Senior Assisted Living Blog

November marks National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month. According to the Alzheimer Association there are more than 5 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s and as many as 10 million family caregivers. In 2010, every 70 seconds someone in America develops Alzheimer’s. By 2050, there will be nearly a million new cases every year. The need for public awareness and research has never been more critical.

GreenTree at Mt. Vernon recently co-hosted a Special Memory Care Event with guest speaker Dr. John C. Morris, a leading researcher in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Morris is a distinguished professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and an international Memory Care specialist. He has authored or co-authored four books and more than 300 published articles, abstracts, and book chapters on dementia and other memory related diseases. See the recent article on stltoday.com featuring Dr. Morris -  Hunting For Early Signs of Alzheimer’s.

According to Dr. Morris, “scientists now know that Alzheimer’s attacks the brain long before people exhibit memory loss or cognitive decline. But the specifics are crucial because so far, drug after drug has failed to effectively treat Alzheimer’s in people who already show symptoms. Many scientists now think the problem may be that the drugs were given too late.”

Currently there are more potential new Alzheimer’s drug treatments in development and testing than ever before. The goal of these new drugs is to treat the underlying causes of Alzheimer’s before the symptoms begin to manifest themselves in each person.