From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, November twenty nine. Dementia is on track to become Australia's leading cause of death, overtaking cancer, and there are steps you can take now to reduce your risk. One of them is drinking less, because alcohol related dementia, including in young people, is a real risk today. The inspiring love story of one couple who faced a diagnosis that was hard to comprehend late summer at Bondi, the
perfect place to fall in love. Louise Bryant was a media executive in her thirties, a volunteer life saver who'd spent the season on patrol keeping the kids and the backpackers safe at the world's most faith beach. Her patrol captain invited the crew to the clubhouse at the beach's south end Icebergs. There's a famous aquamarine ocean pool, and it was their end of season celebration. And then someone walked in who would change Louise's life. The tall, handsome,
drop dead charming Craig Moore. He was an advertising copywriter, a charming wordsmith and a huge personality. His nickname was Moose. Everyone at the table seemed to know Moose, but his attention settled on Loo, and before she knew it, she was swept up in a whirl of dinners and dates.
I guess you could say we instantly fell in love. He's very very charismatic, a bit of a bon vivant sort of character. He's incredibly witty and very funny, and he just had a real mac with being able to solve a kind of client problem, I guess in a creative advertising setting. But he was also an avid letter writer to The Citny Morning in particular, and he wrote some very funny letters that were published every other week. You'd often write me bitiful cards and letters, which I've
of course still kept. But yeah, very special.
And over the years you started to notice some changes in his behavior. Looking back now, what was the first thing that made you aware that something was different?
Look, I think it was a lot of just unusual sort of behavior that I couldn't quite put my finger on. He seemed to genuinely love me. He was very caring and kind. He was very supportive, but in the next breath, he wouldn't turn up to things. He would become a little bit erratic. Some of his friends would often say things to me that were concerning, and yeah, I think there were many moments where I look back and think, oh, okay, that makes sense. Now, that makes sense.
Yeah, you describe in a story that we're publishing in The Australian today a moment where he was supposed to do a big ocean swim and he didn't finish with the rest of the swimmers. That must have sent you into a panic.
Absolutely, I remember it so vividly. It was the Palm Beach to Well Beach swim. It was a sparkling day, the conditions were perfect. We'd made a weekend out of it. We'd stayed at friends the night before. I remember dropping him down to the marshaling area and I said to hear, Mom, meet you at the other end. And an hour later, he hadn't emerged from the water, and his friends and everyone in his age group had obviously arrived, and I started to sort of make some inquiries had anyone seen Moose?
And eventually I looked down and I could see him wandering up the beach and he hadn't been in the water, And I think I was a bit shocked and taken aback by that, and I thought, that's really strange. And he then said, oh, my goalals broke, which in ocean swimming circles is a big like it's just the worst excuse. And I think a friend overheard and she's turned on the heel and said you're so full of shit boos, and it was yeah, it was a sort of troubled me.
But we moved on from that point and I just thought, okay, he was able to atone about a year later, and he did eventually do and another ocean swim over at Manly and he loved it. But now, of course he's completely terrified of open water and he won't go anywhere near a Paul or indeed the ocean or the beach. He gets quite anxious.
Something was in fact seriously wrong, but it was something lew and Craig couldn't have even imagined. At that point. They were in midlife, fit and active. Craig had a young onset dementia, alcohol induced dementia, something lou didn't even know was possible. In Australia, it's hard to find a man who hasn't at some point in their lives drunk a lot of alcohol, whether it's weekend partying or the steady, quiet chug of drinks after work with dinner, catching up
with friends. The kind of always on consumption that seems okay day to day but can look quite confronting when you write down the number of sta and drinks in one of those forms at the GP. After Craig's diagnosis, he and Lou carried on with their life in beautiful BONDI, enjoying the good times, trying not to think too much about what the future might hold. He was in hospital recovering from an unrelated surgery, and he started talking to others about what was going on in your life? That
wasn't quite right? What was he saying?
Well, there was a moment where he was suffering this delirium, I suppose, but I remember at one point a lot of he had streams of visitors coming in and they had some incredible supporting that time, because we weren't really sure what was going on, and a friend, many friends would come in and he'd tell them, and he looked so serene and happy that we were having a baby, Melanie Moore, a baby girl, and he was very happy about that.
So he named this baby that wasn't real And in that moment, do you remember how you felt about that? And that's the moment you can't really pretend that nothing is wrong.
Yeah, look it was. Sometimes you need to look for the humor in the dark moments. I was literally running down the corridor of telling friends, look, please don't ring your wife to tell them this wonderful news, because it's actually not the case.
While all this was going on, Luise was managing editor of The Australian, a huge job. She wasn't sharing much of what was going on in her personal life, but at the time we were making a podcast, Head Noise,
all about degenerative brain conditions. In Head Noise, we followed a superstar, retired rugby league player James Graham, as he explored what years of football had done to his brain, and we heard his neurologist, doctor Rowena Mobbs, telling James his scans showed a reduction in volume of his brain that shouldn't be happening in someone so young. That podcast prompted Lou to go and see doctor Mobs with Craig because Lou wondered if head knocks Craig suffered while playing
American football could have contributed to his condition. Eventually, doctor Mobs said Craig needed to go into full time care. Now he lives safe and happy in a group home where lou knows he's getting the care he needs.
When you're talking about it dementia diagnosis, there's often no start and end. Rowena describes it like a rolling ball. I prefer to describe it like throwing a ball off a cliff, because you don't know where it's going to land.
One of the factors lew and Craig we're dealing with was the shame associated with dementia. It's not easy for anyone to talk about the loss of dignity and privacy, the loss of independence and connection that any kind of dementia causes.
I'd love to one day talk about dementia positivity, but there really isn't now because there's no cure, there's no happy story, there's no surgery, there's no magic pill at the moment, and it's something that I think we really need to start thinking about shifting our tension to dementia as as an important area that's becoming more and more urgent, particularly and I'm sure you're aware of the statistics but it will overtake cats as a leading cause of death
next year in Australia, and cases are expected to triple by twenty fifty in the Western Asia region of which Australia is of course part of. So it's going to have a significant impact on us, and I think we need to start talking about various ways we can prevent or it will intervene.
The world's pre eminent medical journal, The Lancet, has a standing commission on dementia Prevention, Intervention and care. It's twenty twenty four report talks about increasing and stronger evidence about the factors that can help reduce the risk. Those are things like improving education, preventing hearing laws, preventing high blood pressure,
reducing smoking and obesity, and preventing excessive alcohol consumption. The Lancets reports suggests that means consuming fewer than two glasses of wine or beers a day to avoid increasing your risk of dementia. What do you wish you could say to yourself of ten years ago, We wish that you had known if awareness had been.
Greater than Maybe it's just my experience, but I just wonder if when we go to the GP and we start if those issues are raised. Often that conversation leaves down the path of cancer risk, or heart risk or diabetes. But very rarely in those early stages is dementia thought of. And I think that's because a lot of people assume that dementia is an old person's disease, which of course it isn't.
Also, when you're talking to your GP about modifiable behavior, the GP is saying you should really give up smoking, or maybe you should eat a bit less, try and lose a bit of way, or do more exercise. The reasons to do those things feel like they're a long way off, don't they. You could live longer if you eat better now that can feel quite intangible.
Yeah, absolutely, And I think the more we can raise awareness, it is an urgent conversation, and I think we need to collectively think about, well, how we can adjust our thinking. I guess around the fact that dementia is a significant risk factor.
After the break lose message to others who are touched by dementia. Luis's story is told in The Australian Today by one of the Australian's most gifted writers, Fiona Harari. You can read it right now at the Australian dot com au and we'll be back after this break. You and I have been friends for years, and you've been very supportive to me as I watched my mother go through the diagnosis of dementia, and you've listened patiently to me, talking about that a lot. You didn't talk much about
your own situation. You would allude to it in passing, but this is the first time we really talked about it in detail. What made the difference for you? Why do you want to talk about it now?
I received it. It was actually a video of Craig Loose standing at a kitchen bench in his care home and he was struggling to write his name, And even though it was a bitiful video and it was sent with the writing tent, it was heartbreaking for me because I realized then that this insidious disease had robbed him of his skills that he was so good at.
So, yeah, it must have been a moment of just pure empathy for you, of feeling that this beautiful man who you have made sure is happy and safe, was not who he used to be. Yeah, it's our cohort who will have to face to mentor as we get older and this is clearly something that's coming for us. But we're also the careers, whether we're caring for elderly
parents or our partners who are going through this. What would you say to other people who are caring for someone either who has a diagnosis or who is concerned about their partner or someone they love.
I think it's absolutely get to look after yourself, to ensure that you have support around you. It's not often you feel like it is a one person job.
You feel very.
Alone, you're very vulnerable, but it's really important that you are reaching out to get support. I chose to be very private about it and only have very small select network of very close friends and my family who really provided that level of support, which was wonderful. But yeah, I guess you just need to yet actually have support around you.
Yeah. Not be ashamed, No, not at all. Louise, Thank you very much.
Thanks Claire.
Louise Bryant's story is in The Australian and at the Australian Home dot are you right now