Aging With Grace, The Nun's Study, David Snowdon, Ph.D.

Aging With Grace is the assigned book for a portion of a sociology class I will be participating in over the next two weeks. The teacher of the class at the community college, has invited members of the adult learning division to come to classes and participate in discussions with her students. I have read newspapers reports about the Nun's Study for many years so the book held few surprises for me although it covered the many steps and iterations of the study which is ongoing. A great deal of valuable epidemiological and physiological information about Alzheimer's has come out of this study. The teaching nuns in several sister houses from Minneapolis to Baltimore and several cities in between, not only agreed to annual batteries of tests but they also agreed to allow their brains to be autopsied at their death. The later is the most remarkable part of the the study because evidence of Alzheimer's plaques and tangles in the brain can be correlated with the mental functioning, and, in fact with life histories because the sisterhood maintained very complete records.

What did they find? As many questions as answers. They found some brains with serious Alzheimer's evidence belonged to women who had no Alzheimer's symptoms even into their 80s and 90s, and they found women with full blown Alzheimer's symtpoms who had very little brain evidence. They found that having been read aloud to as children seemed to confer the ability to write complex sentences on their entrance essays and that those women had less disease later in life; but those also were usually the women with higher education, with multiple degrees. They did not find that any particular foods confered brain health. And much more. Dr. Snowdon writes for the layperson in this book. He points out how evidence shifts and that the many conflicting reports in general literature is rarely useful.

The only area he has apparently not considered about these women who generally live well over 70, is whether their stable and spiritual life style had an effect on both longevity and continued mental acuity. The nuns would have to be compared to a matched cohort [one thinks of the well known Framingham study] of people living "ordinary" lifes. I personally suspect their religious practices and the freedom from the complexities of typical family life are powerful factors. Most of us, of course, are not nuns and our lives have sets of emotional ups and downs their lives do not.

I will be curious not only how the teacher handles the classes but also what the students' input will be as well as what my peers' input will be. I think it is a good idea to let students interact with older people, especially if they are going to be socioogists and may well have clients who are older. As Snowdon, himself writes at the outset of the study, he was often surprised that the women belied his stereotypes of aging. There are a lot of sterotypes that need shattering.

Alzheimer's Disease

It's one of the monsters that hide under the beds of those with a heavy number of years on their shoulders; it comes out between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m. to waft it's "what ifs" around a wakeful brain. It's on my mind not because it's one of my personal ghoulies but because I'm spent many hours at work this week listening to tapes of people who are caregivers. I do not have answers but from what I hear I have ideas -- one is that we need medical education and also some emotional education. It's now available online for those who are even minimally computer literate -- but so many people are afraid to look up medical info. They think it'll be over their heads. Some sites are just that but there are informational organizations for nearly every disease with easy to understand information. Plus there are support groups in most locations where a facilitator can pass on helpful suggestions; and other can share their frustrations and findgins.

We've been told for too long that knowledge of our physical and mental workings is something for professionals. Thank heavens there are professionals who learn more all the time, but it's OUR bodies and minds. We must be responsible toward ourselves and respect the physical beings we are. I am deeply pained by the ignorance I've been listening to -- pained because ignorance brings on fear and confusion and pain for both patient and caregiver. We have to stop thinking a mental problem is shameful -- one daughter of a patient could not say the word Alzheimer's, she said 'memory issues," although she knew the word well enough. It's not shameful, it's a real physical disease. Other physical diseases make people act strange also but in different ways, that's often accepted.

People are saying, I don't know why she [the patient] acts this way, she was never like this. It's only my theory and I don't think doctors agree with me, but I think that as other veneer goes we become the children we were -- maybe sweet and shy, maybe angry and spiteful and selfish, maybe a spectrum of all those things that we were and then learned to overcome to live among civilized, adults. It's hard to accept that the sweet gramma or grampa can become a selfish, angry child -- but remember that we all had to be taught how to act around others.

Most of us learned that very, very well. Most of us are genuinely likable people, but we probably all went through the "terrible twos" and had there was no reasoning with those brats that we once were. Happily our brains matured and we learned to "be nice." If the brain's deteriorate and the civilization wears away like week old fingernail polish, it doesn't mean the person has become someone else. We are born human and we never stop being human. We need to learn true respect for all sensate beings, all humans first, all animals too, fish, bugs, even trees and plants, all living things. If we have that respect we will do what we can to make the world we live in better for all of us. It takes heart and then it takes education in that virtue called loving kindness that comes from understand others are just as human as we are.

Well, those were my rambling thoughts in the quiet moments after I have come to know a few people dealing with their ill parents, sighing a lot, mumbling a lot, sounding like people in a small row boat on a large lake already caught in a rainstorm and wondering what they'll do if there's hail or lightening.