Last week Whitney Thompson and Amy Remmel joined us to tell us talk about the Alzheimer’s Association. Some 20,000 Montanans have Alzheimers and nearly 50,000 people, usually family members, provide care for them. Providing care can be very taxing and the Alzheimer’s Association exists to help not only those who have the disease and provide care today but also to eliminate Alzheimer’s and dementia in the future through research, early detection, and prevention.
Between 60-80% of people with dementia have Alzheimer’s, but dementia has other causes as well. Individuals between 75 and 84 years old comprise the most heavily hit Alzheimer’s age group (45%), with persons over 85 representing 36% of the total.
There are ten warning signs of Alzheimer’s, most of them pretty well known: memory loss disrupting daily life, difficulty performing familiar tasks, confusion with time and place, a new difficulty with written or spoken words, etc. Less well-known are the impacts. One in three Americans dies with Alzheimer’s or dementia, more than the number who die with breast cancer or prostate cancer combined. Sixteen million Americans provide unpaid care for people with Alzheimer’s or dementia, logging hours which, if compensated, would required $244 billion a year. Half of primary care physicians believe that the medical profession is not adequately prepared for the increasing impacts of more and more Americans with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Whitney and Amy encouraged people with questions to take advantage of the 24/7 hotline at 800-272-3900. They also encouraged local Rotarians to be as active in helping reduce the impact of Alzheimers as Rotary is nationally. Nationally, Rotary is ranked as a gold team.
You can raise awareness by participating in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021. Visit the website Alz.org/walk to participate. You can also simply donate to the Alzheimer’s Association. It’s an important effort to solve a problem most families have faced or will face until early detection, prevention, and a cure provide stronger alternatives. If you’d like to learn more, contact Whitney at wthomspon@alz.org.
