Dementia Resilience with Jill Lorentz

December 2, 2019 Strategy Show! Ideas for a peaceful holiday season when dementia or memory loss is present. I have ideas for how to talk to the person with diagnosis, gift ideas, communications techniques, holiday gathering ideas which will help everyone to be successful.

November 18, 2019 my guest is Dr. Peter Pressman, a Neurologist from University of Colorado   who specializes in Frontotemporal Degeneration. This is the 4th leading type of dementia and it is devastating for families who live with this disease. Dr. pressman explains the disease thoroughly so that we can understand its cause and the symptoms.

November 11, 2019 - Strategy Show where I answered listeners questions about anger issues and more! Driving unsafe? Unmet needs? We talk about all of this and more!

November 4, 2019~ My guest was Jill Lindgren from eLivelihood, talking about her amazing new App that helps families to be on the same page for care. The multifaceted face of this program is unbelievable! Please listen to learn more and check the BLOG site on  this web site for more information.

This week Oct, 21st my guest was Dr.Jonathon Woodcock from the Rocky Mountain Alzheimer’s Disease Center. We had a great chat about listener’s questions such as when is it time to see a physician about memory loss? What is normal aging, and how can we keep from overreacting when it runs in our families and we are hypersensitive to symptoms? How does DR. Woodcock break the news when the diagnosis isn’t what we want to hear? He also works in the clinic with Dr.Huntington Potter on his Leukine Study, and shares with us what his role is in this epic study.

My guest on October 15th is the awesome researcher Dr. Brianne Bettcher, PhD, Assistant Professor, Director of Neuropsychology Research at Rocky Mountain Alzheimer's Disease Center and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. We had a lovely conversation about some exciting research she is working on, and is looking for participants to join a clinical study she has created. Dr. Bri Bettcher would like people who are NOT SHOWING signs of memory loss to help her study aging habits of healthy adults 60 or older. She feels she can learn as much about memory loss from people who do not have Alzheimer's as she does from people who do have Alzheimer's. Below, Bri tells us about exactly what her study entails:

What I am working on:

• Building a healthy aging program (happy to discuss any aspect of why it is important to study aging adults with no memory symptoms)
  • focused on identifying earliest changes in the brain and body that might portend future decline
  • determining what individual factors offer protection against decline (e.g., what makes us resilient to decline)
  • major focus on the immune system
    • why it is important in normal aging and early Alzheimer’s
    • how it becomes dysregulated
    • at what stage it might be a focus for targeted therapeutics
    • the immune system has become a very hot topic in research- one of the more highly covered areas at the recent international Alzheimer’s Conference
• New R01 study (Funded by the National Institute on Aging)
  • This is a 5-year study that aims to look at the role of inflammation in the body (measured in blood) and the brain (measured in spinal fluid) on Alzheimer’s disease biology and memory function in healthy older adults.
  • By looking at both blood and spinal fluid in tandem, we will be better able to understand how the immune system is changing and possibly communicating between the brain and body
  • We will be recruiting 180 healthy older adults, age 60 and over to come in for an initial evaluation and a subsequent evaluation 2-years later.
  • We will also be tracking immune health history factors, such as infections, surgical procedures, autoimmune conditions, etc.
  • If we meet our recruitment goals, we should be able to start seeing initial results in 3-4 years.

The first study involves two research visits over the course of two years at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Compensation provided. Procedures Include: Set of tests that assess memory, attention, behavior, and the other thinking skills. It also includes a questionnaire about your health history. A blood sample, spinal fluid sample and an MRI of your brain will also be given during the process. You may qualify if you are 60 years or older are in good health and have NOT been diagnosed with a memory disorder.

If you are interested in joining the study please contact Neurology Research Partners at 303-724-4644 or email [email protected] to learn more and see if you qualify. Tell them you heard about this study on the Podcast Dementia Resilience with Jill Lorenz!

On October 14th the Strategy Show was about hypersexuality

My Guest this week of October 7th is Dr. Timothy Boyd, PHD, who works at the Rocky Mountain Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Colorado. Dr. Boyd shared astonishing and hopeful findings of an exciting research trial, designed to end Alzheimer’s, this week on my show. Explaining their Leukine Trial, Boyd told my listeners that preliminary results on the first human trials of the drug “Leukine” as a treatment for Alzheimer’s have met with unexpected success. Dr. Boyd, who works with the team headed by renowned researcher Dr. Huntington Potter, shared the news with a detailing of their initial results. Essentially, the first safety trials for Leukine involved 32 people with the disease. 13 were injected with the drug itself. 19 others received a placebo, or, just plain salt water. The results were surprisingly positive. Compared to their starting place, the people who received Leukine actually improved in their cognition, as measured by the MMSE, which is the Mini Mental State Exam. And the people who received the salt water placebo stayed the same. So that means that at the end of treatment there was a big difference between the people who received Leukine and the people who received placebo. Further, the patients who did improve did so quickly. They were showing results in just a matter of three weeks, after only some 15 injections. “Alzheimer’s disease takes probably decades before it even starts to present the first signs of having any cognitive impairment,” said researcher Dr. Timothy Boyd. “So to improve cognition within only 15 days of an injection of a treatment–that is very astonishing.” And even more remarkable is that within that same period of time, the Leukine patients actually began to show some improvement in day to day activity, able to once again do things that the disease had taken from them. Listen to my interview to learn more!

On this show September 24, 2019 This was a dig deep strategy show about Hallucinations and troubling behaviors like destroying property and more. I also added ideas for enjoying Fall and different options for creating activities with our friends with diagnosis.

September 15, 2019 At the Denver Walk to End Alzheimer’s I took my producer and engineer Hank Bradshaw with me and we recorded the show at the Walk. We spoke to many families, new to the disease, seasoned caregivers, people who just recently lost a loved one and people who had family members with younger onset. I also spoke with representatives of the Denver Broncos about their involvement with the Alzheimer’s Association, specifically the CEO & President Joe Ellis and Alli Pisching  from the Community Relations Department. Moving, emotional and inspiring conversations. You must Listen!