reintro Its a big subject, about 8 min read.
EMBRACING THE REALITY
'Embracing
the reality' as when Natalie speaks on
U tube,
using
a bookcase to communicate what the Alzheimer Dementia experience
of loosing ones short or long term memory actually
feels
like, by
saying
simply..'you
have to put your own sense of normality aside and get inside how the
Alzheimer
person experiences the reality,
of
there own past in the present day-and
that is a big ask even for some health workers.
While
the bookcase allegory is an excellent communication tool for
explaining the long and short term memory problems, a meaningful one
is also needed to help create a needed consensus for the sun downer
effect that some researchers still deny even exists, yet they
recognise the bigger version of it called seasonal affective disorder
or SAD for short.
Why the
contradiction when the sun downer is so endemic in dementia? Its just
a short daily version of the long seasonal
one that happens as the days get shorter and the nights get
longer from the Autumn equinox when the hypothalamus is just as
sensitive to loss of daylight as night approaches and temperature
falls and that is when melatonin normally increases as cortisol &
temperature level falls below the rise of melatonin level, in that
respect our hormones have there own metabolic equinox as daylight
ends with dusk as temperature falls, because light and external
temperature both trigger the same hypothalamus to maintain core body
temperature above the hypothermia threshold.
A
pause here
for thought:
'To
put ones own
sense of normality aside and get inside how the AZ DM person
experiences the reality
of
there own past in the present day'
we
need something else to make the DM experience as
real for
us
as the
book
case is.
The
DM
Experience
is
like being
a
prisoner up
shut
up
in a cell most
of the day with no freedom to be part of normal society, trapped in
a small isolation
cell
with no way out and
no one to
talk to who
really understands who
you
are,
is
as good as it gets to communicate what alzheimers actually
feels
like.
Such
was the experience of the Irish
prisoners when
Irish people were
charged
with terrorism and
locked
away out of
normal
society by
the state and such was there desperation for
their status to
be heard that they went on hunger strikes
which
progressed
into
the infamous dirty protest as
a
last
resort
empowerment
statement,
to
say 'So
this
is what you really
think
of me?..
OK
I know
what you think of me, but
whatever you think I am a human being, I
am not
just part
of
the politically correct great stench
of
the 20th
century, that
politicians still prefer to move away from.
Yes,
as
the UN said, that terrible stench was encouraged by the prisoners
themselves, however
a
visiting Archbishop did
not let the historical roots go
unnoticed.
The
comparison here
is
not
only refusing
to eat and smearing oneself
and your room with your own excrement -which
is
not
unusual
behaviour for
people with dementia, yet
the
comparison is just as valid for the
21st
century extreme
austerity
policy
and
the root
causes of
its failure are
highlighted
in
the comments of the
visiting church leader who
said simply...Anyone
with the least knowledge of Irish history knows how deeply this
attitude is in our country's past
..
when
the, Archbishop of Armagh visited the prison in
1978 he
condemned the conditions there: 'One
would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone
a human being. The nearest approach to it that I have seen was the
spectacle of hundreds of homeless people living in the sewer pipes in
the slums of Calcutta'. He
also
said,
'despite
the conditions the morale of the prisoners was high':
The
Cardinal also noted, it seems they prefer to face death rather than
to submit to being classed as criminals. Anyone with the least
knowledge of Irish history knows how deeply this attitude is in our
country's past. (Full
article on WIKIPEDIA)
His
words
put a finger right on the long
dead corpse
of the problem, so given the
rising
stench of
the homeless
community,
why
I
have
to wonder,
when
he gave full credit to the ongoing political failures, why did he not
also give the late
20th
century nuns
study the full credit it deserves, for
its practical demonstration of the
potential,
of
the
family centered well
being
ethos, to normalize dementia symptoms?
I
may just as well ask if all researchers want to realize the much
coveted integration of all services, why not take more seriously the
consensus Hippocrates offered thousands of years ago and
give the natural circadian rhythm that
all humankind are
subject to,
the respect it deserves, or
as Hippocrates puts it:
'
If
anyone wants to study the science of medicine they should first look
at what the seasons say '
After
seeing the recent BBC 4 eugenics documentary I found the answer to my
question was clearly given as a kings college spokesperson summed up
the eugenic issue as being what I now understand to be the nature or
nurture debate.
Negative
eugenics argues for the ultimate medical
cure of disability,
the positive eugenic argument differs in its
preference, for the educational normalization of disability, meaning an education
that understands that any negative inherent dysfunctional
attitudes,
have been
imprinted
in the domestic socialization environment and as such they can be
reprogrammed.
For
the positive eugenic method to function researchers could take a
lesson from the 20th
century vilification of all cholesterol being bad, until more
recently it was discovered that cholesterol can be bad or good for
you, depending on if you have enough good cholesterol.
That
lesson has been overlooked by the enthusiasm about the recent
discovery of brown fat (BAT) being the healthy one that burns up the
calories stored in to much white fat (WAT)
and the essential role of WAT being villified
and left
aside.
The
Kings spokesperson spoke briefly about the difference between nature
and nurture, negative eugenics takes the responsibility away from
parents while positive eugenics reinforces parental responsibility to
nurture our
children with the same positive well being result as the nuns study
has
documented
for us.
It
is not realistic to argue negative eugenics when in practice it
actively reinforces the educational underachievement of people with
numeracy difficulty, by refusing to fund the inclusion of the most
basic excel techniques in basic computing for work courses, where its
technology could have a big impact on the prevention of homelessness.
Minister
Matthew Hancock has put on public record his gratitude for the
essential role the spellchecker technology has had in optimizing his
own career by the
minimization of his dyslexia. If
his enthusiasum had not been so focussed on higher education he would
soon enough have noticed the funding provided for lower education has
not been applied for the provision of basic excel techniques where it
is most needed. Its
not eugenic
rocket
science its common sense.
