Alzheimer's Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Alzheimer's. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Never let the brain idle. ‘An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.’ And the devil’s name is Alzheimer’s.
George Carlin
You're so beautiful," said Alice. "I'm afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are." "I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you." "What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?" "Then, I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Every time I read to her, it was like I was courting her, because sometimes, just sometimes, she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?
Nicholas Sparks (The Wedding (The Notebook, #2))
Love is blind, there was no doubt about it. In Tara's case it was also deaf, dumb, dyslexic, had a bad hip and the beginnings of Alzheimer's
Marian Keyes (Last Chance Saloon)
It is my belief that people who speak of high school with a sugary fondness are bluffing away early-onset Alzheimer's.
Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake: Essays)
To care for those who once cared for us is one of the highest honors.
Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily.
Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer's disease where they slowly began to recover other people's lost memories.
George Carlin
Alzheimer’s is the cleverest thief, because she not only steals from you, but she steals the very thing you need to remember what’s been stolen.
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
Promise me that if I ever get Alzheimer’s or dementia, and I don’t remember anyone that you’ll visit me every day and read to me like Noah read to Allie.
J.A. Redmerski (The Edge of Always (The Edge of Never, #2))
It is leashed. Now drop the subject or I’ll tell Sin you’ve seen me naked. (Kat) I will never bring this topic up again. Oh wait. What topic? I have Alzheimer’s. I know nothing at all. (Kish)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother sitting by the bank of a swimming pool, that was also a river. In real life, she had been a victim of Alzheimer’s disease, and had regressed, before her death, to a semi-conscious state. In the dream, as well, she had lost her capacity for self-control. Her genital region was exposed, dimly; it had the appearance of a thick mat of hair. She was stroking herself, absent-mindedly. She walked over to me, with a handful of pubic hair, compacted into something resembling a large artist’s paint-brush. She pushed this at my face. I raised my arm, several times, to deflect her hand; finally, unwilling to hurt her, or interfere with her any farther, I let her have her way. She stroked my face with the brush, gently, and said, like a child, “isn’t it soft?” I looked at her ruined face and said, “yes, Grandma, it’s soft.
Jordan B. Peterson (Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)
Things people say to depressives that they don’t say in other life-threatening situations: ‘Come on, I know you’ve got tuberculosis, but it could be worse. At least no one’s died.’ 'Why do you think you got cancer of the stomach?’ ‘Yes, I know, colon cancer is hard, but you want to try living with someone who has got it. Sheesh. Nightmare.’ ‘Oh, Alzheimer’s you say? Oh, tell me about it, I get that all the time.’ ‘Ah, meningitis. Come on, mind over matter.’ ‘Yes, yes, your leg is on fire, but talking about it all the time isn’t going to help things, is it?’ ‘Okay. Yes. Yes. Maybe your parachute has failed. But chin up.
Matt Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive)
I like it when people remember that I'm a person, not just a person with Alzheimer's.
Sally Hepworth (The Things We Keep)
And, for a moment in time, I’d crossed the line over to evil and used some unethical interrogation techniques to bring him down. I was hoping for a few months of ‘down time.’ Time to reevaluate how I’d let myself cross that line and how to prevent it from ever happening again. Then there was my father. He was quickly succumbing to Alzheimer’s and I wanted to spend more time with him.
Behcet Kaya (Body In The Woods (Jack Ludefance, #2))
There’s an old joke about Alzheimer’s: the good news is that you meet new people every day.
Stephen King (The Bazaar of Bad Dreams)
She's said she doesn't want to. Go ahead and ask her. Just because she has Alzheimer's doesn't mean she doesn't know what she does and doesn't want. At three in the morning, she wanted scrambled eggs and toast, and she didn't want to go back to bed. You're choosing to dismiss what she wants because she has Alzheimer's
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn't know possible.
Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
I'll say it again - mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn't consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, "Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?" Let us shout it from the rooftops until everyone gets the message; depression has and nothing to do with having a bad day or being sad, it's a killer if not taken seriously.
Ruby Wax
You spend your life hoarding memories against the day you'll lack the energy to go out and make new ones, because that's the comfort of the old age. The ability to look back at your life and know that you left your mark on the world. But I'm losing my memories, it's like someone's broken into my piggy bank and is robbing me one penny at a time. It's happening so slowly, I can hardly tell what's missing.
Shaun David Hutchinson (We Are the Ants)
The Statue of Liberty, that frequently malevolent bitch, has an enormous tumor in her gut that has spread to her brain and eyes. With regard to the Native Americans she has Alzheimer's or mad cow disease and can't remember her past, and her blind eyes can't see the terrifying plight of most of the Indian tribes. Meanwhile she blows China and stomps Cuba to death, choosing to forget the Native cultures she has already destroyed.
Jim Harrison (On the Trail to Wounded Knee: The Big Foot Memorial Ride)
In the heart or every caregiver is a knowing that we are all connected. As I do for you, I do for me.
Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
ولأن الإنسان منذ طفولته يرى والدَيْه في صورة الأقوياء القادرين على مواجهة مصاعب الحياة، فإن رؤية الضعف الذي يستنزفهما بالتدريج تكون أصعب من رؤية ذلك يحدث للآخرين
Arno Geiger (Der alte König in seinem Exil)
And I don’t think you need to be scared of forgetting me,” the boy says “No?” “No. Because if you forget me then you’ll just get the chance to get to know me again. And you’ll like that, because I’m actually a pretty cool person to get to know.
Fredrik Backman (And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer)
She wished she had cancer instead. She'd trade Alzheimer's for cancer in a heartbeat. She felt ashamed for wishing this, and it was certainly a pointless bargaining, but she permitted herself the fantasy anyway. With cancer, she'd have something to fight. There was surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. There was the chance that she could win. Her family and the community at Harvard would rally behind her battle and consider it noble. And even if it defeated her in the end, she'd be able to look them knowingly in the eye and say good-bye before she left.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
I love you but I got to love me more.
Peggi Speers (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
Dr. Cai Song is an internationally known researcher at the University of British Columbia and co-author of a recent textbook, Fundamentals of Psychoneuroimmunology. “I am convinced that Alzheimer’s is an autoimmune disease,” says Dr. Song. “It is probably triggered by chronic stress acting on an aging immune system.
Gabor Maté (When the Body Says No)
A nation which fails to adequately remember salient points of its own history, is like a person with Alzheimer's. And that can be a social disease of a most destructive nature.
S.M. Sigerson (The Assassination of Michael Collins: What Happened At Béal na mBláth?)
If ever the day comes when he wakes beside me and my name doesn't come to his lips, when that bewildered look in his eyes doesn't fade away, I'll remember for us both. I won't let him forget the life we built together. I won't let him go.
J.M. Snyder (Henry and Jim)
Jack? It’s Margeaux.” “My sister? Why would my sister be calling me? How did she get my number? Crazy questions blipped through my head. I knew she had married and was living in New Orleans, but we rarely spoke and have never been close by any means” “Margeaux?” “I’m calling from the police station. Dad was just brought in and I thought I should let you know.” “What! Why was he brought in?” “Jack, he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He drove himself into New Orleans to Quest Diagnostic for some blood tests and he was waiting to be called. Apparently, they took other people back that had come in after him. He got upset and made a scene. The staff tried to explain that those people all had appointments and he didn’t. He became so abusive, they called security, but before they even got there, Dad knocked down one of the technicians. That’s when they called the police. They came and took him.
Behcet Kaya (Treacherous Estate (Jack Ludefance, #1))
She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves.
Debra Dean (The Madonnas of Leningrad)
What are we doing here? (Delphine) Going to eat. What? You got Alzheimer’s? (Jericho) No, but I don’t see a restaurant around here. (Delphine) If I put us inside the restaurant, people might scream and freak. Not to mention, it has a Web cam there that makes it even harder to just poof inside. Damn modern people and their wizard’s tools. (Jericho)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dream Warrior (Dream-Hunter, #4; Dark-Hunter, #17))
We have to watch Nana's life slipping away from her like a forgotten word. I thought I understood what's happening to her, but this isn't like being robbed a penny at a time. Memories aren't currency to spend; they're us. Age isn't stealing from my grandmother; it's slowly unwinding her.
Shaun David Hutchinson (We Are the Ants)
This is the true wine of astonishment: "We are not over when we think we are.
Alice Walker
أكبر هَمٍّ يمكن للكِبَرأن يصيبنا به هو أن يطول أمده أكثر مما نحتمل
Arno Geiger (Der alte König in seinem Exil)
The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.
Lao Tzu
Today is World Alzheimer’s Day. What are you supposed to do with that? Try to remember it?
Hendrik Groen (The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old)
Perhaps the most meaningful exchange I had on the subject was a completely random discussion with my uncle Martin at my parents’ annual summer pool party. Martin, a former entrepreneur who was now in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, turned to me and asked an intriguing question: “Which is more exciting to you? Reality or memory?” I paused, considered it, and said, “I wish I could say reality, but it’s probably memory.” And then I asked, “What about you?” At which point Martin stared blankly back at me and asked, “What was the question?
Dan Harris (10% Happier)
Age isn't stealing from my grandmother; it's slowly unwinding her.
Shaun David Hutchinson (We Are the Ants)
Thin, I think, that fabric between realities. Maybe minds aren't lost. Maybe they just slip through and find a different place to wander.
C.J. Tudor (The Chalk Man)
Many of us follow the commandment 'Love One Another.' When it relates to caregiving, we must love one another with boundaries. We must acknowledge that we are included in the 'Love One Another.
Peggi Speers
Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.
Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)
Indian Alzheimer's" - where you forget everything but the grudges.
Craig Johnson (As The Crow Flies (Walt Longmire, #8))
Not all activities are equal in this regard. Those that involve genuine concentration—studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing—are associated with a lower risk for dementia. Dancing, which requires learning new moves, is both physically and mentally challenging and requires much concentration. Less intense activities, such as bowling, babysitting, and golfing, are not associated with a reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s. (254)
Norman Doidge
Excess cholesterol in the blood can lead to excess cholesterol in the brain, which may then help trigger the clumping of amyloid seen in Alzheimer’s brains. Under an electron microscope, we can see the clustering of amyloid fibers on and around tiny crystals of cholesterol.
Michael Greger (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
And there was this sweet-looking little old lady with her white hair in a bun and everything, the typical grandmother type, and she was swearing her head off. I guess Alzheimer's had brought out her inner sailor.
Vivian Vande Velde (Remembering Raquel)
If God gave Dad Alzheimer’s, He’s got to understand when Dad forgets what church he belongs to.
Joanne Fluke (Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen, #1))
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
William Shakespeare (Love Poems and Sonnets)
They say you can never step into the same river twice. And maybe that's how it was for Papi now, memories shifting and re-forming soundlessly beneath him while the rest of us sat on the shore and watched.
Sarah Ockler (The Book of Broken Hearts)
God doesn’t take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.
Pat Summitt (Sum It Up: 1,098 Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective)
Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.
Mordecai Richler (Barney's Version)
Accepting the fact that she did indeed have Alzheimer's, that she could only bank on two unacceptably effective drugs available to treat it, and that she couldn't trade any of this in for some other, curable disease, what did she want? Assuming the in vitro procedure worked, she wanted to live to hold Anna's baby and know it was her grandchild. She wanted to see Lydia act in something she was proud of. She wanted to see Tom fall in love. She wanted one more sabbatical year with John. She wanted to read every book she could before she could no longer read. She laughed a little, surprised at what she'd just revealed about herself. Nowhere in that list was anything about linguistics, teaching, or Harvard. She ate her last bite of cone. She wanted more sunny, seventy-degree days and ice-cream cones.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
The single most powerful item in our preventive tool kit is exercise, which has a two-pronged impact on Alzheimer’s disease risk: it helps maintain glucose homeostasis, and it improves the health of our vasculature
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?
Joyce Rachelle
Exercise is the best way to prevent Alzheimer. Rotate your arms; rotate your legs; twist your spine and activate your hippocampus to prevent Alzheimer.
Amit Ray (Yoga The Science of Well-Being)
once Alzheimer’s does what it do you never really have conversations it’s more a man becomes a poem a lot of repetition & love with something indecipherable in between.
Nate Marshall (Finna: Poems)
People think it's just forgetting your keys, she says. Or the words for things. But there are the personality changes. The mood swings. The hostility and even violence. Even from the gentlest person in the world. You lose the person you love. And you are left with the shell... And you are expected to go on loving them even when they are no longer there. You are supposed to be loyal. It’s not that other people expect it. It’s that you expect it of yourself. And you long for it to be over soon.
Alice LaPlante (Turn of Mind)
The phrase 'Love one another' is so wise. By loving one another, we invest in each other and in ourselves. Perhaps someday, when we need someone to care for us, it may not come from the person we expect, but from the person we least expect. It may be our sons or daughter-in-laws, our neighbors, friends, cousins, stepchildren, or stepparents whose love for us has assigned them to the honorable, yet dangerous position of caregiver.
Peggi Speers (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
They talked about her as if she weren’t sitting in the wing chair, a few feet away. They talked about her, in front of her, as if she were deaf. They talked about her, in front of her, without including her, as if she had Alzheimer’s disease.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
But I knew he wouldn't kiss me. Not tonight. Not like this. There was too much between us now, all the words and near misses. All the potential, the alternate futures that would stretch out before us in an unending spiral, all built on what happened in this moment. I held his fiery gaze and remembered the five-oh, the half-and-half, the promises I'd whispered to myself in the dawn light. I might lose all my memories one day, but that wouldn't keep me from making them.
Sarah Ockler (The Book of Broken Hearts)
A mom’s hug lasts long after she lets go. ~Author Unknown
Amy Newmark (Chicken Soup for the Soul: Living with Alzheimer's & Other Dementias: 101 Stories of Caregiving, Coping, and Compassion)
I don’t know how much longer I have to know you.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Embracing a healing presence requires you to just be in the moment together.
Nancy L. Kriseman (The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey)
I can’t stand the thought of looking at you someday, this face I love, and not knowing who you are.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
The simplest way to look at all these associations, between obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cancer, and Alzheimer's (not to mention the other the conditions that also associate with obesity and diabetes, such as gout, asthma, and fatty liver disease), is that what makes us fat - the quality and quantity of carbohydrates we consume - also makes us sick.
Gary Taubes (Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It)
From this cascade comes a prediction: getting too little sleep across the adult life span will significantly raise your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Precisely this relationship has now been reported in numerous epidemiological studies, including those individuals suffering from sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea.VIII Parenthetically, and unscientifically, I have always found it curious that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan—two heads of state that were very vocal, if not proud, about sleeping only four to five hours a night—both went on to develop the ruthless disease. The current US president, Donald Trump—also a vociferous proclaimer of sleeping just a few hours each night—may want to take note.
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
I read of a Buddhist teacher who developed Alzheimer's. He had retired from teaching because his memory was unreliable, but he made one exception for a reunion of his former students. When he walked onto the stage, he forgot everything, even where he was and why. However, he was a skilled Buddhist and he simply began sharing his feelings with the crowd. He said, "I am anxious. I feel stupid. I feel scared and dumb. I am worried that I am wasting everyone's time. I am fearful. I am embarrassing myself." After a few minutes of this, he remembered his talk and proceeded without apology. The students were deeply moved, not only by his wise teachings, but also by how he handled his failings. There is a Buddhist saying, "No resistance, no demons.
Mary Pipher (Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World)
SUICIDE IS NOW – in places including the UK and US – a leading cause of death, accounting for over one in a hundred fatalities. According to figures from the World Health Organization, it kills more people than stomach cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, colon cancer, breast cancer, and Alzheimer’s. As people who kill themselves are, more often than not, depressives, depression is one of the deadliest diseases on the planet. It kills more people than most other forms of violence – warfare, terrorism, domestic abuse, assault, gun crime – put together.
Matt Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive)
Never give up hope! If you do, you be dead already.
Rose in The Inspired Caregiver
A dementia-friendly society is not yet in reach.
Meryl Comer
To put it simply--our brain span should match our lifespan.
Meryl Comer
I've had an amazing life. One filled with blessings I could never have imagined. Depressed is the last thing I am. Realistic, yes. Sad, never.
Viola Shipman (The Charm Bracelet)
Then he stared down at the twinkling lights and sobbed, "All my stars fell out of the sky.
Belinda Bauer (The Beautiful Dead)
Mother Nature does not develop Alzheimer’s—actually there is evidence that even humans would not easily lose brain function with age if they followed a regimen of stochastic exercise and stochastic fasting, took long walks, avoided sugar, bread, white rice, and stock market investments, and refrained from taking economics classes or reading such things as The New York Times.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
But Marisa already knew the answer and it was too late for recrimination. The chance of even a rational discussion of the problem was forever shut out of Mama’s brain. A brutal bastard was steadily sucking the intelligence and the very life from the mother who had once been witty, wise and loving. The scourge had a name Marisa had come to equate with hell: Alzheimer’s Disease.
Anna Jeffrey
She almost thought she'd said the words aloud, but she hadn't. They remained trapped in her head, but not because they were barricaded by plaques and tangles. She just couldn't say them aloud
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Alice looked around the room. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen. They listened intently as Eric elaborated on Alice’s comment. Many continued nodding. She felt victorious and a little smug. The fact that she had Alzheimer’s didn’t mean that she was no longer capable of thinking analytically. The fact that she had Alzheimer’s didn’t mean that she didn’t deserve to sit in that room among them. The fact that she had Alzheimer’s didn’t mean that she no longer deserved to be heard.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Her ability to use language, that thing that most separates humans from animals, was leaving her, and she was feeling less and less human as it departed. She's said a tearful good-bye to okay some time ago.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Someday, I suppose I’ll give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I’ll probably be rocking fast, because I don’t know what I’ll do without a job.
Pat Summitt (Sum It Up: 1,098 Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective)
You only know yourself because of your memories.
Andrea Gillies
Never give up hope. If you do, you'll be dead already.--Dementia Patient, Rose from The Inspired Caregiver
Peggi Speers (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
It's like you don't get that she's not gone yet, like you think her time left isn't meaningful anymore. You're acting like a selfish child.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Of all the things to lose, to lose one's mind? Let them take a leg or a lung; let them take anything before they take that. Before you become "poor Rosemary" or "poor Frank," catching the last glimpses of the sun and seeing them for what they were. Before there were no more trips, no more games, no more Murder Clubs. Before there was no more you.
Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1))
According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD, the world’s leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals), if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer’s Disease is ten times higher than if they had one, two or no shots. I asked Dr. Fudenberg why this was so and he said it was due to the mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot (and most childhood shots). The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Is that why Alzheimer’s is expected to quadruple?219
James Perloff (Truth Is a Lonely Warrior: Unmasking the Forces behind Global Destruction)
And sometimes when she does remember, she calls me her little angel and she knows where she is and everything is all right for a second or a minute and then we cry; she for the life that she lost I for the woman I only know about through the stories of her children.
Rebecca Rijsdijk (Portraits of Girls I never Met)
So many modern diseases, including heart disease, depression, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and all the autoimmune diseases (such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus), occur in part because our body’s immune systems produce excess chronic inflammation. In chronic inflammation, the immune system stays on too long and may even begin to attack the body’s own tissues, as though they were outside invaders. The causes of chronic inflammation are many, including diet and, of course, the countless chemical toxins that become embedded in the body. Chronically inflamed bodies produce chemicals, called pro-inflammatory cytokines, which contribute to pain and inflammation.
Norman Doidge (The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity)
I am a wife, mother, and friend, and soon to be grandmother, I still feel, understand, and am worthy of the love and joy in those relationships. I am still an active participant in society. My brain no longer works well, but I use my ears for unconditional listening, my shoulders for crying on, and my arms for hugging others with dementia. Through an early stage support group...by talking to you today, I am helping others with dementia live better with dementia. I am not someone dying. I am someone living with Alzheimer's. I want to do that as well as I possibly can.
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Offering care means being a companion, not a superior. It doesn’t matter whether the person we are caring for is experiencing cancer, the flu, dementia, or grief. If you are a doctor or surgeon, your expertise and knowledge comes from a superior position. But when our role is to be providers of care, we should be there as equals.
Judy Cornish (The Dementia Handbook: How to Provide Dementia Care at Home)
So about an hour later we are in the taxi shooting along empty country roads towards town. The April light is clear as an alarm. As we pass them it gives a sudden sense of every object existing in space on its own shadow. I wish I could carry this clarity with me into the hospital where distinctions tend to flatten and coalesce. I wish I had been nicer to him before he got crazy. These are my two wishes.
Anne Carson (Glass, Irony and God)
As a boy, Picasso struggled with reading, writing, and arithmetic. Einstein was slow to talk and would apply picture thinking to complex problems in the field of physics. The dividing line between psychiatric disorders and great gifts is often a very narrow one and strongly depends on how someone is viewed by their surroundings.
Dick Swaab (We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's)
Butterfly Kisses Aged imperfections stitched upon my face years and years of wisdom earned by His holy grace. Quiet solitude in a humble home all the family scattered now like nomads do they roam. Then a gift sent from above a memory pure and tangible wrapped in innocence and unquestioning love. A butterfly kiss lands gently upon my cheek from an unseen child a kiss most sweet. Heaven grants grace and tears follow as youth revisits this empty hollow.
Muse (Enigmatic Evolution)
Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. For starters, soda’s high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss from the body, as can its sodium and caffeine. [Cousens, Conscious Eating, 475] You know what this means—bone loss, which may lead to osteoporosis. And the last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don’t go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.2 When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). 3 Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don’t fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about aspartame than any other ingredient to date.4 Want more bad news? When aspartame is paired with carbs, it causes your brain to slow down its production of serotonin.5 A healthy level of serotonin is needed to be happy and well balanced. So drinking soda can make you fat, sick, and unhappy.
Rory Freedman (Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous!)
Dementia isn’t the only place that memories are found to be flawed—people find out they can’t rely on their memories every day. People blindsided in relationships. People who find out their truth is a lie. People pulled from trauma. People awakened, as in Anna and Eve. I wondered: If you can’t use memories to steer your life, what can you use? I didn’t know. It was why I had to write this book.
Sally Hepworth
Gene patents are the point of greatest concern in the debate over ownership of human biological materials, and how that ownership might interfere with science. As of 2005—the most recent year figures were available—the U.S. government had issued patents relating to the use of about 20 percent of known human genes, including genes for Alzheimer’s, asthma, colon cancer, and, most famously, breast cancer. This means pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and universities control what research can be done on those genes, and how much resulting therapies and diagnostic tests will cost. And some enforce their patents aggressively: Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, charges $3,000 to test for the genes. Myriad has been accused of creating a monopoly, since no one else can offer the test, and researchers can’t develop cheaper tests or new therapies without getting permission from Myriad and paying steep licensing fees. Scientists who’ve gone ahead with research involving the breast-cancer genes without Myriad’s permission have found themselves on the receiving end of cease-and-desist letters and threats of litigation.
Rebecca Skloot
The pineal gland is activated by light and controls the body's bio- rhythms in concert with the hypothalamus gland which regulates hunger, thirst, sexual desire and the biological clock that dictates how fast we age. Look at the potential for mass control if you can externally suppress and manipulate the pineal and hypothalamus glands alone. You can make it much harder to perceive beyond the five senses, decide how quickly people age, how much they want sex, when they are hungry and thirsty and for how long. This is the key reason for putting sodium fluoride into water supplies and toothpaste. The pineal gland absorbs more fluoride than any other part of the body and becomes calcified by this highly-damaging toxin. Sodium fluoride is an appalling waste product of the aluminum industry and has been used in rat poison. It causes cancer, genetic damage, Alzheimer's disease, disrupts the endocrine system and dumbs down the brain. It was added to drinking water in the Nazi concentration camps to make the inmates more acquiescent and docile.
David Icke (Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More)
I had grown up thinking of life as a series of linear decisions that if made properly would land me on some distant safe shore where I would finally enjoy the fruits of my labor. Now that I was getting a glimpse of that shore I was struck by the inanity of such an equation. My mother was never going to get another chance to do anything else. She did not have the capacity for regrets, nor was she even able to enjoy the comfort of nostalgia or fond memories--her mind had leaked away too imperceptibly to allow for the clarity to look back on her life and wish she had done things differently. As I continued to worry over what sort of future I was setting myself up for, she seemed a painful cautionary tale that life was not a savings plan, accrued now for enjoyment later. I was alive now. My responsibility was to live now as fully as possible.
Glynnis MacNicol (No One Tells You This)
I should also add something about weight here, because we all know that there’s often a relationship between weight and risk for diabetes. If the risk for Alzheimer’s disease goes up with metabolic disorders, then it makes sense that the risk also rises with unhealthy weight gain that has metabolic consequences. The science now speaks to this fact. Carrying extra weight around the abdomen has been shown to be particularly harmful to the brain. One study that garnered lots of media attention looked at over six thousand individuals aged forty to forty-five and measured the size of their bellies between 1964 and 1973.11 A few decades later, they were evaluated to see who had developed dementia and how that related to their waist size at the start of the study. The correlation between risk of dementia and thicker midsections twenty-seven years earlier was remarkable: Those with the highest level of abdominal fat had an increased risk of dementia of almost three-fold in comparison to those with the lowest abdominal weight. There is plenty of evidence that managing your weight now will go a long way toward preventing brain decline later.
Sanjay Gupta (Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age)
My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water. I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces. 'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?' 'A heart. She should get a heart.' Little did they know. They are the tattoos.
Pat Summitt (Sum It Up: 1,098 Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective)
An apple a day might have kept the doctor away prior to the industrialization of food growing and preparation. But, according to research compiled by the United States Drug Administration (USDA) today’s apple contains residue of eleven different neurotoxins—azinphos, methyl chloripyrifos, diazinon, dimethoate, ethion, omthoate, parathion, parathion methyl, phosalone, and phosmet — and the USDA was testing for only one category of chemicals known as organophosphate insecticides. That doesn’t sound too appetizing does it? The average apple is sprayed with pesticides seventeen times before it is harvested.
Michelle Schoffro Cook (The Brain Wash: A Powerful, All-Natural Program to Protect Your Brain Against Alzheimer's, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Depression, Parkinson's, and Other Diseases)
Cannabis affects the brain because brain cells themselves produce cannabis-like neurotransmitters. The first such compound to be identified was christened anandamide, ananda being Sanskrit for “bliss.” The proteins that transmit anandamide’s message to the brain, the receptors, are mainly located in the striatum (hence the blissful feeling) and in the cerebellum (hence the unsteady gait after taking marijuana), in the cerebral cortex (hence the problems with association, the fragmented thoughts and confusion), and in the hippocampus (hence the memory impairment). But there are no receptors in the brain stem areas that regulate blood pressure and breathing. That’s why it’s impossible to take an overdose of cannabis, as opposed to opiates.
D.F. Swaab (We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's)