Kendal at Home recently held a Healthy Aging Day on advance directives in honor of Advance Directives Month. You might be wondering if you need one, how it works and the differences between options. To help make things clearer, elder law attorney Carmen Verhosek from Wickens Herzer Panza has advice on common advance directive questions.
Scientists have discovered a neurodegenerative disease that mimics Alzheimer’s disease but doesn’t have aberrant proteins usually seen with the condition. Experts have dubbed this disease LATE, which stands for limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy and it seems to be caused by a different malfunctioning protein. Here’s what you should know about this discovery.
You’re sitting at home, enjoying a new book when the left side of your face begins to droop. You attempt to smile or move your facial muscles, but the left side of your face is paralyzed. Since you know the warning signs of stroke, you wonder if what you’re experiencing is the start of one. 
Bell’s Palsy, a condition that causes sudden, temporary weakness and at times paralysis on one side of the face, can often be confused with a stroke. Here’s what you should know about Bell’s Palsy.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), regular screenings beginning at age 50 are key to preventing colorectal cancer. These screenings are typically recommended until the age of 75, at a minimum. If you are between 76 and 85, the CDC suggests you discuss whether regular screenings are still needed with your doctor.
Risk factors for colon cancer include a family history of inherited colorectal cancer syndromes, or of colorectal polyps or cancer. If you’ve already experienced long-term inflammatory bowel disease, such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, or if you’ve already had colon polyps, then you’re considered to be at a higher risk to develop colon cancer, making the need for regular screenings even more important.
When you think about colon cancer screenings, you may automatically think of a colonoscopy — which is one form of screening. The goal of these screenings, according to MedlinePlus.gov, is to detect issues, such as polyps and early cancers, in the large intestine before cancer develops or spreads.
If you say that someone has a poor memory or is experiencing memory loss, what does that really mean? It could mean that someone struggles to remember what he or she just did, or it could mean it’s increasingly difficult for someone to recall what happened years ago, or even yesterday.
In reality, we have multiple types of memory with different experts categorizing them in different ways. VeryWellHealth.com takes a look at four types of memory, also discussing how dementia can impact memory types. This article focuses on sensory, short-term, long-term and working memories.
Advance directives are legal documents detailing your wishes about end-of-life care. They provide clarity about these issues to friends, family members, and medical professionals if you become too ill or hurt to express them.
A living will is an example of an advance directive, and it allows you to express your wishes about being fed by a tube, for example, or the use of breathing machines, or whether you’d like to be resuscitated if your heart ceased beating or you stopped breathing. A durable healthcare power of attorney allows you to name who should make a medical decision on your behalf if you can’t discuss issues yourself.
There are, not surprisingly, plenty of myths about advance care planning, and this post will myth-bust three of them.
When you head to the doctor for your annual physical, do they check your brain health along with your blood pressure and cholesterol? If your doctor overlooks your brain health examination, he or she is not alone. Less than half of the primary care doctors surveyed by the Alzheimer’s Association said they regularly screened patients above age 65 for dementia or cognitive decline.
Doctors and older adults agree screening for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are important, but can encounter roadblocks to the test — doctors are short on time for appointments, and many older adults may not have specific cognitive symptoms when they visit the doctor or know they should even have the assessment.
The Alzheimer’s Association also found doctors are not screening their older patient’s brain health because they’re waiting for the patient to bring their concerns up, which rarely happens thanks patient to fear, stigma around brain health, and a belief that patients would rather not know they have a cognitive disease.
What you eat can have a beneficial or a detrimental effect on your brain health. You may have heard that Mediterrean diet or low-carb diets can improve brain health and diets heavy in high glycemic foods can negatively impact 
brain health.
Because of this, researchers are considering diet’s role in reducing the risk and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
According to the new exercise guidelines provided by the federal government, adults should still exercise at moderate intensity for at least 150 to 300 minutes weekly. Moderate-intensity activities include swimming, cycling and brisk walking. For the first time in a decade, the government has updated its guidelines, publishing them in the journal JAMA in November 2018.
A new study reveals that when looking specifically at metabolism rates as a metric, women’s brains tend to remain younger than men’s, with females maintaining a higher rate of metabolism throughout their lives. This research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, in February 2019.
Because of this difference in metabolism rates, women maintain a younger brain age when compared to men’s, which means that women may be “better equipped to learn and be creative in later life,” according to NPR.org. Having said that, the article also noted that this is an average or typical experience, and not a universal one for women. In fact, some women experience a dramatic dip in their metabolism right around the time of menopause which can leave them more vulnerable to experiencing Alzheimer’s.
