The Problem of Alzheimer's

The Problem of Alzheimer's PDF Author: Jason Karlawish
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250218748
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
A definitive and compelling book on one of today's most prevalent illnesses. In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. 16 million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their seventies and eighties, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2050. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis. While it is an unambiguous account of decades of missed opportunities and our health care systems’ failures to take action, it tells the story of the biomedical breakthroughs that may allow Alzheimer’s to finally be prevented and treated by medicine and also presents an argument for how we can live with dementia: the ways patients can reclaim their autonomy and redefine their sense of self, how families can support their loved ones, and the innovative reforms we can make as a society that would give caregivers and patients better quality of life. Rich in science, history, and characters, The Problem of Alzheimer's takes us inside laboratories, patients' homes, caregivers’ support groups, progressive care communities, and Jason Karlawish's own practice at the Penn Memory Center.

The Problem of Alzheimer's

The Problem of Alzheimer's PDF Author: Jason Karlawish
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250218748
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
A definitive and compelling book on one of today's most prevalent illnesses. In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. 16 million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their seventies and eighties, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2050. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis. While it is an unambiguous account of decades of missed opportunities and our health care systems’ failures to take action, it tells the story of the biomedical breakthroughs that may allow Alzheimer’s to finally be prevented and treated by medicine and also presents an argument for how we can live with dementia: the ways patients can reclaim their autonomy and redefine their sense of self, how families can support their loved ones, and the innovative reforms we can make as a society that would give caregivers and patients better quality of life. Rich in science, history, and characters, The Problem of Alzheimer's takes us inside laboratories, patients' homes, caregivers’ support groups, progressive care communities, and Jason Karlawish's own practice at the Penn Memory Center.

Reducing the Impact of Dementia in America

Reducing the Impact of Dementia in America PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780309495035
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
As the largest generation in U.S. history - the population born in the two decades immediately following World War II - enters the age of risk for cognitive impairment, growing numbers of people will experience dementia (including Alzheimer's disease and related dementias). By one estimate, nearly 14 million people in the United States will be living with dementia by 2060. Like other hardships, the experience of living with dementia can bring unexpected moments of intimacy, growth, and compassion, but these diseases also affect people's capacity to work and carry out other activities and alter their relationships with loved ones, friends, and coworkers. Those who live with and care for individuals experiencing these diseases face challenges that include physical and emotional stress, difficult changes and losses in their relationships with life partners, loss of income, and interrupted connections to other activities and friends. From a societal perspective, these diseases place substantial demands on communities and on the institutions and government entities that support people living with dementia and their families, including the health care system, the providers of direct care, and others. Nevertheless, research in the social and behavioral sciences points to possibilities for preventing or slowing the development of dementia and for substantially reducing its social and economic impacts. At the request of the National Institute on Aging of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Reducing the Impact of Dementia in America assesses the contributions of research in the social and behavioral sciences and identifies a research agenda for the coming decade. This report offers a blueprint for the next decade of behavioral and social science research to reduce the negative impact of dementia for America's diverse population. Reducing the Impact of Dementia in America calls for research that addresses the causes and solutions for disparities in both developing dementia and receiving adequate treatment and support. It calls for research that sets goals meaningful not just for scientists but for people living with dementia and those who support them as well. By 2030, an estimated 8.5 million Americans will have Alzheimer's disease and many more will have other forms of dementia. Through identifying priorities social and behavioral science research and recommending ways in which they can be pursued in a coordinated fashion, Reducing the Impact of Dementia in America will help produce research that improves the lives of all those affected by dementia.

American Dementia

American Dementia PDF Author: Daniel R. George
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421440474
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
"The authors argue for a strong connection between public health and social policies that have boosted access to education; quality health care; cleaner air, soil, and water; and a reduction in Alzheimer's disease and dementia. They question the assumption of many that developing a pharmaceutical cure is the best hope for addressing Alzheimer's"--

Long-term Care Providers and Services Users in the United States, 2015-2016

Long-term Care Providers and Services Users in the United States, 2015-2016 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780840606945
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Dementia Reimagined

Dementia Reimagined PDF Author: Tia Powell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735210918
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Now in paperback, the cultural and medical history of dementia and Alzheimer's disease by a leading psychiatrist and bioethicist who urges us to turn our focus from cure to care. Despite being a physician and a bioethicist, Tia Powell wasn't prepared to address the challenges she faced when her grandmother, and then her mother, were diagnosed with dementia--not to mention confronting the hard truth that her own odds aren't great. In the U.S., 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day; by the time a person reaches 85, their chances of having dementia approach 50 percent. And the truth is, there is no cure, and none coming soon, despite the perpetual promises by pharmaceutical companies that they are just one more expensive study away from a pill. Dr. Powell's goal is to move the conversation away from an exclusive focus on cure to a genuine appreciation of care--what we can do for those who have dementia, and how to keep life meaningful and even joyful. Reimagining Dementia is a moving combination of medicine and memoir, peeling back the untold history of dementia, from the story of Solomon Fuller, a black doctor whose research at the turn of the twentieth century anticipated important aspects of what we know about dementia today, to what has been gained and lost with the recent bonanza of funding for Alzheimer's at the expense of other forms of the disease. In demystifying dementia, Dr. Powell helps us understand it with clearer eyes, from the point of view of both physician and caregiver. Ultimately, she wants us all to know that dementia is not only about loss--it's also about the preservation of dignity and hope.

In Love

In Love PDF Author: Amy Bloom
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593243943
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful memoir of a love that leads two people to find a courageous way to part—and a woman’s struggle to go forward in the face of loss—that “enriches the reader’s life with urgency and gratitude” (The Washington Post) “A pleasure to read . . . Rarely has a memoir about death been so full of life. . . . Bloom has a talent for mixing the prosaic and profound, the slapstick and the serious.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR Amy Bloom began to notice changes in her husband, Brian: He retired early from a new job he loved; he withdrew from close friendships; he talked mostly about the past. Suddenly, it seemed there was a glass wall between them, and their long walks and talks stopped. Their world was altered forever when an MRI confirmed what they could no longer ignore: Brian had Alzheimer’s disease. Forced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Supporting each other in their last journey together, Brian and Amy made the unimaginably difficult and painful decision to go to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace. In this heartbreaking and surprising memoir, Bloom sheds light on a part of life we so often shy away from discussing—its ending. Written in Bloom’s captivating, insightful voice and with her trademark wit and candor, In Love is an unforgettable portrait of a beautiful marriage, and a boundary-defying love.

On Vanishing

On Vanishing PDF Author: Lynn Casteel Harper
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1948226294
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An essential book for those coping with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive disorders that “reframe[s] our understanding of dementia with sensitivity and accuracy . . . to grant better futures to our loved ones and ourselves” (The New York Times). An estimated fifty million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer's erase parts of one's memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don't simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging, addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the nature of our outsized fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may create, and what it might mean for us all to try to “vanish well.” Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of disappearance and death, drawing on her own experiences with people with dementia both in the American healthcare system and within her own family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters—of leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals dismissed as “already gone” and finding them still possessed of complex, vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather’s final years with Alzheimer’s and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of succumbing to the disease—Harper engages in an exploration of dementia that is unlike anything written before on the subject. A rich and startling work of nonfiction, On Vanishing reveals cognitive change as it truly is, an essential aspect of what it means to be mortal.

The Dementias

The Dementias PDF Author: John Herbert Growdon
Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Dementia, technically defined as cognitive impairments sufficiently pervasive and severe enough that they disrupt independent life, is one of the most devastating symptoms of neurologic disease. While Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease that causes it, more than 50 medical, psychiatric, and neurological conditions are associated with dementia. Well organized and expertly planned, this text provides new concepts of patient management that have come about through recent neuroscience research. This volume, reviewing the dementias with the needs of the clinician in mind, is unique in that the section dealing with disease mechanisms reviews the exciting recent scientific advance in regard to Alzheimer disease, whereas the clinical section(section A) focuses not on Alzheimer disease but upon related disorders, the less common dementing syndromes due to other neurodegenerative disorders. The editors of this Blue Book have brought together an extraordinary group of experts to define the scientific advances primarily in Alzheimer's disease (section B) and new treatments (section C) being developed. * Written for non-expert general neurologists and residents * Provides new concepts of patient management discovered in neuroscience research * Includes unique coverage of recent scientific advances in Alzheimer's Disease

Living in the Labyrinth

Living in the Labyrinth PDF Author: Diana Friel McGowin
Publisher: Delta
ISBN: 030780464X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Living In The Labyrinth is the story of how one woman found the strength and the courage to cope with a devastating disease that has afflicted five million Americans. Far from being an exercise in self-pity or a standard autobiography, this is an unflinching and ultimately uplifting look at a debilitating illness from the inside out. “Somewhere there is that ever-present reminder list of what I am supposed to do today. But I cannot find it. I attempt to do the laundry and find myself outside, in my backyard, holding soiled clothes. How did I get here? How do I get back?” Only forty-five when she first began to struggle with the memory lapses and disorientation that signal the onset of Alzheimer’s, Diana Friel McGowin has written a courageous, stirring insider’s story of the disease that is now the fourth leading killer of American adults. Diana’s personal journey through days of darkness and light, fear and hope gives us new insight into a devastating illness and the plight of its victims, complete with a list of early warning signs, medical background, and resources for further information. But Diana’s story goes far beyond a recounting of a terrifying disease. It portrays a marriage struggling to survive, a family hurt beyond words, and a woman whose humor and intelligence triumph over setbacks and loss to show us the best of what being human is. “A stunner of a book . . . it takes the reader on a terrifying but enlightening journey.”—San Antonio News Express “Touching and sometimes angry . . . a poignant insider’s view.”—The Cincinnati Enquirer

Future Directions for the Demography of Aging

Future Directions for the Demography of Aging PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309474108
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Almost 25 years have passed since the Demography of Aging (1994) was published by the National Research Council. Future Directions for the Demography of Aging is, in many ways, the successor to that original volume. The Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to produce an authoritative guide to new directions in demography of aging. The papers published in this report were originally presented and discussed at a public workshop held in Washington, D.C., August 17-18, 2017. The workshop discussion made evident that major new advances had been made in the last two decades, but also that new trends and research directions have emerged that call for innovative conceptual, design, and measurement approaches. The report reviews these recent trends and also discusses future directions for research on a range of topics that are central to current research in the demography of aging. Looking back over the past two decades of demography of aging research shows remarkable advances in our understanding of the health and well-being of the older population. Equally exciting is that this report sets the stage for the next two decades of innovative researchâ€"a period of rapid growth in the older American population.