This Flowering Plant May Hold Treatment For Alzheimer’s
A plant commonly found in Indian gardens could hold molecules to treat Alzheimer’s, a brain disease that severely affects behaviour and memory, said researchers in Bengaluru.
Alzheimer’s is typically caused by the corruption of a natural process. In the normal human brain, neurons synthesise a protein called amyloid beta, which begins its life as a solitary molecule. However, within people suffering from Alzheimers, these proteins undergo a process called aggregation, where they bunch up and turn into plaques.
In its aggregated form, amyloid beta can bind strongly to a receptor on nerve cells, setting into motion an intra-cellular process that erodes synapses with other nerve cells. The end result is cognitive impairment and often dementia.
In the study, researchers found that proteins from the common butterfly pea plant protected neurons against this aggregate formation. There was already substantial anecdotal information about the plants memory-enhancing properties.
Plants have hundreds of compounds that could be repurposed for the benefit of society but the first step is to find which ones have the potential for medicinal purposes, said Neha V Kalmankar, a PhD student at the National Centre for Biological Sciences and lead author of the study.
The Promise Garden Ceremony
Minutes before the walk begins, a Promise Garden Ceremony is held. Each participant holds a colored flower that highlights the different reasons for walking our connections to Alzheimers.
More:Alzheimer’s: Constant struggle for caregivers, patients
Blue for someone who is living with a diagnosis, yellow for a caregiver of someone with the disease, orange for an advocate/supporter and purple for someone who has lost a loved one to the disease.
These flowers symbolize a promise to remember, honor, care and fight for those living with Alzheimers and for the people who care for them.
During the ceremony, individuals step forward to raise a flower and others with the same color flower raise theirs as well.
Full Of Flowers: Ardmore Alzheimer’s Walk Returns To Central Park
More than 67,000 Oklahomans are currently living with condition listed as the sixth most prevalent cause of death in the United States: Alzheimers and dementia, according to the Alzheimers Association. Alzheimers is the most common form of dementia. It causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior and is not considered a normal part of aging.
“Like flowers we don’t stop when something gets in our way,” said Jessica Pfau, the emcee for the event as well as the executive director of Lighthouse Behavioral Wellness. “We keep pushing for that breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer’s and other dementias.”
The Ardmore Walk to End Alzheimers event to raise awareness and funds toward research for a cure, risk reduction and better quality care for those with the disease is held annually. Groups and individuals including teams from Cross Timbers Hospice, 1NB, Papaws Life Memories, Citizens Bank and Trust, Edward Jones, Complete OK, Tew End ALZ, Loyalists and Paschall-Santee generated just over $8,500 by Saturday morning.
Participants carry flowers, each symbolic of their determination to improve outcomes and for an end to the disease, of loved ones lost to Alzheimer’s, and for some, living with Alzheimer’s now.
Those taking part in the event last year did so remotely walking in their neighborhoods and raising funds entirely online due to COVID-19 concerns. This year, a hybrid of Walking from Home or participation in the in-person event was offered.
Don’t Miss: Can Aricept Make Dementia Worse
Three Stages Of Dementia
Stage 1 – This is the onset of dementia that involves short term memory loss, confusion, disorientation, forgetfulness, mood changes and anxiety. This stage usually lasts from 2 to 4 years.Stage 2 – In this stage, the Alzheimer’s patients suffer from restlessness, reduced memory, irritability, hallucinations, muscle spasms and incoherence. This stage lasts between 2 to 10 years.Stage 3 – This stage is the advanced stage marked by seizures, difficulty in swallowing, head injury, skin infections and incontinence in Alzheimer’s patients. This stage usually lasts from 1 to 3 years.
In an attempt to unravel treatment methods without side effects for this mental disease, studies reveal that herbs are pertinent for the early treatment of dementia and other neurological conditions. By going through existing literature, it is evident that an early treatment of dementia especially with herbs is necessary for preventing the disease from advancing to a devastating stage. As a result, individuals from the dementia lineages are highly recommended to incorporate natural preventive measures so as to prevent the onset of this disease.
The Flower Of Emotional Needs
The Dementia Friends badge and logo is a forget me not. What is its significance?
Tom Kitwood identified a number of fundamental psychological and social human needs. These human needs have to be met for us all, in order to maintain a good sense of well-being. He developed the idea of person-centred care.
Kitwoods model, shows that when caring for, and supporting people with dementia, we must remember six psychological needs: love, comfort, identity, occupation, inclusion, and attachment.
Everyone has these needs and when we care for someone who is living with dementia, we need to ensure that we take the time to fulfill these needs and be very mindful of them.
Love
Everybody needs to be loved and to love someone being loved and accepted is part of our need for survival, from when we are born. Love can range, from loving a person, an activity, a favourite meal/food, to loving God and feeling self-love.
Comfort
Feeling comfort is our need to be warm, dry and clean, having a full stomach and not feeling thirsty. Comfort also might mean to have quiet when we want or need it, to be free of pain, to have the freedom to move, and to have a sense of closeness, being able to bond with others.
Identity
We all have the need for personal identity from the clothes we choose to wear, the food we prefer, and the way we like our hair. These are all identifying factors that help us and others identify with who we are.
Occupation
Inclusion
Attachment
Read Also: What Is The Difference Between Dementia And Senility
Hundreds Gather At Haymarket Park For Walk To End Alzheimers
Six million people, including 35,000 people in Lincoln, are living with some form of Alzheimers disease.
LINCOLN, Neb. Six million people, including 35,000 in Lincoln, are living with some form of Alzheimers disease.
On Sunday, people gathered at Haymarket Park to raise awareness and money to find a cure to a disease that has impacted so many families.
To see all of the people that are here today and all of the flowers in the flower garden really makes me feel hopeful and empowered, said Tami Soper, whose mother, Ada Robinson, is living with Alzheimers.
Walk manager Carrie Dell says every person in attendance at the walk is invited to grab a colored flower pinwheel as a part of whats called the Promise Garden Ceremony to represent how Alzheimers has impacted them.
The purple flower is if youve lost someone to Alzheimers, the yellow flower is if youre caring for someone with Alzheimers, the orange flower is kind of universal for anyone who cares about the cause and then the blue flower is for people who are living with Alzheimers or dementia, Dell said.
Robinson, who was a beloved teacher at Clinton Elementary School for more than 30 years, was todays blue flower holder. She is namesake of a new elementary school in Lincoln thats set to open in 2022.
She and her daughter Tami say her passion for children and trying to live in the moment helps the family find fulfillment in each and every day.
Walk To End Alzheimers Flowers Tell Special Stories
At the Saturday, Nov. 3, Eastern Shore Walk to End Alzheimers in Salisbury, the impact of Alzheimers disease on the lives of Shore residents will be visually communicated with colored flowers.
Alzheimers is a fatal disease of the brain that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. It is the most common cause of dementia, a general term for the loss of memory and other abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life.
You May Like: What Color Ribbon Is Alzheimer’s
White Flowers A Symbol Of Hope For Alzheimer’s Diseas
The Alzheimers Association Logo
The Alzheimers Associations logo is a lesser known but still widely acknowledged symbol of the disease. This solid purple line is perfect if youre looking for a simple wordless tattoo. You will probably find that the only people who recognize the symbol are those whose lives have been touched by Alzheimers, and perhaps thats perfect for you. Or you can combine it with other words and images for a more complex tattoo story that may or may not be more clear to strangers. Its up to you!
Bonus idea: if youre into knots, try intertwining the purple ribbon and the Alzheimers Association symbol.
Don’t Miss: Does Bobby Knight Have Dementia
An Alchemical Angle The Phoenix
Before you furrow your brow at the suggestion that there could be an alchemical aspect to our question, notice that the Alzheimerâs Association describes its symbol in terms of the language of the duality of âpeople and science.â In a rough-and-ready way, alchemy has to do with transformation â specifically a sort of quasi-scientific transformation of human beings, allegorized as the turning of base metals into gold.
Speaking of gold, Dennis Hauck informs us that gold is symbolized by âthe sun, and gold was considered a king of concealed solar light. Sol is the King of alchemy, and his royal purple color is the indicator of gold particles in solution. â¦Pure colloidal gold â¦has a royal purple hue⦠Historically, colloidal gold has been found useful in cases of â¦nervous unbalance because it seems to help â¦stimulate the nerves.â
The Alzheimerâs Association is certainly aiming to facilitate the transformation of an Alzheimerâs-afflicted brain into a higher-functioning one. Is this broadly âalchemicalâ? Perhaps. Is this definitive? Hardly. Still, it is worth observing that alchemy is rife with references to purple.
As an aside, it is believed by some that âin Ancient Egypt, the bird concerned was the purple heronâ¦â.
Whatever its origination, the fabled phoenix came to symbolize a cycle of death and rebirth â through a kind of self-inflicted fire. Relatedly, purple is âalso a funereal colour â¦connected with death.â
The Stepwise Dosing Procedure
Start Low and Go Slow: The first step to finding your minimum effective dose is to establish a baseline dosage. Since many people report good results with CBD at low doses, we suggest you start with a minimal dose and slowly increase the dosage until you find results. Start with a small baseline dosage between 2-5mg, 2X or 3x daily .
Important Note: Typically, people decide to try CBD because of a specific condition, only to find it helps other areas of their body as well. Remember, your endocannabinoid system runs throughout the entire body at a cellular and sub-cellular level. CBD is a whole-body compound. When you start taking CBD for the first time, pay attention to everything going on in your body. Do not be surprised if you find various benefits from your dosage.
About Sleep: Often times, certain conditions or side-effects from medication can create insomnia. Sleep is essential to the bodies healing and recovery process. If sleep deprivation is an issue, you may want to consider weighting your dosage heavier at night to assist with a more sound sleep.
Also Check: What Color Represents Alzheimer’s
Walk To End Alzheimers Hits Home For Comfort Family
Susan Comfort, of Harrisonburg, holds a photo of her late husband, Duane, who died in January from Alzheimers. Susan and her family will participate in the Walk to End Alzheimers at James Madison University today.
- Jessica
Wetzler / DN-R
He was just a really positive person, brilliant, Susan Comfort says of her late husband, Duane.
- Contributed Photo
For every Walk to End Alzheimers, a participant is given a colored flower that represents their connection to the disease.
Blue flowers represent someone living with Alzheimers or dementia, yellow flowers correlate to someone supporting or caring for a person with Alzheimers and orange flowers show support to the Alzheimers Associations vision and cause.
Today, Susan Comfort and her family will receive a purple flower the color for those who have lost someone to the disease.
In January, Comforts husband, Duane, died after a nearly seven-year diagnosis of Alzheimers.
He was just a really positive person, brilliant, she said.
Duane loved black raspberry ice cream from Klines Dairy Bar, enjoyed espresso drinks and was well known for being the voice of Rosetta Stone, Comfort said.
People would recognize him from all over the world, she said. He had a beautiful voice and he loved to sing.
Sitting in the home they shared, Comfort said in Duanes final year she happily quit her job to care for him and, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, they shared a good year together.
We are so excited, she said.
White Flower Blooms At Walk To End Alzheimers
Symbolic flowers have long been part of the Walk to End Alzheimers, to be held Oct. 6 at Laishley Park in Punta Gorda.
Each flower has a color, and each color has a meaning: orange to represent support for the cause purple to symbolize a loved one lost to the disease yellow to denote a caregiver for someone with Alzheimers or dementia blue to indicate someone living with it.
Approximately 500 participated in last years event in Charlotte County.
Last year, Melissa Lockhart said, a new color was introduced: white to symbolize a cure.
Seeing it kind of gives you chills because weve never before had a flower to represent a cure, said Lockhart, chairwoman of the Charlotte County event for the second year.
The event is held annually in more than 600 communities nationwide. Its the worlds largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimers care, support and research. More than five million Americans are living with the disease, according to the Alzheimers Association.
Lockhart is the owner of Helping Hands of Southwest Florida, a private-duty, nonmedical, in-home care referral company in Punta Gorda. She is president of OCEAN , a coalition of public and private health, human and social service organizations that serves as a resource for Charlotte County seniors.
But working as an Alzheimers advocate is my passion, she said.
Its the only cause of death in the top 10 in America that cannot be prevented, cured or slowed.
Also Check: Ribbon For Dementia
Jouw Hulp Is Hard Nodig
- Walk to End Alzheimer’s events across the country feature the Promise Garden a hands-on, mission-focused activity that allows participants to raise flowers representing their promise to remember, honor, care and fight for those living with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers. The flowers, whic
- Working towards healthy aging by detecting and treating Alzheimer’s disease at the very early stages. One of the main focuses of the Flowers lab is understanding the impact of the glycoprotein, APOE, on the early pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and using this knowledge for the effective diagnosis and treatment of AD
Is Cannabis For Dementia Effective
According to researchers at Californias Salk Institute, the answer is an overwhelming YES. Their study has found evidence that cannabinoids such as THC and CBD could help remove dangerous dementia proteins from brain cells. Professor David Schubert led the study and in early 2017, he spoke of his frustration about the existing anti-marijuana laws that are preventing the plant from being studied in-depth.
In March 2017, he said that he submitted an application to the DEA in December 2016 to use weed extracts on mice for a different study but had received no response.
In the study, that was completed, Schuberts team used a tiny amount of synthetically developed cannabinoids and discovered that they helped with the removal of a harmful plaque associated with dementia.
The name of the protein is amyloid beta and the plaque it forms destroys nerve cells in the brain. This led scientists to believe that amyloid beta appears before the symptoms of Alzheimers.
Another study, by Aso et al. in 2015, gave mice that showed Alzheimers Disease symptoms a THC and CBD combo. They discovered that the mice displayed an improvement in learning skills and there was less evidence of amyloid beta clumps in their brains. The major issue is that there have been no widespread clinical trials to look into the effects of marijuana on dementia in human patients.
Recommended Reading: What Color Ribbon Is Alzheimer’s