Alzheimer's in the News - 7/25/09

Two summers ago I found out that my father had been classified as the fourth in my extended family to have Alzheimer’s Disease. My step-mother had been using the term “dementia” for some time, but once I heard my uncle use the “A Word” it seemed that everything had changed. Suddenly, I had a context for the changes I had been observing from a far. There was a history, a pattern to relate to, and suddenly the awful road ahead seemed clear. Twelve years of my childhood was spent watching my dad care for his father through his decline through the same disease.

Researchers always seem to be publishing new findings on the causes of Alzheimer’s Disease. One week they report a correlation with a lack of physical activity and the next week there is an article connecting it to a lack of brain exercise. Some make correlations with lower levels of education, unhealthy diets or alcohol consumption. Then there are studies saying that caffeine might slow the onset. The fact that aluminum deposits are consistently found in the brains of the Alzheimer’s afflicted, leads me to look askance at all of those cans I drink from and worry about all of the foil used in past roasts. Basically, everything and nothing has been reported as linked to Alzheimer’s Disease.

In reading all of the latest research, none of these theories has ever had very much resonance with me. My father was always very conscious about exercising and maintaining a healthy diet. He ran in local races and had a passion for oat bran muffins. Though he ate fish oils with gusto, for a large portion of his life he drank up to nine cups of coffee a day. But it turns out that this should have been beneficial! Although he sometimes seemed to be the archetypal absent minded professor, he was doing “all the right things.”

A few weeks ago, I read a BBC news article that linked his type of brain degeneration to elevated nitrate levels. Nitrates are found in fertilizers and insecticides. They are also elevated by the process of grilling or overcooking foods and are found in higher concentrations in processed foods. Ah-ha! Being of Midwestern extraction, processed foods and overcooking are ways of life! “Cooking” in my childhood was more often than not opening some package and adding something like water, oil and scallions. No meal was complete without meat, be it roasted in aluminum or barbequed in the summer. In the summers, farm run off in the water supply raised the nitrate levels in tap water past “acceptable” levels. As a child, I remember articles in the paper stating that the levels of nitrates in the water had now gone past an acceptable level, normally only some fraction of a percentage point, and that the populace should not drink the tap water. At this point we would charge out the store to buy bottled water only to discard this practice when the next newspaper article informed us that levels had returned to a “safe” range. For a shinning moment I thought I had found an explanation.

And then I thought that if all of the other articles had seemed so far apart from my experience, this was just another correlation rather than causation. If this is really a reason, why doesn’t everyone from my area of the country with similar habits have this problem? My easy answer slipped away as quickly as it had come.

On Politics and My Father - 11/4/08

Elections tend to produce a feeling of nostalgia in me. Growing up as the daughter of a political scientist, election season was exciting and election night always a holiday. I remember the overpowering joy of speeding on my bicycle through the array of Ohio fall colors and political signs mixed together. Also mixed together in my mind are memories of political booths at fairs and festivals, fundraisers, sausage and chicken paprikash dinners and Democratic Party Headquarters on the nights of Dukakis’s slaughter, Clinton’s first win and John Kerry’s convention speech.

Upon retirement, my dad went to work with vigor on many of the political causes he had championed all his life. He worked very hard for Kerry four years ago. In an email to me a week before that election, he told me that the excitement and ground game of the campaign was like nothing he had ever seen before and was hopeful that a high turnout would put them over the top.

At Christmas in 2006, my dad was still glowing over the results of the midterm elections. In his car, papered over in political bumper stickers (much to the mortification of my Republican stepmother), my dad regaled me with stories of Ohio’s new progressive Senator, Sherrod Brown and read aloud articles from the magazine the Progressive as I drove from Toledo to Columbus. At the time, I complained to my friends that it seemed I’d never been able to have a real conversation with my dad. All we had ever been able to talk about was politics.

Almost two years later, I would give anything to have that type of conversation with my father again, the kind of conversation where he could share with me his passions and his joy in what he holds dear in the world. Now I know that my father’s declining ability to remember things has finally been classified as Alzheimer’s, and the biggest wakeup call for me is that he has not been involved in this campaign. Given his assessment of the Kerry campaign, I wondered what he would say if he were involved for Obama. Last week, Obama HQ called him to see if he would make phone calls on Saturday. He was excited to be of use, and drove off that afternoon. About an hour after he should have been there, they called to see where he was. He arrived home about 2½ hours later. He said that he had made calls, but had nothing to say about the energy of a campaign ground game that appears to be unprecedented in modern politics. Soon it will be time to retire his politically papered Honda as well.

Although it is now me doing most of the reading and talking about issues, we are still able to talk and we are still able to share our joy in politics. I am fortunate that maybe tonight, we will be able to celebrate together by phone and share one more big and exciting win.