Holistic Program May Help People With Alzheimer’s, Dementia

May 19, 2022 – In 2018, David Elliot, an 83-year-old retired worldwide businessman, was recognized with Alzheimer’s illness. His well being care suppliers inspired his spouse, Susan, to hitch a caregiver help group and inspired David to hitch a gaggle for sufferers as quickly as potential.

The Elliots had been instructed that if such care wasn’t began early, an individual with Alzheimer’s may develop into “set in their ways” and decline extra rapidly, Susan says. So they started looking for the proper help however couldn’t discover the providers they wanted.

“We didn’t know what to do or where to go,” Susan says. “Should we give up?”

Fortunately, they had been referred to Together Senior Health, which gives a cognitive well being program: Moving Together, devoted to lowering the affect of reminiscence loss, Alzheimer’s, and different dementias for older adults and likewise relieving the stress that caregivers have.

“It is a very rounded program, it’s suitable for people with different types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, which is what I have – and it has helped me tremendously,” David says. “We look forward to it and look forward to carrying on with it in the future, because the biggest problem I see with Alzheimer’s is that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.”

A Holistic Approach

Together Senior Health’s program improves cognitive well being via an array of approaches, together with motion, mindfulness, physique consciousness, music, social connection and neighborhood, and sense of function, in keeping with Cynthia Benjamin, CEO of Together Senior Health.

In folks residing with Alzheimer’s, components of the mind are hampered, however different components proceed to work nicely, says Deborah Barnes, PhD, chief science adviser of Together Senior Health. People with Alzheimer’s and different dementias proceed to have the ability to “experience joy, happiness, and connect in meaningful ways with others.”

Something else that continues to be “preserved well” within the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s and dementia is the “muscle memory part of the brain – meaning that people can maintain movements to support daily function if those movements are repeated, because the brain learns through repetition,” Barnes says.

The group setting of Moving Together fosters the sense of social connection, and the actions help day by day perform. The program additionally gives conscious physique consciousness, which “helps bring people more into awareness of the body in the present moment, which can be calming in people with dementia. This is an integrative program that combines all these elements into a neat package,” Barnes says.

Benjamin describes this system as a “holistic approach” as a result of it applies neuroscience, therapy with out medication, and psychology “to strengthen cognitive health” and since it addresses so many areas of life.

Accessible, Affordable, and Advancing Research

Those who enroll are assigned to teams that meet nearly twice every week for 1-hour periods. The periods are livestreamed, so members are partaking with one another and with the instructors in actual time.

David and Susan say they’re grateful they may use this system by way of video in the course of the pandemic, when every little thing was shut down. They had been collaborating on this program, in addition to different in-person actions for folks with Alzheimer’s, earlier than then, however the different actions weren’t out there in the course of the lockdown.

“David looks forward to the consistency and the twice-a-week meetings,” Susan says. “At first, he blew off some of it because he wanted something more physical, but he now understands the concepts, the breathing, and how it’s all coming together to help him.”

The program is offered to seniors via their Medicare Advantage plan, and people who don’t have this plan can self-pay in the event that they want to take part. Together Senior Health can be working with main establishments, such because the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of California, San Francisco, to proceed analysis into this program. It’s free to participate within the examine. People who’re can verify to see in the event that they’re eligible right here.

No ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ Solutions

Heather M. Snyder, PhD, vice chairman of medical and scientific relations on the Alzheimer’s Association, says her group made it a precedence to fund analysis into this program and different “risk reduction interventions — especially lifestyle-based interventions – because they have great potential both for prevention of dementia and/or cognitive decline and improving quality of life for those living with cognitive decline.”

She described the Together Senior Health examine as a “unique program that aimed to evaluate these types of strategies and test specific intervention tactics.”

But, she says, lifestyle-based danger discount applications “are unlikely to be ‘one-size-fits-all,’ so it is important to investigate and verify a range of programs that capitalize on local customs, traditions, and resources.”

She recommends that folks with Alzheimer’s, dementia, or cognitive decline, or folks caring for others with these circumstances, speak to their well being care suppliers about what sort of intervention is perhaps one of the best match.

“Evidence suggests that being physically active, even after cognitive decline, provides better health outcomes and higher perceived quality of life,” Snyder says.