Alcohol as a psychotropic agent acts as a sedative, a tranquilizer, an anti-anxiety agent, or a hypnotic as it is a central nervous system depressant. As such, it diminishes environmental awareness, reduces responsiveness to external stimulation, impairs cognitive functioning, hinders coordination, and reduces physical activity. At high doses it induces sedation, lethargy, amnesia, antiseizure activity, and anesthesia. Next to caffeine, alcohol is the second most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. The health-related impact of alcohol consumption can vary depending of the amount and chronic use with its consumption. Heavy ingestion of alcohol over time can lead to a variety of serious physiological and neurological disorders (e.g., vitamin and mineral deficiencies, liver damage, destruction of nerve cells that can induce a dementia, pancreatitis, chronic gastritis, and certain cancers such as tongue, mouth, throat, voice box, liver, stomach, intestinal, breast). […]
An opinion presented in the New York Times by Sandra Day O’Connor, Stanley Prusiner, and Ken Dychtwald (October 28, 2010) presents a plan on “How to resist the coming wave of fatal dementia.” They present sobering facts to make their case. Alzheimer’s is 100% incurable and 100% fatal (100% of us will die but most will not die with Alzheimer’s). There are 5 million cases of Alzheimer’s in the United States today and there will be an estimated 13.5 million cases by 2050. They remind us of the rush of baby boomers that start on January 1st. Further, they state that we cannot avoid Alzheimer’s by medical checkups, exercise, being social, or engaging in stimulating mental activities. Finally, they bemoan the lack of medications that are presently helpful and the limits of the effectiveness of the medications to reverse the […]
What Engagement Therapy for Early to Middle Stage Dementia When Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:00pm – All Ages Where (map) Other InfoDr. Beckwith will hold a free workshop on November 16 from 1-2:30. He will speak on Engagement Therapy for Early to Middle Stage Dementia at Arden Courts in Naples, FL. Call 417-8511 for reservations and directions. « Back to the calendar
What Consequences of Caregiving: Don’t Go it Alone When Wednesday, October 27, 2010 10:00am – All Ages Where (map) Other InfoDr. Beckwith will hold a free workshop on October 27 from 10-11:30. He will speak on Engagement Therapy for Early to Middle Stage Dementia at Arden Courts in Fort Myers, FL. Call 454-1277 for reservations and directions. « Back to the calendar
What Engagement Therapy for Early to Middle Stage Dementia When Wednesday, October 6, 2010 8:00pm – All Ages Where (map) Other InfoDr. Beckwith will hold a free workshop on October 6 from 3-4:30. He will speak on Engagement Therapy for Early to Middle Stage Dementia at Arden Courts in Seminole, Florida. Call 727-517-7800 for reservations and directions. « Back to the calendar
A new study in the journal Neurology asserts that a spinal tap can accurately detect the development of Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms appear. As quoted in The New Republic, “The unexpected presence of the AD signature in more than one-third of cognitively normal subjects suggests that Alzheimer’s pathology is active and detectable earlier than has heretofore been envisioned.” The “AD signature” is the presence of a protein called beta-amyloid in the spinal fluid. The implication is that people can be accurately diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease years before they develop symptoms. This all sounds so neat and clean like genetic testing for neurological diseases such as Huntington’s chorea. As technologies like spinal taps and brain scans become more available outside of research settings, there seems to be increased interest in using them as diagnostic tools. But I feel we are getting […]
