I don’t know how much I’ll be able to write about Parkinson’s here. If I write about Parkinson’s, it’ll be about how it’s affecting Dad. And if I tell you the things this disease makes Dad do, you won’t have a pretty picture of Dad. And that ain’t fair.
Here’s just a little, white example. A couple days ago Dad had to go to the bathroom. He asked what direction the bathroom was, and I pointed it out. He walked to the bathroom door, then asked me again where the bathroom was. I told him he was standing at the bathroom door. He said, “And now what?” I explained that he had to walk over to the toilet. He was standing four feet from the toilet and asked, “Where?” I put pressure on his back and gently led him to the toilet. He said, “And now?”
I had to help him through the whole process.
The concept “how to back up” seems to be the biggest obstacle his brain has to overcome. He can’t figure out how to back up to the toilet before sitting, or once he’s in a chair, how to back up from the edge. The same when he goes to bed.
My sister and I try “scoot back, Dad.” He scoots forward even though he’s already on the edge of whatever. We try changing the cue. “Put your back here” (while patting the back of the chair). Nothing. “Lift your bottom and move it back.” Nothing. Yesterday I tried switching languages. I said, “Put your butt in reverse” in Portuguese. He couldn’t do it, but he did double over laughing. And that’s a huge gift.
But these gifts are hard to come by. So I probably won’t write much about Dad and his Parkinson’s. I’d rather you see the adventurous man who loaded up his wife and eight kids in a van and drove from New York to Bolivia in 1966. This man taught us all kinds of good things about nature and God, and I’d rather not leave you with a highly unbalanced picture of who he is.
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I’m having a hard go at it with my new resolution to spend more quality time with my mother.

It’s a very painful fact that I miss Dad and that I wish I had spent more “being time” with him instead of dividing my time between being and being productive. As I’ve mentioned before, in hindsight, all you want is to be near the one you’ve lost just a few more minutes. Nothing else matters but being in the person’s presence and having them know you are there.

I want to do this with Mom, but Alzheimer’s presents a huge problem. Whenever I see Mom sitting alone, it kills me because she looks so terribly alone. So I go sit with her, and on a good day—most days—she is riveted with my presence. But the second I leave her sight—to fling clothes from the washer to the dryer; to use the bathroom; to make a cup of tea—she is completely alone again. And in those moments—from her perspective—she has always been and always will be alone. There is no memory of my having been in her presence all morning other than a few moments of necessary “productive time.”

I hate this disease. There is no sufficient quality time you can give someone with Alzheimer’s. As a caregiver, it feels like there is no neutral status for you as a human being: you are either benevolent or malevolent; sacrificial or selfish; worthy or worthless.

Alzheimer’s isn’t a one-man disease; it does a pretty good job of spreading the pain around.

Yesterday I finished reading Still Alice. I think the title is meant to be a loaded question. Can I, after losing all memory of others and self, still be considered to be myself? Am I still “me” if I don’t have a clue what that me is or was?
The fictional book answers the question affirmatively.
I found myself examining my perceptions of Mom–who obviously no longer knows herself–and thinking the conclusion was absolutely true. I still recognize Mom in this shell of a person. She still has the same mannerisms, exudes the same kind affection, displays the same funny reactions. She’s still Mom down to the core.
But not so much with Dad–a victim of Parkinson’s. It seems I recognize him less and less. But then, I suppose I’m holding a higher standard of “self” to Dad, giving that I’m assuming he’s more “there” than mom. If I were to strip him down to mannerisms alone, I would probably find him to be his old self too. It’s a tricky question.
At the very end of the novel, Alice has a moment of lucidy and says, “I miss myself.”
That statement struck me to the core. You know why? Because I miss being me too! There is this incredible longing inside me to be “more” or “better” or “fuller” or something. I fall way short of the me I want to be, and I long for (or miss) that. Yet I still want to be treated as though I were fully “me” even though I don’t meet my own standard for myself.
Why not, then, treat the Alzheimer’s victim as though they were fully themselves, regardless of how short they fall from the perfect version of that self?
Ultimately, our longing is for acceptance, love, safety. Let’s just make a pact to offer it unconditionally to each other regardless of where we are on this journey toward the perfect self.

RELATED ARTICLES:
Alzheimer’s and the Ego: the Power of No

The other night I attended an author’s reading of a first-time novel.
The main character in the novel is an immigrant computer programmer with terrible social skills trying to navigate his way around the American culture. His mistakes are endearing and a good mirror into the idiosyncrasies of American culture.
In the question and answer period of this reading, someone shot up their hand and asked if the main character suffered from Asperger’s Disease because of his mental brilliance and social ineptitude.
I think the author’s answer was something along the lines of “uh…” which mirrored my own reaction to the question. I’d smiled at the word Asperger’s and felt my stomach lurch at the word Disease. I’ve always thought of Asperger’s more as a cool color to be rather than a disease. Besides, why the need to label?

Why can’t we just accept a different package of assets and challenges in a person and enjoy their uniqueness rather than feel the need to cubbyhole folks into categories?

I just looked up the number of brain-related disorder labels and found a list of 50, among them “intermittent explosive disorder” which is basically the display of temper tantrums. Get real, folks!
What are labels & diagnoses? Something to shield other people from us as well as something to hide behind?

My recommendation for anyone suffering from excessive labeling (both giving and taking) is to read the book “You are Special” by Max Lucado. The interesting notion in this book is that positive labeling can be as harmful as negative labeling because it enslaves us to other people’s opinions. Freedom comes in checking in constantly with our Maker and knowing He loves us as we are.
Read and re-read and practice what you read.
Dare to be yourself.

Today the world has been given the very bad news that there is nothing that can help prevent or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. The disease is a thief and a murderer, and nothing can stand in its way.

I say the folks who did these studies need to study Mom. Round out the evidence of all that hopeless progression with a little taste of surprising regression.

I wrote the rest of this post a week ago, but only got around to publishing it today:

Good news!

Mom is going backwards. She’s regressing, it seems to us, and that’s a good thing when you have Alzheimer’s.

How? What? When? Where? Why? Is it wishful thinking that we’re seeing marked improvement in Mom’s cognition, or is this real?

Exactly what I’m asking myself these days. Granted, being a highly motivated observer may make my observations suspect, but I feel it would be irresponsible not to report what appears to be clear evidence of improvement in Mom’s condition. It would be irresponsible of you not to suspect my findings, but dumb not to take a look at all.

So here goes.

A few weeks ago, we who have been taking care of (or been around) Mom for the past three years noticed that we were telling people Mom was having a good month. We were used to telling people that Mom was “having a good day” every now and then. A good day once a week was a good thing. But the entire month of March of this year seemed to be “a good day.” It came to the point that we were scratching our heads saying, “Hmm. Maybe Mom doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. Maybe this was all stress, and now that she’s been de-stressed for three years, she’s coming back.”

So I decided to take inventory of the new signs of cognition (and physical improvement) coming from Mom these days. What exactly is she doing that she wasn’t doing before? This is what I have:

• Mom has gained weight. Exactly a year ago Mom weighed 85 pounds and was bed-ridden with pneumonia. Hospice pronounced her a week from the grave. Today Mom weighs 95.5 pounds. No sign of physical sickness (OK, an occasional night fever and drippy nose).
• Mom sucks from a straw. For the longest time, we were having to “prime the pump” to get Mom to suck from a straw. A year ago, when we put a straw in her mouth, nothing would happen. So we’d plug the straw with our finger, then release the contents into her mouth, and, voila, she’d start sucking. Now Mom sucks as soon as the straw hits her lips.
• Mom opens her mouth at the sight of food. Again, for the longest time we’d just get a pleasant stare when we lifted a fork to her mouth. Two years ago, it would take us a good hour and a half to get through breakfast because it was only one time out of ten that Mom’s lips would part when we brought food to her mouth. Now, six-seven times out of ten,  her mouth opens like a baby bird’s. Breakfast time has been cut in half.
• Mom swallows. Up until (this is where I wish I’d kept an exact diary) about four months ago, Mom had a permanent sore on the right side of her mouth. This was caused by the fact that Mom leans to the right when she sleeps, and food that remained in her mouth (because she wasn’t aware enough to swallow) dribbled out and ate at her skin. No matter how well we brushed her teeth and how much Vaseline we slathered around her lips, the sore was there off and on for the last three years until–a few months ago. The sore has not returned.
• Mom watches TV now. Meaning, she actually turns to it, focuses on it, and laughs on cue–sometimes for a 10-15 minute stretch. This hasn’t happened at all in the past three years until this “awakening.”
• Mom stops at the photo gallery in the hallway, looks at individual family photos and “comments.” For the past three years we’ve been walking through the hallway with Mom–past a 4 foot x 4 foot photo gallery–occasionally stopping to show Mom the family photos in hopes of getting a response. She wouldn’t even look where we were pointing. And if she focused at all, it would just as likely be on a knot in the wood frame as on a photo. Now Mom takes the initiative to stop and look from frame to frame, pointing, jabbering, looking at us and back at the photos. Sometimes getting teary-eyed at our description of the photos.
• Mom is using sentences. I wrote in a previous post that Mom’s language consists almost entirely of two syllable experiments in sound with an occasional word thrown in. We used to get so excited when she uttered a word that we’d call a family member and share the big news. In the past couple weeks, Mom has used short sentences. Like three days ago when I put her to bed, I said, “Mom, I love you.” She nodded and said, “For me, for me, for me too too.” The next morning at breakfast I tried to give her some juice while she was still chewing on her eggs and she shoved my hand aside and said “Put it down down.” I put her down for a nap in the afternoon, put on some Vivaldi, and did a farcical ballet dance (a la BodyVox). She nodded and said, “Yes. I do too too too.” Then that evening when I tried to give her her Seroquel (ground up in some juice), she shook her head. I kept bringing the juice to her mouth, and in exasperation she said, “Tsk! What what what do you do?” (Translation, “cut it out!”).

Four sentences in two days! Yesterday was a quiet day for Mom. No miraculous signs of anything. I’m dying to report more on this healing process, but Mom is not a science project, and I have to remember that she is worth all my love no matter what direction her mind and body take.

But I do think it’s worth mentioning that something has happened to Mom that has sent this Alzheimer’s into some sort of retreat. There is more than death taking place in her brain. Somewhere, somehow, regeneration is taking place as well.

Have any of you had the experience of watching a loved one with Alzheimer’s have a good month? I know Bob DeMarco recently reported an extraordinary event with his mother Dotty. Huge “regressive” step.

Next question will be, what could be causing these amazing regressions? We may have to rely on each other–the caregivers–to find the answer rather than on lab tests alone.

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?

I’ve had water on my mind lately (which is not the same as, but does not preclude, water on the brain).
Anyway, ever since my sister-in-law’s mother was taken to the doctor with signs of Alzheimer’s and discovered to have nothing but dehydration, I’ve been meaning to read up on how exactly the lack of water hinders brain function.

Here’s what I found about dehydration and the aging brain:
Not much—unless you count articles on websites trying to sell water filtration systems.
The fact that water makes up 70-80% of a nerve cell and transports both nutrients and wastes from neurons means it is essential for proper brain function all through life. That’s a given. What’s not a given is how much a brain has to be depleted of water to affect cognition.
Rigorous research on the topic of the brain and dehydration is limited. Even the “standard facts” about the body and water are all over the place: babies come out of the womb composed of 90% water; no, 78%; no, make that 70%. In adults, the proportion is 60% water for males and 55% for females. The consensus is 50-60% for adults in general. The brain is 60% water; nay, 90%. Whatever.
As for how much water you need to drink on a daily basis to be properly hydrated, oy, there is no consensus. For years I’ve been hearing “8 cups a day.” No allowance for a sedentary life or for someone with a diet of fruits and vegetables (which are high in water content); no penalty for eating junk food (which would increase the need for the detoxifying properties of water) or for spending days cooped up near a wood stove.
One article quoted the Mayo Clinic as saying that “the average adult loses more than 80 ounces of water every day through sweating, breathing, and eliminating wastes,” and therefore you’d have to drink 10 cups of water/day to rehydrate. I searched for the quote on the Mayo Clinic site and didn’t find it. Instead, I found a recommendation for 6-8 cups of water per day.
Suppose you take the most conservative recommendation of 6 cups per day–do you follow that? I don’t think I’ve ever gone one whole week drinking that much per day.
It has been estimated that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. OK, that figure is questioned. But it seems to be a fairly hard fact that “among people over 65, dehydration is one of the most frequent causes of hospitalization.”* Understandable: throw in a bit of incontinence, and fear of hydration soars. Also, some medications are diuretics, and after 50, the body loses kidney function and is less able to conserve fluids.*
But how bad is dehydration for your brain?
According to Lumosity, when your body lacks water,

brain cells and other neurons shrink and biochemical processes involved in cellular communication slow. A drop of as little as 1 to 2% of fluid levels can result in slower processing speeds, impaired short-term memory, tweaked visual tracking and deficits in attention. With proper hydration however, neurons work best and are capable of reacting faster.

But pinning down the exact link between hydration and cognitive function is tricky in the lab. From Hydration and Human Cognition:

Although adequate hydration is essential for optimal brain function, research addressing relationships between hydration status and human behavior and cognitive function is limited. The few published studies in this area are inconclusive and contradictory. The impact of variations in hydration status, which can be substantial as humans go about their daily activities, on brain function and behavior is not known and may impact quality of life.

From PubMed’s Hydration and Cognition: a Critical Review and Recommendations for Future Research: “The limited literature on the effects of dehydration on human cognitive function is contradictory and inconsistent.” The monkey wrench in research here is given as confounding factors:

Confounding factors, such as caffeine intake and the methods used to produce dehydration, need to be considered in the design and conduct of such studies. Inclusion of a positive control condition, such as alcohol intake, a hypnotic drug, or other treatments known to produce adverse changes in cognitive performance should be included in such studies. To the extent possible, efforts to blind both volunteers and investigators should be an important consideration in study design.

On the Mayo Clinic site, a Dr. Lette finds that “there’s no scientific evidence that drinking large amounts of water is good for one’s health.” The recommendation in this article is to drink when you’re thirsty, and that’s enough.
My question is, does the lack of scientific evidence mean there is no scientific proof or merely that there is no motivation to research the topic to obtain the evidencef? Who, after all, would fund research into water being fundamental to the health of the aging brain? Not the pharmaceutical industry. If you could avoid dementia by being continually hydrated, you wouldn’t need pills to fix dementia. Why would any self-respecting drug company fund that finding? And if it takes a lot of money to work through all the confounding factors, who’s going to pay for it?

The thing is, when the anecdote about my sister-in-law’s mother is not even rare, it makes me wonder how many cases of Alzheimer’s are checked for a history of dehydration. I don’t mean just the over-the-weekend kind of dehydration, but long-term, chronic shortage of water.
As with Mom. The list of things Mom was doing “right” for her aging brain is stellar: she was highly educated, spoke multiple languages, was given to prayer and meditation, was active in the community, etc., etc. Yet she succumbed to complete dementia in her early seventies! Could it all have been due to her severe distaste for water? I mean, she hated water–would gag if she drank it straight from the tap. Could her present dementia have been prevented by a regimen of 4+ cups of plain ole water daily?
I hate to look at the “what if” from Mom’s point of view, but for our generation and beyond, it needs a good deal more consideration than we’re giving it.
What do you think? Am I grasping at straws? (I suppose that’s OK as long as the straw is propped inside a nice glass of water, right?).

Resources:
Water and Brain Function
Water in the Body”
You’re Not Demented, Just Dehydrated
Dehydration and Cognitive Performance
Hydration and Cognitive Function in Children
Nerve and Muscle Cells
Impaired cognitive function and mental performance in mild dehydration

When dealing with Parkinson’s, sometimes one symptom can dictate behavior and end up causing a cascade of physical problems.
Symptom and consequence in point: hand tremors can lead to decreased liquid consumption (because the Parkinson’s patient is embarrassed to spill every time he drinks), and decreased liquid consumption can exacerbate constipation and possibly lead to impacted bowels in a Parkinson’s victim.
In dealing with Dad, we found that one solution to this cascading problem is a spill-proof sipping container. Dad used to spill everything on himself, the table, the floor. Now when his shaking is bad, we put all liquids in the spill-proof water bottle, and he is no longer embarrassed to drink.
The nice thing about the Camelbak water bottle is it’s sleek, sporty design which makes Dad feel like he fits in more with our physically active family.
So if you are having a hard time coming up with a Father’s Day gift for your Parkinson’s dad, this is my suggestion.

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
Read more

Just when we thought Dad’s Parkinson’s symptoms were a source of fear and despair, we saw potential for an up side to the down side.

I took Dad for a walk tonight. It wasn’t a long walk. Dad was tired and didn’t really want to go. But he acquiesced to my prompting, and we walked to the end of the 50-yard driveway.
The whole time we walked, I supported Dad’s right arm. And the whole time we walked, Dad’s arm shook violently. By the time we got back, my arm was buzzed and aching.
Then it occurred to me that if Dad’s energy gets passed onto me in this bad way, perhaps we could harvest the energy in a good way. I suggested to him that we design something like the soccer ball recently invented by those Harvard girls—you know, the ball that stores the energy of a game’s worth of kicking into a battery that can then be used to light up the Third World.
Dad laughed.
But hey, why not harvest the energy generated by Parkinson’s tremors? Maybe we could even wire the energy back into the brain for deep brain stimulation therapy.
There’s got to be an up side to the down side of this energy-depleting disease!

Because it’s Fall and crisp out and a good time to sit down to a good movie, I’m posting one of my favorite suggestions for a movie that deals with Alzheimer’s.
How To Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog is an unfortunate title for a great movie about self-centeredness and the cure for immaturity. The story centers around a playwright with writer’s block who must exit himself in order to find inspiration. Alzheimer’s isn’t the main theme of the movie, but it is present in the background, and the most lucidly-spoken scene in the movie is between the mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s and her brilliant, unhappy son-in-law.
Thought I’d pass it on.

All my life I considered myself an introvert, a private person, ungifted in the art of validating people.

In my early forties (a couple minutes ago), I bought a small restaurant, and all this changed. I grew by leaps and bounds in my fascination with people of all stripes and in my ability to dig beneath the surface and find the gold within. I grew in my ability to remember names, know faces, discover connections, and find new ways to validate people. I got high on it—on my ability to validate. It validated me in return.

Then one day this abruptly ended. I crashed. I had been working seven-day weeks for two and a half years, and my body and mind couldn’t take it anymore. The first scary sign of stress was when some of the music I played every day at the cafe lost its familiarity. I was evidently unable to learn new music. Then it was faces. New ones wouldn’t stick, and old but infrequent ones were a struggle to recall. I was filled with doubt when in conversation: what had we talked about the previous time? Did they just come from Europe, or were they going to Europe? I couldn’t remember.

Stress fried my brain, and my validation skills went with it. Nothing, but nothing hurt as much as having a newly-made friend appear and me not know who they were for ten or twenty seconds. The eager look on their face faded instantly, and nothing could bring it back. No amount of remembering in a few seconds would make up for my initial inability to validate them. I died a little bit every time it happened.

I wanted to resign from life. Retreat. Embrace my pre-cafe, introverted self. I wanted to be given a chance to explain (there is no such thing). I cried, prayed angrily, tried to bargain with God.

How do you love people when the principal organ of love—the brain—is shot?

I realized eventually that I was mourning my ego, not my lost ability to validate people—because I hadn’t lost the ability. I’d only lost the ability to do so in a way that would make me look good. There were and are plenty of opportunities to extend kindness and touch people’s souls even if we can’t immediately recall a face. It just takes an awful lot of something to give up the craving for reciprocity.

This also showed me that validating was not my natural gift. To meet someone for whom it is, you must meet Jan Petersen. This afternoon I watched the video Jan’s Story: Love and Early-Onset Alzheimer’s again and re-discovered a true hero. Even with severe dementia, Jan knows how to seize each day and touch each person she meets. Jan’s is both a heart-wrenching and heart-warming story. Many people go through life mentally intact yet unable to see the goodness that surrounds them. Then you meet someone like Jan whose indomitable spirit sheds significance on everything and everyone she sees—regardless of her inability to name things.

The validation breakdown begins with us who think Jan’s story is nothing but a tragedy. But I tell you, if I could pick one trait to take with me on the dark road into oblivion, I’d pick Jan’s ability to validate without requirement; to love without strings attached; to milk each moment and each encounter.

That is the validation breakthrough!

Here are four more of my current heros—people with early onset Alzheimer’s who put themselves in the crosshairs of the stigma-tazers so they can help the rest of us see a little bit of the road ahead:

Kris Bakowski
Chuck Donofrio
Richard Taylor
Bill Craig

My last post on niacinamide and Alzheimer’s (it’s supposed to reverse Alzheimer’s de-mentiaThe Coenzyme nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) has been used as medication in 17 patients suffering from de-mentia of the Alzheimer type in an open label trial. In all patients evaluated so far, an improvement in their cognitive dysfunction was observed. Based on the minimental state examination, the minimum improvement was 6 points and the maximum improvement 14 points with a mean value of 8.35 points. The improvement on the basis of the global deterioration scale (GDS) was a minimum of 1 point and a maximum of 2 points with a mean value of 1.82. The duration of therapy was between 8 and 12 weeks. No side effects or adverse effects have been reported from the patients or their caregivers during the observation period which is, in some patients, more than a year. This open label trial represents a pilot study from which no definitive conclusion can be drawn. A double-blind placebo controlled study is necessary
Read more

Yesterday I asked my sister—who is visiting from abroad—what signs of Alzheimer’s she sees in herself. She rattled off some memory problems such as forgetting names of acquaintances or not being able to place someone’s face when out of context. Nothing particularly Alzheimersy, just decreased mental sharpness.
She then asked me if I was experiencing any unusual mental hyperabilities and went on to explain how she seems to have gained a fantastic ability to call up words she didn’t even know she knew.
Funny, I told her. I had this post saved as a draft when she asked me the question. The answer is yes, I’m experiencing this very same thing, and am curious to know if there is a name for it.
Is there such a thing as hyperphasia—the flip side of aphasia? The term hyperphasia exists, and it’s defined as an uncontrolled impulse to talk. But that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m referring to the mind’s sudden ability to pull up obscure words when common words won’t present themselves. Words so obscure that we had no idea we knew them.
I’m well acquainted with aphasia—the “tip of the tongue but it just won’t come” nature of language loss. I’m also familiar with another embarrassing result of gradual mental decline: the mind’s tendency to call up words similar in shape, but wholly different in meaning from the one the user wants. Try Googling “fairy schedule” next time you want to cross the Puget Sound to see what I mean.
But what is it called when the mind calls up unknown words that perfectly fit the context they were intended for? Does neurology study mental surfeits as well as deficits?
I told my sister that I’ve had arguments in my head over this new ability. One night, for example, I went to bed, and as I lay my head on the pillow a picture of our living room doorway came to mind, and with it the word “transom.” I immediately questioned myself:
“Transom? What’s that?”
“It’s the big piece that spans the top of the doorway, dummy.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I don’t know. I just know that it is.”
“You’re probably thinking of Hansom. And I think that’s a horse carriage, not a doorway.”
“No, I know hansom is a carriage. Transom is the door thingy.”
With that, I got out of bed and looked the word up in the dictionary: a horizontal crossbar in a window, over a door, or between a door and a window or fanlight above it
“See?”
“OK, you were right.”
My sister laughed and said, yes, that’s exactly what goes through her brain.
So my question is, what is this newly acquired hyper-phasia called? And is it common to everyone as their minds begin to deteriorate?