5 Signs of Short Term Memory Loss

Short Term Memory Loss

Your elderly loved one has undoubtedly changed over the years, perhaps they are not as active or as healthy as they once were. For many individuals, Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease are major concerns, and these illnesses and others often manifest themselves in the form of short term memory loss.  To help keep your elderly loved one as healthy and happy as possible, it is crucial that you pay close attention and catch short term memory loss right when it begins. The following are five signs that short term memory loss may be present.

Decline in Cognitive Capabilities

1. Forgetting recent events or activities can be difficult to pinpoint at first, but this symptom of short term memory loss can quickly escalate and even cause dementia. Individuals with this symptom may have a difficult time planning or organizing, may forget to take their medicine, or may not pay bills on time.

Speech Confusion 

2. Speech confusion. When elderly individuals have a difficult time finding the right words, or mix up the meaning of common words, this may be a sign of short term memory loss.

Changes in Mood or Personality 

3. Individuals who suffer from short term memory loss may have the constant feeling that something is… off. This can prompt them to act in a different way than normal, and may cause anxiety or other distress.

Disorientation 

4. Though visiting a new place can be disorienting for anyone, it is something that most people can navigate. For individuals who have short term memory loss, coping with unfamiliar surroundings can be difficult because they may not remember how they arrived in this new place.

Repetitiveness

5. Elderly individuals who suffer from short term memory loss may ask the same question several times, or repeatedly make the same observation.

Though there really is no cure for memory loss, mild cases can be treated. The key is to address the issue quickly, before it becomes too severe. By watching out for these five signs of memory loss, you may be able to pinpoint short term issues and have them treated quickly. Additionally, paying close attention to the behavior of your elderly loved one will also allow you to better care for their needs.

Acknowledging Caregiver Burnout

Acknowledging Caregiver Burnout is the first step in preventing it happening  to you. In your busy life or business who do you care for? Ok, let’s face it, a  woman of the new millennium wears a multitude of hats and goes about her day  taking one-off to put another on without batting an eyelash. It becomes so much  a part of her routine she does it like brushing her teeth.

Before understanding the concept of burnout you must first examine who you  actually have to care for. The list is endless with caring for children,  possibly parents and/or grandparents, friends, your spouse or partner,  co-workers, staff, your pets, sibling, a business partner and oh yeah yourself  just to name a few. Now buckle up as we explore your other roles even deeper.  Most women perform daily tasks that put them in other care giving roles such as  – teachers, nurses, chauffeurs, cosmeticians, housekeepers, chefs, negotiators,  bookkeepers, financial planners and advisors, peace-keepers, labourers,  developers, designers, professional dieters, counsellor, babysitter, and I could  go on but you know where this is going!

I am exhausted just thinking about the fact that all of these hats are  probably worn by you in one day and we didn’t even talk about any professional  roles yet! Now take a look at what happens when your job list becomes too  heavy….

Please follow this link to read the full article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Acknowledging-Caregiver-Burnout&id=6724186

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New Way to Smuggle Drugs Into Brain May Lead to Better Alzheimer’s Treatments

 

by Valerie Ross in Health & Medicine, Mind & Brain |

What’s the News: A modified antibody can make its way into the brain and target the development of Alzheimer’s-inducing plaques, researchers reported today in two animal studies in Science Translational Medicine. The blood-brain barrier usually keeps drugs and other compounds from entering the brain in large enough quantities to be effective, but these studies show a way to trick the body’s own defenses into letting the drug in, demonstrating that this obstacle to treating Alzheimer’s could potentially be overcome.

How the Heck:

• Antibodies—immune proteins that attack disease-causers like viruses and bacteria—are far too big to fit through the blood-brain barrier under normal circumstances. But because of the brain’s need for iron, one protein is routinely ferried across the barrier: transferrin, which binds to iron in the blood.
• So, the researchers added a molecular structure to the antibody that essentially fooled receptors in the blood-brain barrier into treating the antibody as though it were transferrin, picking it up from the bloodstream and releasing it on the other side, into the brain. Ten times as much of the modified antibody made it past the barrier, compared to a version of the antibody without the add-on.
• The researchers tailored the antibody to bind to BACE1, an enzyme that contributes to the formation of Alzheimer’s-triggering plaques. The antibody successfully bound to BACE1, interfering with the formation of the plaques.
• The antibody reduced amyloid-beta levels in the brain by about 20% in some animal types and about 50% in others, the researchers found.

Click here for complete article.

Has a Tobacco Company Stumbled on an Alzheimer’s Cure?

Nicotene-based compound at the heart of clinical studies

Mar. 1, 2011, 10:33 am EDT   |   By Jeff Reeves, Editor, InvestorPlace.com

Tobacco stock Star Scientific (NASDAQ: CIGX) is a company that focuses on smokeless tobacco products. But if Star Scientific has its way, the public could have a very different perception of tobacco — namely, as the plant that cured Alzheimer’s. That could mean big things for tobacco, and even bigger things for Star Scientific stock.

So why haven’t you heard of this development? Well, because the results are preliminary and Star Scientific is burying its study on the potential cure in legalese and confusing press releases. As the pithy investor and journalist James Altucher wrote on Seeking Alpha, the latest press release from Star looked “looks like guys who got their law degree in some outpost of Antarctica wrote it.”

But here are the details: Star  Scientific isolated a compound from nicotine, anatabine, that is a potential Alzheimer’s treatment. After much hype, the 30-year-old neurological research center Roskamp Institute will finally begin human trials with the antabine compound (cleverly named CigRx), and will complete the study after three months…

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Blood Test for Alzheimer’s in Sight, Say U.S. Scientists

Published January 07, 2011

| NewsCore

Alzheimer’s disease could soon be detected by a simple blood test, following the development of a new technique by  U.S. scientists.

Florida researchers said Thursday that they tried a new way of testing the immune system’s response to abnormal substances, known as antigens, released during diseases like Alzheimer’s and identified a pattern of antibodies specific to Alzheimer’s.

The method could also be used to test for early stages of other diseases, including multiple sclerosis, neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and various forms of cancer.

Dr. Thomas Kodadek, the research leader from the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, is now using the technique to develop a test for pancreatic cancer, in which early diagnosis is critical to survival.

“I don’t want my enthusiasm to get too far ahead of the data, but it sure seems to be a general approach that would work for any disease to which the immune system responds,” Kodadek said. “If this works in Alzheimer’s disease, it suggests it is a pretty good platform that may work for a lot of different diseases.”

He added, “Now we need to put it in the hands of disease experts to tackle diseases where early diagnosis is the key.”

The research, published in the journal Cell, involved testing the blood of people with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease and a number of healthy individuals. Molecules called peptoids were then used to test antibodies, and the researchers discovered three that appeared to identify Alzheimer’s sufferers, in a development they believe could form the basis for a blood test.

“This breaks the dogma that antibodies are such specialized receptors that they are only going to bind to native antigens.

It turns out you can screen for them with peptoids that work as an antigen surrogate,” Kodadek said.