are currently no approaches that have been proven to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. However, as with many other diseases, there may be steps you can take to help reduce your risk.

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March 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the March newsletter!

Helping Family and Friends Understand Alzheimer's Disease

When you learn that someone has Alzheimer’s disease, you may wonder when and how to tell your family and friends. You may be worried about how others will react to or treat the person. Realize that people often sense when something has changed. By sharing what is happening, family and friends can help support you and the person with Alzheimer’s disease.

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What Is Alzheimer's Disease?

Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In most people with the disease — those with the late-onset type symptoms first appear in their mid-60s. Early-onset Alzheimer’s occurs between a person’s 30s and mid-60s and is very rare. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia among older adults.

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What Is Mild Cognitive Impairment?

Some older adults have more memory or thinking problems than other adults their age. This condition is called mild cognitive impairment, or MCI.Calendar resting on a table

There is no single cause of MCI. The risk of developing MCI increases as someone gets older. Conditions such as diabetes, depression, and stroke may increase a person’s risk for MCI.

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February 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the February newsletter!

Many Americans with dementia can’t get the hospice care they need

Rosalynn Carter, whose unflagging advocacy for mental health reform and on behalf of human rights, democracy, and health programs redefined the role of a president’s wife, died on November 19 at age 96.

Half a year earlier, her family had shared publicly that Rosalynn had been diagnosed with dementia.

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Travel Tips for Traveling with a Parent Who Is a Fall Risk

Aging adults progressively lose their independence in one way or another and it can be very hard for them to accept the changes. It can be even more difficult when a parent is at risk of falling. But don't let that risk stop you from traveling with your loved one. Here are some tips to help a senior prone to falling on your next travel adventure.

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End-of-Life Conversations with Seniors: A Guide for Caregivers

Talking about end-of-life wishes is one of the most important conversations to have because it’s not actually about dying.

It’s about how your older adult wants to live during their last months, weeks, and days.

And when others know their preferences, they’ll be able to die on their own terms.

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January 2024 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the January newsletter!

Dementia Friendly Home: 4 Ways to Make Things Easier to See

Everyday tasks are often challenging for people with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

But small changes at home can have a big impact in making their life easier.

As the disease progresses, your older adult will have increasing difficulty remembering, thinking, processing, and reasoning.

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7 Ways to Reduce Dementia Sundowning Symptoms

Many people with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia get increasingly confused, anxious, and agitated later in the day.

Others may have disrupted sleep schedules or restlessness at night.

These sundowning symptoms are disruptive and difficult to manage. They’re also stressful and negatively affect your older adult’s quality of life.

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10 Ways to Respond to Dementia Hallucinations in Seniors

Dementia causes changes in the brain that may cause someone to hallucinate – see, hear, feel, or taste something that isn’t there. Their brain is distorting or misinterpreting the senses.

And even if it’s not real, the hallucination is very real to the person experiencing it.

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December 2023 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the December newsletter!

Wander Management in Senior Care: Lessons From the Brookfield Assisted Living Settlement

In May, a lawsuit against Brookfield Assisted Living in Bella Vista concluded with a $2 million settlement. It comes less than two years after 74-year-old Barbara Doyle went missing after wandering from the facility in August 2021, and was found dead 13 days later.

Her husband, Jack, alleged in the wrongful death lawsuit that an employee saw that Doyle had left the facility but did not notify anyone.

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Why Seniors Need A Health Advocate: 7 Health Benefits

Visiting the doctor can be an exhausting blur for some older adults.

Sometimes, seniors aren’t able to fully understand what the doctor says, aren’t comfortable asking questions, don’t like to speak frankly about symptoms and concerns, or are too shy to insist on treatments that are in their best interests.

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Strategies to Facilitate Social Engagement Among Senior Living Residents

Social engagement is vital to senior care residents, but facilitating it can be a challenge. With obstacles to social engagement common in senior living settings, senior care communities need to take an active approach in facilitating resident engagement.

Socialization is critically important for senior care residents.

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November 2023 Newsletter for Caregivers

Welcome to the November newsletter!

Seven Tips for Helping Seniors at The Doctor: Being A Health Advocate

Figuring out how to get the best possible health care can be overwhelming. And for many seniors, a doctor’s appointment can be a confusing blur.

That’s why having you as their health advocate can improve your older adult’s overall health – especially if they need help keeping track of details, making sure their care is coordinated among multiple doctors, or bringing up sensitive subjects.

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Better Senior Health Involves Improved Doctor Visits

Having a good understanding of your older adult’s health conditions is especially important because they’re usually managing serious chronic conditions or multiple health problems.

As their health advocate, knowing what’s going on with your older adult’s medications and treatments helps reduce medication errors and improves quality of life.

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What Does a Geriatric Doctor DO? How Seniors Benefit from a Specialist

Many older adults have multiple chronic health conditions.

Treatments for one issue can easily affect other aspects of their health and worsen their overall quality of life.

Managing these complex health situations are where geriatricians (geriatric doctors) can be especially helpful.

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