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Medical Experts See 'Gross Signs Of Dementia' Whenever Trump Speaks

Medical Experts See 'Gross Signs Of Dementia' Whenever Trump Speaks

Right-have media outlets have been obsessed with 81-year-old President Joe Biden's age, often conflating his gaffes with mental impairment while portraying 77-year-old Donald Trump as youthful and energetic — and either ignoring or downplaying Trump's verbal difficulties, such as confusing former South Carolina Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) during a recent speech.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega makes a Biden/Trump comparison in an article published on March 7 and reports that Trump's problems, according to medical experts, are much worse.

"Whatever one may think of Donald Trump the political leader, and all of the evil and vile things he has done in that capacity, he is a human being who appears to be in crisis," DeVega warns. "Moreover, that Donald Trump is leading President Biden in the polls and has a real chance of becoming the next president of the United States should be a source of great alarm for anyone who claims to care about the wellbeing of the country and its future."

One of the Salon interviewees quoted in DeVega's report is Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Gartner told Salon, "Not enough people are sounding the alarm that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains: Biden's brain is aging, Trump's brain is dementing."

Harry Segal of Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical School notes that Trump's campaign speeches have been increasingly "erratic."

Segal told Salon, "In the past six months, Trump's rallies are filled with strange lapses of logic. He has confused Biden with (Barack) Obama, spoke of World War 2, and has lapsed into bewildering digressions that are hard to follow. Only this weekend, he said, 'We have languages coming into our country that no one can speak' — a strange grasping for meaning, bordering on neologism. At other times, he seems to get lost in the middle of a sentence."

Vincent Greenwood, executive director of the Washington Center For Cognitive Therapy, argues that Trump is showing "confusion with increasing regularity."

Greenwood told Salon, "We all stumble over and mispronounce words occasionally. This is not what is going on with Trump. The incidence of these kinds of mistakes takes him into this realm of phonemic paraphasia, which is a sign of underlying brain damage, not just aging. Even when compared to his speech of a few years ago, you can observe a noticeable difference. When you compare it to his speech as a middle-aged man, the shift is radical and ominous."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Quick & Healthy: You Might Get Uncomfortably Numb

Quick & Healthy: You Might Get Uncomfortably Numb

“Quick & Healthy” offers some highlights from the world of health and wellness that you may have missed this week:

  • A breath test has shown promise for detecting the early signs of stomach cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, of the 24,590 U.S. patients who will be diagnosed with stomach cancer this year,10,720 will die. Since there is currently no non-invasive way to screen for stomach cancer, the new technology would fill a vital need.
  • Tylenol might do more than dull your pain; it might dull your capacity for joy as well. According to a recent study, researchers observed that among patients who had taken acetaminophen (Tylenol’s active ingredient), there was a “general blunting effect” on their ability to process either positive or negative emotions.
  • It’s possible vaccines will one day be a whole lot more painless. The ImmunoMatrix — one of the winners of Popular Science‘s 2015 Invention Awards — can deliver vaccine molecules via a patch on your skin. But this is about more than sparing people from their fear of needles. In situations where access to refrigeration, clean syringes, and proper biomedical waste disposal is scant, this simple patch could save a lot of lives.
  • The health risks of being overweight are well known and legion. It’s less often we hear about the risks of being underweight. But according to a new study, middle-aged people who are obese are actually less likely to develop dementia than those who are underweight. Being underweight is linked to higher dementia risk. Keep in mind that this directly contradicts several other studies, and also the typical caveats about correlation and causation. But it still gives you something to chew on.

Photo: Jerry Bowley via Flickr

For Those With Dementia, ‘Springing’ Power Of Attorney Debated

For Those With Dementia, ‘Springing’ Power Of Attorney Debated

By Tim Grant, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

Cognitive impairment can have a huge impact on a person’s ability to look after their own money.

When someone who is usually prompt about handling finances starts forgetting to pay bills, it’s a common warning sign of the beginning stages of dementia.

“Depending on the family dynamics, the person’s financial adviser may be the first to notice,” said Shomari Hearn, vice president of Palisades Hudson Financial Group in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

As a financial planner serving many older clients, Hearn sometimes works with people who are in the beginning stages of dementia. But even when they recognize and acknowledge their own declining capabilities, many people, even in the later stages of dementia, want to stay involved with their money.

“Giving someone else the power to take control of your affairs can be a bit scary,” Hearn said, which is why he recommends designing a health care proxy and power of attorney that only become effective once two physicians determine that you lack the capacity to make medical and financial decisions.

This type of power of attorney is called a “springing” power of attorney. Springing powers of attorney are not permitted in every state, but Pennsylvania does permit them.

In Florida, however, a power of attorney must be effective immediately. The person who has the power of attorney can act as an agent handling all of a person’s financial and legal affairs.

Dementia is not a disease, but rather a group of symptoms that affect mental tasks like memory and reasoning. Dementia can be caused by a variety of conditions, the most common of which is Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease of the brain that slowly impairs memory and cognitive function. The exact cause is unknown, and there is no cure. People who have it can easily get lost, forget things and have mood swings. Gradually they lose control of their bodily functions and usually die three to nine years after diagnosis, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The association, based in Chicago, estimates about 5.4 million Americans were living with the disease in 2014.

Not everyone sees the use of springing powers of attorney as the answer for such situations. Pittsburgh trusts and estate lawyer E. David Margolis does not recommend them.

“The challenge in using springing powers of attorney is, when do they spring?” he said. “You have to have a trigger, and it’s not always a clear line as to whether the facts and circumstances are there for it to trigger.”

Even having two physicians declare a person unfit is far from perfect, he said.

“Which physicians? And what if they take opposite points of view?” Margolis said. “One of them could know the principal well and (have) seen him over the years and has a good feel for his cognitive capacity. Another one who has only seen the person once or on a bad day could reach” a different conclusion.

“Powers of attorney are fraught with problems,” he said. “The fundamental problem is, the power is vested in the agent to act for the principal and, if the principal is not capable of oversight, the relationship relies on the loyalty and integrity of the agent. It’s hard to police a wayward agent who has power of attorney.”

Springing powers of attorney can potentially complicate matters even more at a time when a person’s health is in decline.

“Anyone they use as an agent should be someone they trust completely and unquestionably,” Margolis said. “I use a presently effective power of attorney. But the agent can’t use it unless they have it or the principal gives it to them or makes it available to the agent.”

In many cases, he said, the principal will allow an attorney to hold onto the signed power of attorney. The attorney would turn it over to the agent only when necessary.

For those in the beginning stages of dementia who chose to use a springing power of attorney, Hearn said they need to make sure their loved ones know about the documents and they should give copies of the executed documents to their appointed agents.

“It’s also a good idea to give copies of your health care proxy and living will to your health care providers,” he said. “If your doctors know your wishes ahead of time, it will be easier for them to help ensure that your wishes are respected.”

(c)2015 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Jeffrey Simms Photography via Flickr

Study: Dementia Patients Continue To Get Medications With Little To No Benefit

Study: Dementia Patients Continue To Get Medications With Little To No Benefit

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — More than half of nursing home patients who suffer severe dementia and are likely to die within a year or two are administered medications that offer little to no benefit and may cause pointless discomfort, a new study finds.

The latest research, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, demonstrates that physicians and families often continue the flow of medications well beyond the point at which they might prolong or enhance a patient’s life. The practice needlessly inflates the cost of caring for patients near the end of life, by an estimated $816 on average every 90 days.

Alzheimer’s disease drugs, which are virtually ineffective in patients with severe dementia, were the questionable medications most commonly given to nursing home patients with advanced disease. Prescriptions for Alzheimer’s drugs such as donepezil (better known by its commercial name, Aricept), rivastigmine (Exelon), and memantine (Namenda) are commonly initiated for patients in the early stages of the disease and may slow the rate at which they become unable to care for themselves. There’s little evidence they improve memory or mental performance in people in late stages of the disease, however.

Despite slim evidence for their use, those medications often cause side effects such as fainting and arrhythmia, which put patients at high risk of hip fractures, and urinary retention. More than a third of the study’s 5,406 nursing home residents with severe dementia were taking one or more of these medications.

About a quarter of the study’s subject population continued to take lipid-lowering medications – most typically statin drugs. There’s a very low likelihood that lipid-lowering drugs would lengthen life in such patients, many of whom would not be resuscitated were they to suffer a heart attack anyway. But recent studies suggest that as many as 1 in 5 patients taking a statin may suffer muscle fatigue or soreness, and the Food and Drug Administration has recently warned that in some older patients, statins may cause memory loss and confusion as well.

The latest study found regional and ethnic differences in the trend of such questionable prescribing: It was highest in the southern and central parts of the Western and Eastern United States, where as many as 65 percent of such patients took at least one drug of questionable value. And it was lowest in the Mid-Atlantic states, New England, and the mountain states of the West. Latinos with dementia were much more likely to get medications of questionable value — 65 percent did so — and the rate for non-Latino blacks and whites was roughly the same — about 52 percent.

Men were more likely than women to get such drugs: 62 percent vs. 52 percent got medically questionable medications. And although medications of questionable value went to 44 percent of patients in hospice care and nearly half who had do-not-resuscitate orders, these patients were much less likely than patients outside of the hospice system (55 percent) and those without do-not-resuscitate order (64 percent) to get them.

In an invited editorial, geriatrician and palliative care specialist Dr. Greg A. Sacks expressed hope that the latest findings will prompt physicians who treat any patients with limited time horizons to reconsider their prescribing practices.

If physicians initiated more detailed conversations with patients and their families about the goals that should guide a sick patient’s care, they would be less likely to prescribe many drugs and tests, wrote Sacks, of the Indiana University School of Medicine. The results would be reduced medical costs and patients whose limited life spans are spent more comfortably and are no shorter than those of patients who are needlessly medicated, Sacks wrote.

Photo: epSos.de via Flickr

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