Heading Off Alzheimer's

"The disease is a progressive disease, and both physicians prescribing and treating patients [as well as] patients and their families haven’t understood clearly enough that we’re treating symptoms in a progressive disease — and treating symptoms is still worthwhile."
"[There is hope that new medicines will succeed in stabilizing, even reversing or curing the disease.] So that goal is very valid, but we’re not there yet."
"You see experts from the U.S. expressing concern that drugs we have already are not being used. And I think the general public gets the feeling there’s nothing for Alzheimer’s disease."
"We will need combination medicine. So we don’t want to throw out the gains we have made over the years for the hope there will be one thing that will make the original gains obsolete. We’re not that far in the field that we don’t need these current medicines that we have."
Dr. Sharon Cohen, medical director, Alzheimer’s program Toronto Memory Program -- Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, Toronto

Dr. Sharon Cohen, medical director of the Toronto Memory Program, says that since Alzheimer's is a progressive disease, "treating symptoms is still worthwhile,” even if the next generation of treatments will get at the roots of the disease itself. Researchers and health-care professionals concerned with Alzheimer's are gathering in Toronto this week for an international conference.   (NAKITA KRUCKER / TORONTO STAR) |

"It is unfortunate that only a minority of primary care doctors believe they have received sufficient training to diagnose the disease."

"We see patients regularly for whom the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s was missed. Unfortunately, the result is people with the disease are not getting treated."

"[Approved drugs that affect the cholinergic system — a chemical produced by brain cells essential for memory, behaviour and thinking — have been available since the 1990s and are the only drugs] shown to have a positive impact on all stages of Alzheimer’s disease."
Dr. Rachelle Doody, chair, Alzheimer’s research, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas

Thanks to ongoing medical research and improved quality of health care with new protocols and medicines reaching the market on an ongoing basis, we are living longer, more productive lives enhanced with better health outcomes. The general public is aware that physical activity is necessary to balance lifestyles and remain active. There is a growing tendency among older people who once would have thought of retiring as soon as they could from the active workforce, to continue working rather than put themselves 'out to pasture'.

In the early 1980s ten percent of the American workforce as an example, over age 65 had no plan to leave the workforce and retire. At a time when jobs were plentiful and no baleful glares turned toward older works with the grumble that their persistence in avoiding retirement meant they were keeping younger workers from finding employment fewer people decided to retire. In many industries when older workers did retire their institutional knowledge was lost with their absence.

At the present time the number of older workers remaining in the workforce has doubled, close to 20 percent. And of that number fewer than fifty percent who continue to work have financial pressures keeping them there. Most older people continue their jobs through choice, and most because they find a purpose and satisfaction in continuing to work or even because they have a compulsion "to remain involved".

According to Gallup's Employee Engagement studies, half of retirement age workers are resolved to work past age 65 while ten percent have no aspirations whatever to retire at any age unless compelled to by circumstances beyond their control. It is also recognized that older people in the workforce are more reliable, have a tendency to greater engagement in their work than do younger workers. People over 50, according to Gallup, represent one of North America's fastest-growing groups of prospective entrepreneurs.

Which is to say once their lifetime professional careers come to an end that demographic turns to what is called "encore" careers. To be sure, whether or not to retire is in essence yet another lifestyle opportunity; the choice to remain active in the workforce, or to take retirement leave and look forward to advancing other interests at leisure, though many people in their retirement years remain busy with any number of other distractions from volunteerism to finally seriously pursuing hobbies or travelling extensively.

This past week in Toronto the Alzheimer's Association International met to present research findings and discuss issues relating to that dread disease. Their contention is that jobs involving interacting with others in society, such as teaching, social work, sales and law, can have the effect of dramatically lowering the chance of Alzheimer's onset or other forms of dementia through ongoing mental engagement.

How we were: An elderly woman clutches a comb for her white hair while the dark-haired reflection of a young school teacher, a notebook and red apple in her arms, reflects back in her mirror

France's Bordeaux School of Public Health found that for each additional year of work the risk of dementia onset decreased by 3.2 percent. According to the findings issued from Bordeaux, "those who retired at 65 years old had a 14.6 percent lower risk of getting dementia than those who retired at 60 years old." Other studies follow in similar vein; that works ensures people will be sound in body and mind.

Former lives: A retired fire fighter, who's actual photo is seen tucked in the mirror's top left corner, gazes into his reflection that shows a strapping young fire fighter staring straight back

A British Medical Journal Analysis of 2005 studying Shell Oil employees discovered that 55-year-old retirees were 89 percent more likely to die within ten years of retirement than those who had retired at age 65. Those below the company's managerial and professional rungs; skilled, semi-skilled, unskilled and clerical workers were found to be 17 percent likelier to die at a younger age.

             Gary Burtless, Brookings