Amy and I spent two weeks at an assisted living facility in Seattle where we devoted ten days to engaging in four activities from a possible five. The idea was to measure how much these activities could influence the progress of Alzheimer's disease, specifically with respect to quality of life, mood, self-efficacy, and memory-related activities of daily living.
The five possible activities involved memory compensation training (calendar and checklists), computerized cognitive training (video games), yoga, patient and partner support groups, and wellness education. The program was conducted at different sites across the country, and each trial eliminated one of the activities. By measuring changes in cognition over an 18 month period (following the initial two weeks), relative effects of the different activities could be measured by knowing which were omitted. Our group omitted the computer games.
We really enjoyed our participation, but I got kicked out of the study when I started on the insulin study. We met really nice people, and I learned a lot.
In a recent email exchange with the neuropsychologist who was principal investigator for our site, she told me about publication of the study results. (Dr. Phatak was my first neuropsychologist at Harborview and is a reviewer on both editions of Beating the Dementia Monster.) I was a little surprised at the outcome. You can read the results, but my takeaways were:
- Playing video games doesn't improve mood or cognition impaired by Alzheimer's disease. Other research suggests that it's the same with crossword puzzles and Sudoku.
- Yoga does help measurably. This surprised me.
- Wellness education did the most to improve mood. Mood is a factor in the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
- Support groups were helpful with improving quality of life.
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