Posted 1/31/24
A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. -Prov 17:22
This is another short piece that I copy from a series I am doing for my co-workers on our Intranet at work. If you work at SeniorAge, this is sort of a rerun. 😉
OK. (Exhaling)
Sometimes a news wire headline makes me want to either scream or weep, depending on the hour. This week there was a biggie that originated from the setting of the great show The Crown. (Pardon all of their junk ads and garbage headlines on their sidebar. This is a mainstream enough paper over there. It was picked up on the national wire services and ended up everywhere including Springfield, Missouri.) 🙁 Here it is:
Headline reads: “Alzheimer’s can be spread BETWEEN humans: Pioneering study reveals at least five people have ‘caught’ memory-robbing illness – as scientists warn hundreds more may be ‘at risk'”
(Pause. Gathering my self. Fighting a cranial explosion…another Pandemic?!?!?!)
The first line of this version of the story:
“Alzheimer’s can spread between humans, a groundbreaking study revealed today.”
Breathing in a paper bag. Blood pressure lowering, slowly but surely…
Then I read the whole piece.
This is, for the most part, what the cool kids call “clickbait” It is little better than a big ad that says “Click Here to win a free Iphone” or “Click Here to Hear Taylor Swift Admit she prefers the Broncos” or “Buy this vitamin to cure Alzheimer’s”. This one in particular sounds so sensational…and 10 minutes later, after wading through ads and junk that are generating these charlatans piles of click ad revenue, you find out the key punchline in the article:
“‘There is now a possible risk of them developing Alzheimer’s. But these risks are not possible to quantify at the moment.’ Researchers are currently monitoring the patients to study what is happening in their brains and catch any problems early. Professor Collinge added: ‘I should emphasize these are very rare occurrences. You can’t “catch” Alzheimer’s, it is not transmissible in the sense of a viral or bacterial infection. ‘These rare transmission routes are where people have been accidentally injected with infected human tissue extracts, and the majority of this relates to medical procedures that are no longer used.”
The more you read the more you feel 2 conflicting emotions:
- Relief that the odds are so small they can’t be quantified.
- Frustration that you bothered to read it to begin with.
Saying “I suspect if you injected someone else’s beta amyloid into your body, you could technically give them early onset Alzheimer’s.” is about as likely as saying “If a smart cartoon Coyote dropped an Acme anvil off a cliff and hit you in the head, he would likely kill you.” There were people who, back in the 1980s, when we were being scared to death by Mad Cow Disease…and, rightly so… changed their methodology because of this bovine blunder. I get it. It was a good thing. However, read this more carefully:
“Experts have found evidence of at least five people ‘catching’ the memory-robbing disorder from now-banned hormone treatments. The (5!) patients were among 1,848 people injected with growth hormones riddled with toxic amyloid-beta protein ‘seeds’, or prions, as children.”
(Breaking out my special tin foil math helmet)
Now for some real facts from the Alzheimer’s Association’s Facts and Figures publication: “About 1 in 9 people (10.8%) age 65 and older have Alzheimer’s dementia” Of those, less than 5% had it as this rare, early onset form. Therefore, the odds that a random person would have this early onset type of dementia in the AMERICAN general population is around 0.0054%. That is around a half of one percent. VERY low…but still 200,000 people… far too many and needs to be 0!
Now back to the original article text again: It cites that 5 out of 1,848 who had this very rare procedure that is long since discontinued (rightfully so) developed this early dementia. Taking my shoes off to calculate this percentage gives a shocking number: A whopping 0.0027056277056277…% of the 1848 tested “contracted dementia!!!!. Less than half of the number than would get it anyway!!!!! SO, if my understanding of numbers is right…and I feel like it is (I am sure the UK numbers of early onset are similar to the US numbers), it actually mathematically made them LESS likely to get early onset dementia. Don’t resurrect this procedure, friends, to avoid early onset demnetia. That would be like eating Tide Pods. Just don’t.
Sigh…
Harmless, sure. I mean, nobody is going to get this disease because of this procedure any more. NO ONE. Maybe it gets people to get tested if they have memory concerns…I guess there is that for a small positive.
HOWEVER, it scares people. That is all we need to do…give people a reason to not visit folks with dementia and love on them lest they “catch it”. I can tell you very comfortably that isolation in seniors gives the negative health results of smoking 15 cigarettes per day. So lets punish these folks in a nursing home with a pack of Camel Unfiltered by not visiting them out of fear that we would …uhhh…errr…actually have a less likelihood of early onset dementia?!?! Add to this the fact that some will consider leaving the dementia care/memory unit profession with this fear…and rightly so if it were real! 🙁 Heck, I would wear a space suit visiting mom if it was contagious…which it is NOT, even a little bit. Sigh…
(Gathered my exploded brain back into my melon)
The internet is hard to find good information. With dementia stuff, please, please, please….Only trust the research sites and the Alzheimer’s Association. Don’t trust this guy to sort out:
#EndALZ
Update:
Mom is sort of “using the force” these days when she eats. I was with her for 2 hours last night and she never opened her eyes even for a second, but, nevertheless, she ate 75% of her food and wasn’t grimacing or sad that I could tell. She has had eye issues for years just like her mom did and is sensitive to light…but it is pretty rare for it to play out like this. There have been times that she kind of “sleep ate”, but thi has a different feel. I will be there again tonite…we shall see.
She has had seizures/tremors off and on lately again too. That is always a concern, so we have a close eye on her movements. Lastly, she, of course, aspirates her food and drink, so we are getting slower and slower on the feeding speed and are using a smaller spoon and smaller bites from it. Such is life at the end stage of this dreadful disease.
