Getting the word out

The last ten days have been busy, but in a good way.  As I described in the last post, Lois and I were interviewed on live radio at the Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) radio station on June 18. Then on June 22, Lois and I joined up with my friend and neurologist Dr. Joe Quinn after screening of the documentary film A Tattoo On My Brain to answer questions submitted in advance from audience members. The screening of the film and our panel discussion was a part of the annual Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Alumni Day. The event was held in the Old Library Auditorium, and over 200 people attended. It was a nostalgic event for me. When I was a neurology resident at OHSU from 1986 to 1989, the old library was then just the only library. This was before easy internet use.  We had to submit literature search requests to the library staff. I’m not sure of the exact year, but I recall getting infected with my first malware caught from one of the library computers. I don’t think I have been back to the Old Library Auditorium since the 1980s. It was great to return to the old building and the many friends and colleagues who connected me to the past. Finally, on June 28, I got a heads up from Rita Rubin, the senior medical writer at JAMA. On May 29, she interviewed me for a JAMA article and podcast. She had estimated that it would go live in mid-July, but it got bumped up and was released last Friday, June 28. As of today, there have been over 30,000 views, just three days after publication.

My goal in all of these interviews, in writing about Alzheimer’s in this blog and in the two books I have written, has been to raise awareness of our current understanding of Alzheimer’s disease.  For example, it is not a rapidly progressive disease that kills within eight to ten years as we used to think. Rather it slowly progresses as extracellular amyloid plaques start to appear in the brain up to 20 years before there are any symptoms suggestive of dementia. The intracellular tau-containing neurofibrillary tangles appear later but still at least several years before measurable cognitive impairment. So Alzheimer’s disease measured from first deposition of amyloid plaques to death typically lasts about 30 years. Life style modifications such as switching to a Mediterranean diet, getting regular aerobic exercise, staying socially and intellectually, getting at least 7 ½ hours of sleep, and controlling cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, obesity and smoking can all slow the progression of the disease and even decrease the chance of having symptomatic Alzheimer’s dementia during a normal lifetime.