Alzheimer Quotes

Never let the brain idle. ‘An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.’ And the devil’s name is Alzheimer’s.

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.

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?

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

It is my belief that people who speak of high school with a sugary fondness are bluffing away early-onset Alzheimer's.

To care for those who once cared for us is one of the highest honors.

Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

I like it when people remember that I'm a person, not just a person with Alzheimer's.

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.

There’s an old joke about Alzheimer’s: the good news is that you meet new people every day.

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

Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn't know possible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the heart or every caregiver is a knowing that we are all connected. As I do for you, I do for me.

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

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.

I love you but I got to love me more.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

This is the true wine of astonishment: "We are not over when we think we are.

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?

أكبر هَمٍّ يمكن للكِبَرأن يصيبنا به هو أن يطول أمده أكثر مما نحتمل

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day. What are you supposed to do with that? Try to remember it?

Indian Alzheimer's" - where you forget everything but the grudges.

Age isn't stealing from my grandmother; it's slowly unwinding her.

Thin, I think, that fabric between realities. Maybe minds aren't lost. Maybe they just slip through and find a different place to wander.

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.

Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

I don’t know how much longer I have to know you.

I can’t stand the thought of looking at you someday, this face I love, and not knowing who you are.

If God gave Dad Alzheimer’s, He’s got to understand when Dad forgets what church he belongs to.

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.

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.

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.

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.

And if, despite all this, you are someday diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, there are three lessons I’ve learned from my grandmother and Greg and the dozens of other people I’ve come to know living with this disease: Diagnosis

Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?

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.

The most mind-blowing results concern the aging process. People with a more positive attitude to their later years are less likely to develop hearing loss, frailty, and illness—and even Alzheimer’s disease—than people who associate aging with senility and disability. In a very real sense, we are as young as we feel inside.

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.

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.

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.

A mom’s hug lasts long after she lets go. ~Author Unknown

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.

Embracing a healing presence requires you to just be in the moment together.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The more glucose we deliver to our body, the more often glycation happens. Once a molecule is glycated, it's damaged forever - which is why you can't untoast a piece of bread. The long term consequences of glycated molecules range from wrinkles and cataracts to heart disease and Alzheimer's disease. Since browning is aging and aging is browning, slowing down the browning reaction in your body leads to a longer life.

A dementia-friendly society is not yet in reach.

To put it simply--our brain span should match our lifespan.

Never give up hope! If you do, you be dead already.

I miss myself." "I miss you too, Ali, so much." "I never planned to get like this." "I know.

Then he stared down at the twinkling lights and sobbed, "All my stars fell out of the sky.

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.

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.

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

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.

I think knowledge is a blessing, not a curse. This is especially true in the case of genetic knowledge. To understand the molecular nature of cancer for the first time, to diagnose and prevent Alzheimer’s disease, to discover the secrets of human history, to reconstruct the organisms that populated the pre-Cambrian seas – these seem to me to be immense blessings.

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.

Dr. Sacks treats each of his subjects—the amnesic fifty-year-old man who believes himself to be a young sailor in the Navy, the “disembodied” woman whose limbs have become alien to her, and of course the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat—with a deep respect for the unique individual living beneath the disorder. These tales inspire awe and empathy, allowing the reader to enter the uncanny worlds of those with autism, Alzheimer's, Tourette's syndrome, and other unfathomable neurological conditions. “One of the great clinical writers of the 20th century” (The New York Times), Dr. Sacks brings to vivid life some of the most fundamental questions about identity and the human mind.

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

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.

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.

Diagnosis doesn't mean you are dying tomorrow. Keep living. You won't lose your emotional memory. You'll still be capable of understanding love and joy. You might not remember what I said 5 minutes ago or even who I am but you'll remember how I made you feel. You are more than what you can remember.

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.

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.

Without the aid of the visual cues of the person she talked to, conversations on the phone often baffled her. Words sometimes ran together, abrupt changes in topic were difficult for her to anticipate and follow, and her comprehension suffered. Although writing presented its own set of problems, she could keep them hidden from discovery because she wasn't restricted to real-time responding.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Elevated blood sugar stirs up inflammation in the bloodstream, as excess sugar can be toxic if it’s not swept up and used by cells. It also triggers a reaction called glycation—the biological process by which sugar binds to proteins and certain fats, resulting in deformed molecules that don’t function well. These sugar proteins are technically called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). The body does not recognize AGEs as normal, so they set off inflammatory reactions. In the brain, sugar molecules and brain proteins combine to produce lethal new structures that contribute to the degeneration of the brain and its functioning. The relationship between poor blood sugar control and Alzheimer’s disease in particular is so strong that researchers are now calling Alzheimer’s disease type-3 diabetes.14

Dear Stephen,’ he begins. ‘This is a difficult letter to write, but I know it will be a great deal more difficult to read. I will come straight to it. I believe you are in the early stages of dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s.’ Elizabeth can hear her heart beating through her chest. Who on earth has chosen to shatter their privacy this way? Who even knows? Her friends? Has one of them written? They wouldn’t dare, not without asking. Not Ibrahim, surely? He might dare. ‘I am not an expert, but it is something I have been looking into. You are forgetting things, and you are getting confused. I know full well what you will say – “But I’ve always forgotten things. I’ve always been confused!” – and you are right, of course, but this, Stephen, is of a different order. Something is not right with you, and everything I read points in just one direction.’ ‘Stephen,’ says Elizabeth, but he gently gestures for hush. ‘You must also know that dementia points in just one direction. Once you start to descend the slope, and please believe me when I say you have started, there is no return. There may be footholds here and there, there may be ledges on which to rest, and the view may still be beautiful from time to time, but you will not clamber back up.’ ‘Stephen, who wrote you this letter?’ Elizabeth asks. Stephen holds up a finger, asking her to be patient a few moments more. Elizabeth’s fury is decreasing. The letter is something she should have written to him herself. This should not have been left to a stranger. Stephen starts

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.

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.