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SoylentNews
from the progress-against-a-nasty-disease dept.
https://news.ubc.ca/2017/10/31/alzheimers-disease-might-be-a-whole-body-problem/
Alzheimer's disease, the leading cause of dementia, has long been assumed to originate in the brain but new research indicates that it could be triggered by breakdowns elsewhere in the body.
The findings, published today in Molecular Psychiatry [DOI: 10.1038/mp.2017.204] [DX], offer hope that future drug therapies might be able to stop or slow the disease without acting directly on the brain, which is a complex, sensitive and often hard-to-reach target. Instead, such drugs could target the kidney or liver, ridding the blood of a toxic protein [amyloid-β protein] before it ever reaches the brain.
"Alzheimer's disease is clearly a disease of the brain, but our research shows that we need to pay attention to the whole body to understand where it comes from, and how to stop it," said Dr. Weihong Song, UBC psychiatry professor.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday November 03 2017, @03:32PM (6 children)
I am currently watching my grandmother go through the stages of Alzheimer's disease as my wife and I caretake for her. After watching this I want to make sure that I am able to kill myself if I ever develop the kind of mental deterioration that comes with this (and other) diseases. As part of this a friend of mine and I have been discussing checks that you can make against your brain to confirm your mental ability and then commit these to habit. The goal is to be able to run your own system diagnostics through a series of thought processes to determine you are at a point where you need to take action without returning false positives.
Being people of intellect I imagine that this is something other soylentels have thought about to. Any ideas?
Something that I do daily is run through the multiplication tables in my head. Pretty easy, but could be a useful method in this case.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:06PM
An OS watchdog timer only works if the kernel itself hasn't become corrupted; I don't think it's possible for system to analyze itself effectively without a rogue component that has been designed to be as independent as possible from the rest of the system.
I mean, there's a reason it's difficult for a lot of people to keep themselves from drinking too much alcohol; it's hard to be reasonable about something that explicitly diminishes reason.
Instead of figuring out how to self-check, spend your time figuring out how to kill yourself in a non-violent, peaceful way, which includes figuring out how to prepare yourself to follow through with such a decision. Alzheimer's or not, the longer you live, the more likely you'll need to make that choice (or, like most people, choose not to think about it, and then just futilely claw in fear as the Universe sucks you down its merciless hole of eternal oblivion). Hypoxia by nitrogen gas seems like a good choice.
None of us knows how the story will go. The only thing we do know is that it won't end well. Prepare accordingly.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 03 2017, @04:21PM (1 child)
Music Therapy. Insist that, should your mental condition deteriorate, your family and/or caretakers regularly play music and other media from back when you were younger and stronger.
So for current old Geezers, this would be stuff like Louis Armstrong, Gershwin, perhaps some fifties and even sixties shit. Old TV shows etc. The sense of association can tie who they were to who they are today.
Note: I didn't come up with this idea, but I think it's a good one -- who likes the crap media churned out nowadays anyway?
The second I become incontinent or demented, I'm going to go full-chimp and fling my poo at people while making monkey-noises. That's always been my lifelong dream, just gotta wait until I have the right excuse to do it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday November 03 2017, @05:14PM
You've been channeling my father's ghost. He got Alzheimer's and towards the end one of his joys was to take his urine bag and swing it around his head...at some point it usually broke.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:18AM (2 children)
Once you get past your peak your general trajectory is deterioration for most stuff, BUT you can still enjoy life. And as long as you're having a decent quality of life and not being a big burden or problem for others why kill yourself? Just because you're starting to forget stuff or start not being able to do some stuff?
Most pet dogs don't think that well but lots of people still love them AND want them to still be around. Even the really stupid ones.
Similarly lots of us don't mind those kind gentle old folks with good hearts even if they're forgetful. Then it's only near the very end that it becomes a big problem, but that's true for the many other ways you can age to death (cancer, heart problems etc).
So maybe what might help is training yourself and your character so that even if you're a forgetful person you'd still be a nice forgetful person that normal people are happy to be with. There are some paranoid and angry forgetful people who accuse other people of stealing stuff, get angry and make a huge fuss for small stuff, etc.
Unfortunately there are cases of nice people being changed by Alzheimer's to becoming nasty people, not everyone though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:36PM (1 child)
Just sayin'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @04:40PM