It is not surprising that a hearing aid company like Beltone would praise the value of improved hearing to reduce the likelihood of a person’s contracting Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Beltone referred to a number of studies, which may have included the one by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the National Institute on Aging.
With millions of people affected by Alzheimer’s disease, there is a lot of interest by drug companies to come up with a cure. But that interest has thus far not translated into drugs that work. Two companies—Pfizer, Inc. and Axovant Sciences Ltd.—have recently exited the business, but others are continuing their research, and new ones are starting. Curiously, new research indicates that drugs used to treat diabetes may work for Alzheimer’s too … at least in mice.
The brain needs vitamin B1 (thiamine) to make acetylcholine as Alzheimer’s sufferers are deficient in it.
And another possible way to avoid, or at least delay, Alzheimer’s is to floss your teeth religiously.
Our highest praise for a book is to say, “I wish I had written a book that good.” This is such a book. You get a lot for your money, because it is so densely filled with both verifiable scientific facts and advice to increase the quantity and quality of one’s own life. An optimistic tone pervades the whole book, though Dr. Carstensen—Founding Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity—spends a whole chapter on “What Might Go Wrong?” She includes an extensive bibliography (called Notes) with numerous ideas—both from her and from others—skillfully woven into the basic fabric. Here are a few. Having more education is the most important factor in ensuring longer lives, and it likely delays the onset of dementia. Bilingual people may have a lower incidence of dementia. Financial problems (which can lower quality of life) in later life can result from the mistaken belief that one needs less money as one ages. Among the most significant health problems as one ages are arthritis, hearing, and obesity, with future obesity levels’ threatening to undo most of the recent advances in health.
Of greatest interest to our TechnologyBloopers persona is our observation that in the few short years between the book’s first copyright in 2009 and today (2016), many technologies have emerged or changed dramatically. Unfortunately, some of them may have progressed so far that older people can be disenfranchised if they don’t know about them, if they don’t know how to use them (even if they ARE user-friendly), or if they don’t have children or grandchildren to show them how. Of course, some of the new Apps (“Applications”, i.e., software programs that run on mobile devices to accomplish certain functions) are far more used by teens than retirees, and may not have value to older people except for the most extreme of passive watchers or gossipers. But developments such as self-driving cars, which are only vaguely hinted about in the book, will allow older folks to avoid being isolated, so will be hugely important in the very near future.