In memory of

One of the people I call a friend, died of a stroke the other day. It was a shock, and so sad. He was about 10 years younger than me and was a gentle, considerate, caring, kind,  compassionate man with a wicked sense of humour. On our annual golf tour, it was mentioned by one of his closest friends that he had some medical problems, but we were sure they were minor. He stayed in shape, he exercised, he ate right and was mindful of stress but stroke is a silent killer. We were wrong, and he died before his time.

I met him in the mid-eighties and worked with him on extra-curricular activities. I also had the privilege of working with him for 10 years before I retired and for a few more years after I went back to work. He was a brilliant teacher, a caring and thoughtful man, who cared about his family, his friends, and his students. It is hard to put a person’s life in perspective, but one of the ways to measure a person is by the connections they make with others. In his life he made many strong connections as seen by some of the comments made after news of his passing was known are:

Probably the nicest person I have ever met. Very sad.

One of the best men I’ve worked with. A gentleman who always had time for advice for this newbie.

Oh no... how very sad. My heart and prayers are over his beautiful family!

He was a legend! You all were the greatest team of teachers. Condolences to his family

Oh…. This is so sad. Big love to everyone…. He was a loved teacher

He had quite an impact on me. Still remember many lessons he taught us. Extremely sad news

Such a huge loss. Thoughts are with his family during this difficult time. He had the best stories and always greeted you with a huge smile!

I had him in grade 12! Great teacher! Great person all around! RIP

A terrible loss. Gone too soon. Thinking of his family. Such a positive and kind man.

So sorry to hear this news. So sad that a great teacher person and friend left this world so early. He is a legend, and I had the pleasure to work for several years at the same school. He was always positive upbeat and very knowledgeable about business. My condolences go to his wife and his family.

 It’s never easy losing a friend

When Should You Be Concerned About Memory Loss?

Seniors Health and Wellness Institute has over 44 different workshops that we give but one of the most requested workshops is a workshop on Memory and Ageing. As we age many of us are nervous when we start to forget things. We could forget where we put our glasses, our keys or why we walked into a room. As we get older, we believe that being forgetful or having bad eyesight, hearing is often associated with ageing. What we don’t think about is that these attributes are so often stereotypes of ageing and are a subtle form of ageism.

Having said that there can be times to think about getting help for yourself or a loved one when memory and forgetfulness becomes a problem. In order to understand what is normal memory loss and what type of memory loss requires attention we start on a journey to find as much information as possible.

Common age-related memory lapses aren’t the same thing as having Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia. If you or your loved one exhibits any of the following behaviours it may be a time to consider getting help. Someone without Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia is certainly capable of any of these behaviours. It’s the frequency with which memory lapses happen and the degree to which these lapses make life unsafe that you want to watch out for. You or they:

·       leave things unfinished.

·       get lost in familiar places.

·       are unable to recall recent conversations.

·       leave the stove on after cooking a meal, or forget they’re cooking and let the food burn.

·       blank on familiar information, like street names and names of people they know.

·       end up in places and can’t recall how they got there.

·       regularly make mistakes on things like paying bills and filling out forms.

·       don’t remember instances when their memory impairment caused a problem.

·       forget words or repeat phrases or stories in the same conversation.

·       show uncharacteristically poor social behaviour or lapse in judgment.

If you have a loved one or you find that you have a large frequency of the above occurring, then what do you do? It’s completely expected and understandable that you want to continue to function normally for as long as possible, so you or they may be in denial that their memory loss is a cause for serious concern.

If you feel you have to talk to a loved one about memory loss, approach them about their memory care with love, patience, understanding and good intention. Try to avoid confrontation; be aware that their memory loss is just as difficult for them to handle as it is for you, if not more.

If you have been approached by a loved one about your memory loss try to remember that they are talking to you out of love and concern so be willing to listen. I end the workshop with this thought. Remember, if you are concerned about your memory loss that is normal, but if others are concerned about your memory and you don’t think you have a memory problem, then you need to listen and to act.

Ways to store memory

I have a friend who fears he is starting to get dementia so I thought I would put some tips together to help him store and retrieve things from his memory. Here are some ideas on ways to store memory. Can you add it to my list?

Choose What to Remember / What to Forget – be selective about what is important to remember and what is not. Being selective will avoid memory overload.

Internal strategies are exercises that you can do mentally:

a.    Read materials out loud, repeat several times – repetition is helpful. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

b.    Visualization Compose mental pictures, visualize images.

                                          i.    This means forming a picture in your mind’s eye of the things you want to remember. Because we remember bizarre images better, incorporate something unusual into your visualizations.

c.    Makeup rhymes (30 days hath September).

d.    Use memories to trigger other memories – reminisce with someone, look at photo albums. Review the information several times and then re-tell it in your own words as if you were explaining it to someone else.

e.    Relax – relaxation will clear your mind of clutter.

f.     Keep your mind active, exercise your brain by reading, playing chess, doing crossword puzzles, etc.

g.    Association You can learn or recall something more easily if you associate it with something you already know or remember. To recall a specific date, associate it with another well-known date. For example, November 25 is a month before Christmas. July 11 is a week after Independence Day.

                                          i.    You might recall an important date by its relationship to your birthday or by making the date into a price ($9.29) or a time (12:15). To help remember names, associate the new name with a famous person or someone you already know.

                                        ii.    Sometimes a person’s name can be associated with their physical characteristics. For example, if Elizabeth is somewhat overweight, imagine her like a queen at an Elizabethan feast. (You don’t have to tell the person how you are remembering)

External strategies use environmental cues to help you remember:

h.    Organize your life. Put keys, glasses in the same designated place, and get rid of clutter.

i.      Reduce noise and background distractions as much as possible.

j.      Keep a datebook or calendar.

k.    Use helpful devices such as cooking timers, alarm clocks, etc.

l.      Compensation Some of the best memory advice comes from Confucius, who said, “The weakest ink is stronger than the best memory.”  In other words, if you want to remember something, write it down.  Keep lists. Having a good system for recording information is critical. This usually includes a calendar for appointments and a memory notebook. The notebook should have at least three sections:

                                          i.    Reference material such as name, phone numbers, medications.

                                        ii.    List of things to do, including a space to mark off when completed.

                                       iii.    A section for notes or things to remember. This section can contain information from the past — Mary’s new grandson is named Sam — or for the future — a question for your doctor.  If reading and writing are difficult, have someone help you record and review the information or use your phone and speak to it. Compensatory techniques can also include writing notes to yourself and posting them in conspicuous places, writing on your hand,

                        iv.    Keep your lists by the door, in your car.

m.  Be physically active. Exercise increases blood flow to the brain which enhances the mind and also helps to reduce stress and anxiety.

n.    Take care of your health and eat nutritious meals

Direct-Current Stimulation Does Little to Improve the Outcome of Working Memory

Memory or loss of memory is a big concern for many seniors. We can improve our working memory, working memory - our capacity for holding information in mind at any given moment - underlies many fundamental cognitive processes and is linked with some aspects of intelligence. Research has shown that working memory training improves working memory performance but it's unclear whether one type of specific training that is now being used can yield improvements to broader cognitive abilities

This training is called transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) - a non-invasive technique for applying electric current to areas of the brain. This type of training is growing in popularity, but new research suggests that it probably does not add any meaningful benefit to cognitive training. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"Our findings suggest that applying tDCS while older participants engaged in daily working memory training over four weeks did not result in improved cognitive ability," explains researcher Martin Lövdén of Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University.

"The study is important because it addresses what has arguably been the most promising cognitive application of tDCS: the possibility of long-term cognitive enhancement from relatively limited practice on select cognitive tasks," Lövdén adds. "Cognitive enhancement is of interest not just to scientists, but also to the student studying for final exams, the gamer playing online games, and the retiree remembering which pills to take. Because of this large audience, it is of utmost importance to conduct systematic research to disentangle hype from fact."

The researchers enrolled 123 healthy adults who were between 65 and 75 years old in a 4-week training program. All participants completed a battery of cognitive tests, which included tasks that were incorporated in the training and tasks that were not, at the beginning of the study and again at the end. Those randomly assigned to the experimental group trained on tasks that targeted their ability to update mental representations and their ability to switch between different tasks and rules, while those in the active control group trained on tasks that focused on perceptual speed.

As they completed the training tasks, some participants received 25 minutes of tDCS current to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that plays a central role in working memory; other participants were led to believe they were receiving 25 minutes of current, when in actuality the current was only active for a total 30 seconds.

Comparing participants' performance before and after training indicated that those who received working memory training did improve on the updating and switching tasks they had encountered during training and on similar tasks that they had not encountered previously.

But there was no evidence that tDCS produced any additional benefit to the working memory training - at the end of the study, participants who received tDCS did not show greater improvement than their peers.

When the researchers pooled the data from this study with findings from six other studies, they again found no evidence of any additional benefit from working memory training that was combined with tDCS.

Given strong public interest in cognitive enhancement, Lövdén and colleagues urge caution when it comes to this as-of-yet unproven application of tDCS:

"A growing number of people in the general public, presumably inspired by such uninhibited optimism, are now using tDCS to perform better at work or in online gaming, and online communities offer advice on the purchase, fabrication, and use of tDCS devices," the researchers write. "Unsurprisingly, commercial exploitation is rapidly being developed to meet this new public demand for cognitive enhancement via tDCS, often without a single human trial to support the sellers' or manufacturers' claims."

"These findings highlight exactly how limited our knowledge is of the mechanisms underlying the potential effects of tDCS on human cognition and encourages the research community to take a step back and focus its resources on developing strategies for uncovering such mechanisms before using the technique in more applied settings," Lövdén concludes.

Article: Direct-Current Stimulation Does Little to Improve the Outcome of Working Memory Training in Older Adults, Jonna Nilsson, Alexander V. Lebedev, Anders Rydström, Martin Lövdén, Psychological Science, doi: 10.1177/0956797617698139, published 16 May 2017.

A test for the older kids

TEST FOR YOU 'OLDER' KIDS
As we get closer to Xmas, kids are getting excited, as are the older kids. So have some fun,and take a trip down memory lane,  my sharp-witted friends. The answers are printed below, but don't cheat.

01.After the Lone Ranger saved the day and rode off into the sunset, the grateful citizens would ask, "Who was that masked man?" Invariably, someone would answer, "I don't know, but he left this behind." What did he leave behind?_______________.

02.When the Beatles first came to the US in early 1964, we all watched them on The _____________ Show

03'Get your kicks on route _________________.

04.'The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to _______________.

05.'In the jungle, the mighty jungle, ______________.

06.After the Twist, The Mashed Potato, and the Watusi, we 'danced' under a stick that was lowered as low as we could go in a dance called the '____________.

07.Nestle's makes the very best . . . . _________.'Nestle's makes the very best . . . . _________.'

08.Satchmo was America 's 'Ambassador of Goodwill.' Our parents shared this great jazz trumpet player with us. His name was ________________.

09.What takes a licking and keeps on ticking? _______________.

10.Red Skeleton's hobo character was named __________________ and Red always ended his television show by saying, ______.

11.Some American’s who protested the Vietnam War did so by burning their_____________.

12.The cute little car with the engine in the back and the trunk in the front was called the VW. By what other names did it go?___________.

13.In 1971, singer Don MacLean sang a song about, 'the day the music died.' This was a tribute to _________________.

14.We can remember the first satellite placed into orbit. The Russians did it. It was called ___________________.

15.One of the big fads of the late 50's and 60's was a large plastic ring that we twirled around our waist. It was called the ______________.
　

ANSWERS :

01.The Lone Ranger left behind a silver bullet.

02.The Ed Sullivan Show

03.On Route 66

04.To protect the innocent..On Route 66

04.To protect the innocent..

05.The Lion Sleeps Tonight

06..The limbo

07.Chocolate

08.Louis Armstrong

09.The Timex watch

10.Freddy, The Freeloader and 'Good Night and God Bless.'

11.Draft cards (Bras were also burned. Not flags, as some have guessed)

12.Beetle or Bug

13.Buddy Holly

14.Sputnik

15.Hoola-hoopBeetle or Bug

13.Buddy Holly

14.Sputnik

15.Hoola-hoop