This past week has been a little brutal on my ego. My fictitious self (the me I hold in high regard) has seen its reflection in various external realities and has taken a mortal blow.
At least I hope it has.
You see, I’ve had to acknowledge all in one breath that I’m not as clever as I thought I was; I’m not all that kind or thoughtful of others; my conversation skills have dulled; and my hair isn’t really red (all this self-revelation is partly due to reading Crazy Love—a book that spoons out truth about the self in a cod-liver-oil kind of way: nasty; painful; healing).
I’ve been thinking a lot about my hair in particular, perhaps as a metaphor for all the other traits I have to face up to in myself. My hair—which appears rich and red and full to others—is actually flimsy and almost entirely white. If you look close enough and run your fingers through the root system, the truth is quite apparent: I’m somewhere between grizzly gray and snow white. And as metaphor, I’m thinking it’s time to go white once and for all. It’s time to stop covering up the truth.
Just one thing holds me back: the stigma of white. No, not that elegant, brilliant white, but the mousy salt-and-pepper white. It’s terrifyingly old. I know the difference it would make at the supermarket, at the realtor’s office, at a job interview. I’m young; I should not have to place myself in the old category just yet. Lushious red gives you youth and authority. Mousy gray, and it’s an uphill battle to convince others you can still think. It’s ridiculous that pigment can make the world go ’round, but there you have it.
I know you’re wondering why I’m talking about hair in a blog about dementia, but you’ve probably sensed the connection. Aging has enormous stigma in our culture, and everything in us resists revealing anything that might indicate we are aging. Particularly for those of us who are aging prematurely.
My struggle with hair has atuned me to the struggle in the early-onset Alzheimer’s community. I follow a group on Facebook called Memory People comprised of people of all ages who have been diagnosed with some kind of dementia, their caregivers, and other supporting cast. Some members are open about their dignoses and are brave enough to face public scrutiny; others accept their diagnoses but keep it somewhat private; and still others straddle the cover-up fence: should they reveal something that isn’t fully blown yet but could have as devastating results as if it was? All of them long to live truthfully, but all also know the stigma of dementia and the costs incurred in making their mental status known. As with pigment, we are valued for our synaptic connections. Why would anyone want to expose their deficits and risk rejection?
It makes my stomach turn. What kind of society have we become? When are we going to change the way we value each other? When are we going to free ourselves from the layers of untruth that we spend a lifetime building up? When are we going to trade all our lies in for Truth and finally be set free?

Eleanor Cooney’s Death in Slow Motion: a Memoir of a Daughter, Her Mother, and the Beast Called Alzheimer’s is not just one book. This is two tales in one: a memoir of desperate caregiving and a biography. The memoir part follows Eleanor’s hyperventilated, drug and alcohol-sustained trek through the five stages of Alzheimer’s caregiving for her mother, Mary Durant, and the biography chapters relate the story of her mother prior to Alzheimer’s (think Dorothy Parker with abundant sex and alcohol) ending with a very rare love story between Mary Durant and Michael Harwood (her third husband). Having the story weave through these two windows makes the reader feel the compounded tragedy of the beast called Alzheimer’s.
You will laugh, clench, oggle, envy, and cry as you read this literary gem.
As a bonus, Cooney includes a previously unpublished short story written by her mother (in a style I would call Flannery O’Connor cum wicked smirk).
Buy it. Read it. Pass it on.
P.S. People who read this book will probably also buy and read Mary Durant and Michael Harwood’s On the Road with John James Audubon. Mine is already in the mail.

The other night I watched the movie Limitless. I thought it was a typical heart-pounding thriller with a touch of fantasy—in this case about a guy who discovers a drug that turns him into a genius. I thought the plot was moving toward the inevitable crash he would suffer when his supply ran out (as happened to everyone else in the movie whose supply ran out).
Then came the twist at the very end that made me laugh out loud. OMG, what Pretty Woman was to prostitutes, Limitless is to drug addicts and the whole drug industry.
If you’re smart enough, it says, you can make the perfect brain drug; you can take the last dose of the perfect drug to a lab and figure out how to reverse engineer and reproduce it; and you can figure out how to tweak it downwards in a perfectly safe manner (all within very short time periods); then you can wean yourself from a phenomenally addictive drug; and finally, you can train your brain to retain all the benefits of said drug once you have weaned yourself off it.
HA HA HA HA HA.

I think the whole problem I have with the drug industry is that, except in this extreme pharmacofantasy, it is additive rather than subtractive. You add one drug to treat a condition, then you add another to deal with the side effects of the first drug, then you add an nth drug to deal with the side effects of the combination of all the previous drugs.
Why not start with subtraction?
What are we injesting that we should cut out? Sugar? Preservatives? Smoke? Alcohol? Pesticides?
How often/much are we eating that we should cut back? Are we inhibiting certain enzymes—such as the anti-aging SIRT1—that only activate during fasting hours?
Maybe less is more?
Let’s start by removing the offending substances first, because once you start adding, it’s not you who benefit. It’s the industry that initially did have your brain in mind but now needs you to need them more and more.

In continuation of Alzheimer’s and Glucose Metabolism: The Niacinamide Experiment Part 1

This post is simply me mulling over things I’ve read in light of Mom’s dementia and my own experience with stress and mental short-circuiting, with the conclusion that in some cases of Alzheimer’s, intestinal flora could be greatly to blame. My conclusion also points to the possible way niacinamide could function in correcting one of the malfunctions in the gut-brain axis.

The Gut-Brain Axis

In-depth studies of human intestinal microbes are just now coming into maturity. The Human Microbiome Project is fueled by the increasing belief that the population of bacteria and yeasts that inhabit the human digestive tract is greatly responsible for how the body and mind develop and how they continue to function or malfunction as we tinker with the balance of flora in our gut:

Visionaries are hoping for cures for some forms of obesity and anorexia along with various forms of cancer, asthma, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, lupus, and most of the major psychiatric diseases. In the future, Blaser [of the infectious-disease research lab at New York University] says, pediatricians could help prevent these diseases by infecting babies with a starter kit of friendly bacteria. “Bottom line, humans and our fellow animals have been colonized by microbes for a very long time, going back a billion years. The microbes that we carry have been selected because they are helpful to us. They participate in human physiology. They are a compartment of the body, like the liver or the heart.” (1)

When the BP oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico, we were all
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Continued from Does Alzheimer’s Take Guts? The Niacinamide Experiment Part 2

A Compromised Gut and Aging

Suppose we throw out the acetaldehyde-in-the-blood-and-brain hypothesis. Even if the liver can keep up with the load, the process of breaking down acetaldehyde into a harmless acetate itself will upset the NADH/NAD balance.

NAD (nicotinamide adenoid dinucleotide) is the most important co-enzyme in the body. Aldehyde dehydrogenase depends on it to break down toxic aldehydes. SIRT1 depends on it to keep cells from committing suicide. It is the key to glucose metabolism. Etc.

A shortage of NAD is a normal part of aging:

Once pancreatic β cells and neurons start having functional problems due to inadequate NAD biosynthesis, other peripheral tissues/organs would also be affected through insulin secretion and central metabolic regulation so that the metabolic robustness would gradually deteriorate over age at a systemic level. This cascade of robustness breakdown triggered by a decrease in
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This weekend I picked up and devoured Dr. Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat—a fascinating collection of clinical tales of neurological aberrations accompanied by philosophical and social observations regarding the people affected by these aberrations.

One of the first things that hit me as I read these tales was remorse over my inadequate caregiving of Dad in the past three years. I mean, the very first case in the book reminded me very much of Dad—his inability to tell the difference between his foot and his shoe; to interpret a picture or the furniture layout of any room; to distinguish between his body and a chair across the room. But whereas Dr. Sacks’ response to these aberrations was fascination, interest, and kindness, mine was a struggle against exasperation, irritability, and impatience.

Why couldn’t I marvel at (instead shake my head at) Dad’s description of his back pain as an imaginary horizontal tube about a foot in front of his abdomen? Why did I only nod in shame when doctors asked, “Is your father’s mentation… always… this… shot?” instead of pushing the observation beyond the superficial to the interesting? If I’d only read this book or studied neurology before taking care of Dad! I feel like a parent looking back on her inadequate parenting skills and feeling remorse over the damage it may have caused.

Dr. Sacks laments the tendency of neurology to focus on “deficits,” leaving the soul out of the doctor’s concern. This echoed my own feelings expressed in the post Regarding Disabilities and Questionnaires. We are so concerned in medicine and social services to define what’s wrong with the patient that we miss seeing the desperate starvation in front of our eyes: the individual’s need for affirmation—for having someone notice what’s right with them. Thus, the simplest of all medicines or disability benefits is left completely out of the picture in professional delineation of care: making use of what’s left of the damaged self to make positive human connections.

From his chapter, “The President’s Speech,” I learned one way to use what’s left of Mom’s mind to connect more effectively with her. Like the patients in the aphasiac ward, Mom too has lost all language while retaining extraordinary function in the area of intonation, body language, inflection, and facial expression. I’ve always sensed that she could “read our body language.” Dr. Sacks’ confirmation of this ability has made me more aware of how I use those meta-verbal cues in communicating with Mom. The smile I get in response is more valuable than any drug-induced ability to tell what date it is.

One of the most fascinating passages in Dr. Sack’s book tells of a man with Tourett’s who, when given Haldol in the smallest of doses, ceased to exhibit the excesses of Tourett’s and became disastrously dulled—both physically and mentally—causing him as much distress as had his Tourett’s dysfunction. It took three months of counseling and “preparation for healing” before the man was again willing to try a tiny dose of Haldol. As Dr. Sacks put it, “The effects of Haldol here were miraculous—but only became so when a miracle was allowed.” Scandalous! Was Dr. Sacks milking the placebo effect for all its worth? I’ve always wondered why doctors don’t deliberately incorporate the placebo effect into the real medication to multiply its effect. Now I know: some do (what’s wrong with spending three months preparing a patient for healing?).

It’s easy to see why Dr. Sacks is considered an exentric. His methods go beyond the cut and dry. They touch the soul. I think I like this.

Pursuit of Happiness and Aging

So I re-listened to the Fresh Air segment today, then did some quick digging through articles I’ve seen online on the brain, stirred it all around, let it simmer some more, and here is the reduction I got.

Maybe our addiction to the pursuit of happiness is contributing to brain aging. It’s not an umbrella cause, of course. You would never have been able to say that Mom led a hedonistic lifestyle. And Ronald Reagan pursued a lot more things than happiness. But still… The connection between what Dr. Linden was saying and what I’ve read makes me suspicious.

In David Linden’s Compass of Pleasure, he talks about the pleasure area of the brain as being that part that–in response to certain activities or substances–produces dopamine. Dopamine is the “feel good” neurotransmitter in the brain. It is activated when we engage in certain activities or thought processes, but it is also activated when we injest/inject food, alcohol, narcotics.

Some things that produce dopamine are completely healthy. Like a good run, the enjoyment of friends, reading a stimulating book.

Some things are borderline good. Like food. Everybody needs it. The pleasure of good food produces dopamine. But when pleasure is sought after for pleasure’s sake, “the brain’s dopaminergic circuitry gets blunted. In all cases of producing pleasure in the brain, it takes increasing levels [of a thing] to produce the same level of pleasure” (quoting Dr. L). So with food, you eventually get overweightness if the pleasure of food is pursued beyond the body’s need for it. Obesity is contributing to an epidemic of Diabetes, which is strongly linked to brain aging. By indirect means, then, the pursuit of a happy palate can lead to brain aging.

Then there are things that produce dopamine (or cause its production) that are not healthy. Like alcohol, nicotine, cocaine. This falls in with the acetaldehyde hypothesis I wrote about in Does Alzheimer’s Take Guts. Alcohol, cocaine, and especially cigarette smoke have–at some point in their metabolic breakdown–the toxic aldehyde acetaldehyde. Very destructive to the brain. Dopamine is produced as the end-process of breaking down harmful aldehydes into harmless acids. It’s the brain’s “Yahoo!” after saving the day from the bad guys. That “Yahoo!” may be a good thing, but again, in order to get it a second, third, and nth time, you have to increase the attack on the body. [Interestingly, Disulfiram's use to treat alcohol and cocaine addiction works by inhibiting ALDH2 (aldehyde dehydrogenase) which is the enzyme that metabolizes acetaldehyde. It lets the toxin do its full work rather than disabling it by metabolizing it into a harmless acid. So the brain does not get its "yahoo!" And if you get no yahoo, you don't repeat the action.]

The problem with focusing on happiness above all else is that we may end up using the short-cut and more harmful methods of getting that dopamine high.

Dr. Linden’s solution? “Try to take your pleasures broadly: exercise, meditate, learn, have moderate consumption of alcohol, moderate consumption of food.”

I would add: pursue friendships, do charitable work, tend a garden, read a good book (get more ideas at Changing Aging).

As Captain Kirk once said, “There are a million things you can have and a million things you can’t have. Choose the million you can.”

See also:
Ethanol and acetaldehyde action on central dopamine systems: mechanisms, modulation, and relationship to stress.

Age-Dependent Neurodegeneration Accompanying Memory Loss in Transgenic Mice Defective in Mitochondrial Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 2 Activity

Today a nice physical therapist came to assess a treatment program for Dad—to help him regain his balance and mobility and in so doing help him milk the summer ahead of us.

A couple hours later, while sitting at the table Dad asked me in an unusually clear voice, "What's the agenda?"

I looked up from the computer, slid my glasses down, and asked back, "Agenda for your physical therapy?"

"No."

"Agenda for life?" (I thought I’d go for the gusto).

"Yes." He smiled.

"Ah. Well. The agenda for life is to live more fully. You are going to get back to being more fully you. We are going to visit the local museum, go see the natural wonders around us, go to the big city to check out the OMSI exhibit."

He smiled more broadly. We're on the right track.

Shoot, this Parkinson's is going to be a nuisance, but we are going to live one shaky bite, one shuffling step, one tough lesson, one adventurous ride, one grateful day at a time.

This week I started wearing the monovision contact lens that I got three years ago. This is the lens that you wear in one eye to correct for reading while leaving the other eye free to focus on things in the distance.
I tried this lens years ago but found it unacceptable. Everything was at once blurry and sharp, and I couldn’t tolerate the tiniest bit of blur in my vision.
I realized it was a mental adjustment—I would have to learn to choose the sharpness of one eye over the blurriness of the other at any distance until all I saw was sharpness. But I was impatient and gave up on the adjustment period, resorting instead to donning and doffing reading glasses when in need.
Now my close-up vision has gotten so bad that when I tried the monovision lens this time, my mind was quite happy to accept the gift of semi-sharpness without the need to scout around for glasses. It took a very short time, in fact, for my brain to adjust and see all things in focus at all distances.
Remarkable how the brain can do that.
I learned a similar lesson in life with the attitude of gratitude. I was going through a very stressful, heart-rending period when nothing seemed to be “working” for me. One day I plopped down on the floor and began to say “thank you” for every part of my life. It was a turning point in my stress level. I began to see not problems but challenges; not curses but blessings. And what a difference it made!
Alzheimer’s and other devastating diseases, I’m noticing, can be lenses that change the way we see life; they change what we think is important; they bring into focal clarity the gift of family, friends, community, connection. I’m amazed as I surf the blogs written by sufferers and caregivers to see the softness that takes over when anger ends. I’m amazed, for example, with Michael J. Fox’s attitude toward his Parkinson’s, calling it a “liberating” gift. I’m touched by the may bloggers who share of the immense struggle of caregiving and the eventual gratitude it produces in them.
It’s always a choice the person makes to see disease differently. Or rather, to see the value of the person despite the disease.
In this season of Thanksgiving, it is good to see the change that Alzheimer’s and other diseases have brought to our self-centered culture.
So, thank you to all of you who write and share of your struggles, forming a new community that chooses to rise above bitterness and embrace even the bleakest, darkest days of life for the goodness they produce.

The first thing you have to know about Mom is that she is the biggest sweetheart on the planet. She has always said “yes” to anyone who asked her for a favor or a meal or a ride or even cash. We used to berate her over some of these decisions. “Mom, you’re just enabling them to go get drunk,” or whatever. We’d rather keep our boundaries intact. Keep safe. Not Mom. She’d rather “do onto others” as Jesus wanted her to do–and let Jesus take care of punishment if the recipient abused the gift.
With that in mind, it puzzles me that these days, the word most frequently pulled out of her tiny residual vocabulary (5-10 words at present) is the word “no.”

“Mom, shall we get up?”
“No.”
“Mom, isn’t this music pretty?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
“No.”

Here’s the curious part. Her body language still says “yes.” So why the verbal “no”?
I’m thinking that this knee-jerk negation is her last recourse to individuality. Having lost most of what makes her a person, she is resorting to negation as a way to distinguish herself from others.
Think about it. “Yes” blends us into other people. It’s a unifying word. It accepts. It serves. It hugs and becomes one with the other.
“No” on the other hand, puts up a wall between the self and the other. It says, I am me and you are you and it’s going to stop there.
It’s Mom’s only way, I believe, to retain a feeling of self.
And that revelation changes how I look at the world. You wonder why some people just can’t play nice in the world arena; why they have to say “no” to constructive engagement; why they have to strap bombs around themselves and “no” themselves and other people into oblivion.
Perhaps it’s because those people feel that a “yes” will blend them into the will of the other–a will that is unacceptable to their idea of a healthy self. A ”no,” they feel, is the only way they’ll be seen.
Do you see what I’m saying? The ego’s boundaries collapse under yes. “No” is the last bastion of the tormented ego.

If you’re like me and need a visual representation of the brain’s anatomy to understand Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research better, here are a few good slide shows and videos for your educational pleasure:

How The Brain Works
From the Mayo Clinic. This is a good starter slide show of the brain’s main functions. In eight slides you get a basic outline of the lobes of the brain and their purposes.

Dementia Pictures Slideshow: Disorders of the Brain
From MedicineNet. These 31 slides show what happens to the brain in cortical, subcortical, progressive, primary, and secondary dementias.

Brain Tour
From the Alzheimer’s Association. In 17 slides you will learn about the brain’s basic functions, then how the brain is affected in Alzheimer’s by amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles.

Zoom In and Search for a Cure
From Emergent Universe. This is a fun, artsy, and very interactive show depicting what happens in the brain affected by Alzheimer’s Disease. Among other things, you will discover why ab42 is more toxic than ab40.

Inside the Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of Alzheimer’s Disease
This is a video put out by several government organizations (the NIH, NIA…) showing the pathology of Alzheimer’s in the brain.

The Secret Life of the Brain
From PBS. Here are three interactive shows (requires Shockwave), including, History of the Brain, 3-D Brain Anatomy, Mind Illusions, and Scanning the Brain.

Brain Rules: Sleep
Now that findings show beta amyloid buildup is cleared during sleep, this slide show will be of special interest, as it shows the role of sleep in brain function.