Seven forty four are here fifty five care Seed Talk Station Bryan Time. I was happy to welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show a subject matter near and dear to my heart for all the wrong reasons. Alzheimer's sucks, and no one knows more about that than Jackie Williams. She's a program manager for the Greatest Sincinti Chapter of
the Alzheimer's Association. Before being joining the Association, she served as a volunteer for close to ten years, helping to educate those in the community regarding challenges individuals face with living with dementia. She was her mother's full time caregiver when she was in the later stages of dementia, with hands on experience, her passion to continue her work and serving this population letter to join the staff at the
Alzheimer's Association. Welcome Jackie Williams. Let me start by thanking you for your hard work with the Alzheimer's Association. My father struggled with Alzheimer's dementia and ultimately lost his life as a consequence, and my mom was his primary caregiver and oh, my God, as well as anybody, it takes a huge toll on the family and most notably the primary caregiver. Welcome to the program.
Oh, thank you, Brian. I appreciate you inviting us to be here today, and I'm so sorry to hear about your journey with with the disease. And you're absolutely correct. The toll on caregivers is tremendous and we work every day out in communities just making sure we're providing programs and resources and services to help families and caregivers through that journey. It is a long haul. Oftentimes as you are you.
Witness, yes, a quite a long haul. And it's just heart heartbreaking too. You know, my father was is the sharpest knife in the drawer, always quick witted, always on his face. You could you can never outwit my dad. And to have him struggle with and deteriorate and ultimately pass as a consequence of this was just sort of like, you know, throwing a salt on the wound. And I
note the numbers. I've been looking at the numbers that, yeah, I have in front of me, six point seven million Americans and to county or twenty twenty three, one in nine aged sixty five or older are living with Alzheimer's. These numbers just keep going up. Is there any do we know anything about where it comes from or why the numbers increase every year?
So well, aging is definitely the number one risk factor, and so as our population in this baby boom generation is aging and it's such a huge piece of our population. Yes, the numbers are increasing, but the good news is we have been making incredible strides in research that are allowing us to find treatment to help slow down that progression.
We still do not have a cure, We still do not have a prevention, but every day those research projects are getting us closer and closer to getting us to what our mission is, a world without Alzheimer's and all other dementia. So, as an association, while we are Alzheimer's Association, we do care and support individuals who have a form of dementia that may not be Alzheimer's. Well.
Tonight's Empower You Seminar and it begins at seven pm. It's either virtual or live. You can go to two twenty five North On Boulevard to participate in person. You can log in from the comfort of your own home. Just go to empower You America dot org. Please register ahead of time now the name of the seminar is
ten Warning Signs of Alzheimer's. What is the Is there a first leading indicator that might be a red flag that people might want to start paying attention to, or is it just vary from person to person.
It definitely can vary from person to person, most definitely, and it's a lot of it is based on what form of dementia they may have and what kind of signs they may start demonstrating. And so one of the things that is always I think a bit confusing and troubling for a lot of people. You know, how many times is we're getting older, we start forgetting somebody's name
or trying to figure out, like what was that? And oftentimes I'll hear people just probably jokingly but maybe not saying, oh boy, I must be getting to Alzheimer's or I must be getting dementia. And that may not necessarily be the case. It could be attributed to something else. You know, stress can manifest in terms of like all of a sudden, you know, your cognitive abilities and your thinking process might be hindered by stress. So it may be that or
it just may be normal aging. And there is a difference between the things that we experience as normal aging and what could be what i'll call crossing the line
and not necessarily normal aging. That we would encourage individuals to go and get checked and make sure that they're working with their physic to just evaluate and monitor and try to get any type of an early diagnosis, because that's where the most success is in finding treatment and being able to have a more impactful journey through this disease.
Now, in terms of getting a diagnosis, okay, you're talking about tonight the ten warning signs of Alzheimer's. Let's say someone has enough of these indicators that are like, okay, well, I really should schedule an appointment. How is Alzheimer's diagnosed? Where yes, this is early onset of Alzheimer's, or no, it's just you just didn't remember the person's name, right.
Right, Yeah. So you know, there's a variety of different ways that we go through and try and get individuals diagnosed. The first one, actually, in my opinion, starts with the family or those close by the individual and start taking notice and really making sure that the individual is aware that some of these things are happening with them. Oftentimes, there's a lot of denial there's like, oh, no, I'm just getting old. I don't I don't need anything. I
don't I don't need to address that. And so oftentimes tracking and recognizing and encouraging somebody to go and get further assessment. And if you're lucky enough like I was to be able to attend those doctor's appointments with my mom, I kept a lot of notes in terms of like, here are the changes I'm seeing, and when it's happening, and why it might be happening and whatnot, and that helps the physicians know that, yep, this is a little
bit more than what normal aging might be. There is a lot of testing that happens, and I will tell you right now, a lot of it will be physicians trying to rule out other things that it could be that might be causing this cognitive impairment or decline, because there's a lot of things that could have an impact on that, and so finding out what it may not be kind of helps lead to Okay, do we take that next step, which is potentially MRIs pet scans and
spinal taps. The spinal tap fluid can be an indicator of whether or not you have Alzheimer's, but The great news is we are getting really close in our research to a point where we might find a day and we're really close to it where you can get the diagnosis through a biomarker blood test, and being able to do that makes it so much more available to individuals who might have cost prohibitations to really paying for some of those tests, but also in some of our rural
areas where they don't have access to some of those things, and making sure that we're getting them diagnosed as well.
Okay, and real quickly here because we're out of time. I acknowledge that, so my producer knows. I am paying attention to the clock. But once diagnosed, is there a treatment protocol? I mean, we don't have a cure for it yet, So are there exercises or you know, brain challenges or things that we can do to slow down the progression or is it just okay, you got the information, prepare yourself for the worst.
Yeah, I know. There's a couple of things. One is definitely we have a whole series on healthy living for your brain and body, and there's things that we can do, even as healthy non diagnosed individuals can do to try and start warding off maybe the onset of dementia, but here more recently, we actually have a couple of treatments that are actually slowing down the progression of the disease, and they are very new, like here within the last
couple of years. So we are working with the public health policies and hospitals and insurance companies to make sure that we are allowing good, ample accessibility to those treatments and making sure that we can get those individuals in the loop and being treated.
Wonderful, wonderful log in tonight or show with two twenty five North and Bolivar. Jackie Williams's going to do a deep dive into the balance of these maybe even give you some hope for down the road. Jackie Williams, it's been a real pleasure having you on the program. Fascinating discussion and fingers crossed and money coming your way from folks in my listening audience want to help try to
solve this this insidious disease. Log In and Power You America tonight or show up at the Empower You studios. Thank you for what you do. Jackie. It's been a real pleasure having you on the program.
Thank you. We appreciate it so much.
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