Posted on 04/08/2009 4:55:11 PM PDT by Canticle_of_Deborah
Millions of golf enthusiasts who will watch the Masters Tournament this weekend have waxed endlessly about the game's mystical power and its hold on the human mind. A handful of people with Alzheimer's disease, no longer able to dress or nourish themselves without assistance, are proving them right.
--snip--
Anyone who has dealt with people suffering from mid- to late-stage Alzheimer's knows how difficult it can be to transport someone from fear and confusion to contentment and lucidity. But at Silverado, caregivers have stumbled onto a technique that works nearly every time -- a golf outing. They run through a series of putting drills, knocking the ball around with the wonder of small children playing the game for the first time, which is how many of them experience it each week. For those who played the game when they were younger, swinging a club often sparks a startling transformation, however fleeting, that can make them seem like regular old folks again.
Experts in Alzheimer's say these weekly golf outings illustrate an individualized method of an increasingly popular treatment known as behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy has been around for more than a decade, but personalizing the treatment to a patient's interests is less common. Rather than providing the same series of experiences to every patient, caregivers have begun to search for activities patients enjoyed when they were younger, and to allow the patients to experience them again.
"This is motor memory for these people, and usually you don't lose that," said Carl Cotman, a professor of neurology at the University of California at Irvine. Dr. Cotman, who has done research on treatment programs at assisted-living facilities throughout the country, said structured, individually focused experiences, especially ones that include off-site exercise like the golf outing, are rare.
--snip--
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
ping
Callaway
My friend recently died of Alzheimer’s.
He was VERY into horses. And he was very rich, and transported his horses back and forth each year between his homes in Michigan and Florida.
In Florida, he played polo with the rich and famous, even playing against Prince Charles once.
He still had horses at his property in his waning years of Alzheimer’s. Of course horses are too dangerous for someone like that to ride. So he could only look.
And although he loved horses, he would never go near them. They would make him angry when he got close to them... so angry he would push and pinch the person next to him.
I think the memory of riding horses was too much for him to handle.
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Lord, don’t let me die like that. Take me quick when it’s that time. (And it won’t be time for a LONG LONG while)
Now that’s just brilliant! Most Alzheimer’s patients DO remember things from many years ago, so it’s no wonder that if they were golfers before, it could come back to them quickly, even in the later stages of the disease.
Some day they’ll plant all of us old FReepers in front of a keyboard with “Ash Alerts” on the screen. That’ll get us all energized and focused again.
So sad. But with someone at his side, walking the horse, like they do with disabled children, he could have at least sat in the saddle and walked around the corral. Maybe that would have made him less bitter and combative.
I'm only mildly forgetful, so Mini Golf helps.
/johnny
Mr. Carolina, you caused me to notice that Iron Martin is about to pass his Ten Year mark here. Congrats Martin!
and to your eleven of course!
thanks, bfl
HHHMMMMM....
Ping
The father of a friend had Alzheimer. He could play golf and did. He would also get in his car and end up away from home and go the the insurance company where he was known and they would see he got home.
He seemed well at the golf level but not at the getting around level.
Stanford University is running a distributed computing effort called Folding@home, which allows users to run a simulation of protein folding on our computers. Currently well over 420,000 computers are crunching the simulation trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's Disease, along with other diseases that are related to misfolded proteins (prions).
Please consider joining the effort as part of team 36120 - Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan. We keep about 200 active FReeprs and friends running the simulation on around 1,000 computers and Playstation 3.
Look here for more info:
How does it work?: You download a safe, tested program (see link below) that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.
Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.
How do I get started folding for Team FreeRepublic?:
1.) Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page (Folding@home Client Download). Type in your desired user-name.
2.) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic!
3.) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.
How can my computer help? Even if they were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Stanford still wouldn't have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people's desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.
There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.
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Hey DUmmies, can't ya'll post a new thread at least once a year?
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I just reached 2 million points today. The team has been doing a good job of maintaining our overall rank, but we’re going to need some extra help in the next few months.
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