I don’t want to end up like my parents. Any advice?

Stay active. I saw my grandparents and parent decline from sitting around .
volunteer and be involved in the community.
look into care options now. - look at minimum care places like condo or elderly communities but also home care options and assisted living . Be honest with when you adjust your living place. Not based on denial that your not they bad yet. Better to have assistance than fall or make dangerous choices.
Make a good plan now - estate planning TOD and financial, don’t burden your family on estate when they are grieving .

I spent the first two years, after our parents were both diagnosed with dementia, researching this miserable disease endlessly, read every blog, found all the forums, and found other folks, who helped me so much, with this forum being number one help, for honest, real truth talk.

Best advice I have is to have a disciplined lifestyle, one in which best health practices are followed, simple stuff that matters, that your doctors advise you to do, and just going to the doctor, every damn year, but doing whatever you want, is not the best plan. Actually drink water, move every day, and yes, we all hurt as we get older, some more than others, BUT you will feel better if you MOVE. And if you insist on not walking, doing your own chores, as much as possible, working out…..immobility will happen faster than you think. I watched it happened with my mom, and the mindset of my female elders, was to complain, more than to find solutions. My generation was expected to do it all and fabulously. Not my moms.

Do what you can to avoid high blood pressure, obesity, sleep apnea, high cholesterol, too much sugar and bad foods resulting in diabetes, and on and on and on. So much of it IS NOT out of one’s control, if one exercised and lived with some thought, toward their health.

I NEVER share my opinion on any of this, with my full-time caregiving sister or parents, of course, cause it helps no one now. They made their lifestyle choices, and are now imprisoned by them. Dad is not immobile or in as bad of shape, but his love, is so amazingly deep for mom, he refuses to leave her side to do anything, with anyone. He just stays with her every single minute, cause her self confidence has been affected. When one cannot trust their body to support them, cannot move the way they used to be able to, that can cause deep neediness, and it has in our mom. It is very hard to witness, and has motivated me, the eldest, to double down on taking care of myself.

My husband and I have 42 years together, and we watch each other’s back, and hold each other accountable, for our health and how we live. I began that journey at age 24, getting sober and staying sober, so disciplined living became natural to me, talking with others to solve problems, sharing about my deepest problems, fears, insecurities, anything! Not normal in my family, of folks so constipated in their inability to share with each other, that it has rendered us silent at this point. This memory loss and poor health path with our elders is not easy, is tough and mind numbingly depressing. All of it is out of my control, as I don’t control how my caregiving sister handles anything.

Only recently have I been able to let go of the guilt in my head and heart, that I have no reason to feel, as I did nothing wrong, except have parents who aged badly. Who basically gave up. But that guilt hung over me like a bad nightmare, gone today.

So for me, not my lifestyle. I am not going to stop doing for myself, not going to zone in on one of our kids, and groom them to be our old age slaves. No, I get up and do the things that confuse me, figure out my own technology, keep doing the scary things that are not in my comfort zone, and we do our own chores, work out, and give each other grace to fall apart as well. My husband lost his mom
to Alzeheimers, and bad family dynamics, as well, so we have had this crap in our world for a long time. His parents were older than mine by ten years.

I’m sorry for losing focus. Last thought, do not feel you are resigned to “your fate”. Nope, if this is truly plain old run of the mill dementia, not a specialty variety, like Lewy Body, or early onset ALZ, just do your best to stay healthy….without all the pills. Actually do the work to have your best health. It is not the easiest path. But it will help avoid how my folks live. So worth it. I live my parents with all my heart, but their choices were not wise. Sadly.

Hmmm… Everyday above ground is a “ good” day😊.
We can not predict our future!
Plan to stay active, eat healthy, stay mentally focused, live a lot and laugh a lot more!
I suppose it’s fortunate for some of us and unfortunate for others that we share our parents genes! It may give us some advice as to how we may age but, even still everyone is so very different .
I say just live for today because tomorrow will take care of itself. Throw that fearful thinking to the wind and let our Creator handle it!!
Continue to do your best to care for your loved ones.
Wishing you the best😊

mynameishappy: Be your own patient advocate, e.g. have a voice for physicians and specialists. I.e. When my mother's retinologist gave her way too many injections in the eyes, which caused major, irreparable scaring, she remained silent.

Eat healthy, get daily exercise, manage stress, develop healthy relationships - all the things that lead to a healthy body, mind and life. It seems that there is a cumulative effect when it comes to heart disease, strokes, and Alzheimer's disease. That healthy lifestyle will slow down chances of having the decline your parents are having.

In addition, get into the routine of seeing your doctor(s) regularly for health screenings - labs, eyes, hearing, annual physical... Take the medications and advice that they prescribe as indicated.

Follow all the the great advice here about eating healthy, exercising, keeping up with your doctors’ appointments, etc. Another important fact is to make sure that you have long-term care insurance to take care of you when you reach the ripe old age as your parents so you will not become a financial strain on your wife.

Hi, I am 39 yrs old, and THIS question bugs me daily.... Mother (72) is in pallative care stage for multiple issues, CKD, Stroke, Cancer and Heart issues. Dad (75) is in nursing home with early stages of dementia, and his family has a long history of mental illnesses. I just got married, and cannot bring myself to want children approaching 40s, because I'm afraid of the responsibility and cannot imagine how tiring it will be to raise children amidst my parents' decline.
Years of family struggles and arguments have worn my heart down. Fear of a phone call informing mom/dad has fallen/ill etc is there daily and The worries of what is to come is making me more sick. I feel so tired.. and afraid of today and tommorows.
Since the pandemic I saw friends and family die whether or not they were sick or perfectly fine. One thing for sure, we cannot fool proof our future. I witness friends who exercised, watched their diet, supplemented with expensive stuff, and still had a heart attack?
Honestly I think a calm, positive and balanced mind & heart is the key to good life. And us tired caregivers have exhausted some parts of our mind & heart beyond repair. Damage done. Going forward, calm down at every change you can.. As much as I want to hold my family together like a forest tree, most of the time i realise I'm only like a leaf going down a stream. Its so frustrating! especially when you see firm, majestic trees while you're taking a beating from the current! It is just like that.
We have short time on earth, we try our best to make it a good one. Just hope and pray that God gives us the same portion.
Take care Timothy :)

Hi Happy
   I am now so glad I did not wait for 'due course' and pursued my most early symptoms after a routine referral which included a less than needed sensitive brain scan found 'nothing remarkable' with my brain, because only when I pursued those increasing symptom episode, was I sent for a second scan that was sensitive enough to make the slight changes in my brain visible as such provide essential evidence for a pre dementia tipping point.
Since then rather than wait for it to progress I began searching the social route and recently found a community-based venue that allowed me to share my experience which included keeping a daily check on my own blood pressure which interestingly began to improve with that social contact.
By itself that may not seem exciting but given that the balance management exercises I have also been using now seem to be getting a positive result no way am I going to wait for new drugs that offer the hope of improvement when the verdict of medical science is that there is no one gene that can explain dementia or bipolar, rather I put my trust in the changes I am experiencing before I get past the tipping point of no return.
The way forward for me is now to continue to gather the evidence that as with many other conditions Dementia is best managed at most early stage by active self-management not by the miasma like resistance to change that history records obstructed the evidence that many infectious diseases are in fact water, not air born conditions.

While in recent years medical science has made great progress in gene therapy which continues to be a leading light in the continued search for a cure- just as miasma was in its day, yet as the BBC media reported today the medically incurable dementia condition can be managed better with positive results with just physical exercise and singing in group sessions.
respectfully Terry OAP

Sign up for research studies!
The Eli Lilly Trailblazer study will enable you to find out if you have the P-tau mutation, thought to be associated with an increased risk of developing dementia.
They take a blood sample to see if you qualify for the treatment part of the study.
If you don't have the P-Tau mutation - well that's comforting news.
If you do, then you can choose to be part of the treatment study - or not.

TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 3 – Lilly (trailblazer3study.com)

Not sure there is much you can do, genetics are genetics. Hopefully you won’t get it. There is a lot of promising research going on in this field, with better drugs on the horizon to keep cognition intact for as long as possible. Who knows where the science will be in a few more years. We can hope.

Make sure your wife has the financial support needed if you reach the point where you can no longer care for yourself and make your wishes clear to your wife now.

It's safe to say that NOBODY wants to wind up with Alzheimers or one of the dementias, but people are living to be 100 these days, so it's becoming par for the course. My mother ate well, no drugs, cigarettes, booze, etc, and STILL came down with vascular dementia in her 80s. What did she do 'wrong'? Nothing. Same with her sister who was dx'ed with Alzheimer's and suffered for 15 years with it, till she died at 97! Mom was 95 when she died.

We can plan and scheme about how we want to die, and wind up getting run over by a truck crossing the street.

We read here all the time about the lengths people go to in order to avoid getting Covid..........hiding out in their homes for years, not going out to do things, or seeing loved ones for fear of getting a virus with a 99% or better survival rate.

My philosophy is: Live life for TODAY and enjoy it to the fullest. Stop dwelling on death b/c it will come for us one way or another, and probably in a way we LEAST expect.

Have lots of pain killers & whiskey on hand in the event we DO get diagnosed with something horrible like ALS or AD. Then we get to determine how and when we make our exit from this life into the next.

That's the best we can do, and a great way not to be a huge burden to our children and leave them what that horrible load on their hands.

There's no way to predict our future health. To be in a facility to get the care you need can be determined by what your income is at the time you need that sort of help. Self pay for care is very, very expensive. Very little income could get you qualified for Medicaid nursing home bed. So, you can build your wealth to a point where you could afford to pay for the care, check in to getting a Long Term Care insurance plan (pricey), or you get what you get when the time arrives.

Another alternative would be to discuss selling out as you see a decline for yourself or your spouse and getting in to an Assisted Living facility for both of you. Use the money to live as long as you can there and move on to other facilities as the medical need increases. You both may want to talk to an elder attorney now to make a plan that works in your state.

I wrote my thesis on the power of food over cognitive decline so here is what I learned in a billion academic paper and studies:
The best protection for your brain (and health in general) is the following:
Try to follow a Mediterranean diet. fatty fish, chicken, olive oil, LOTS of green vegetables. Keep sugar low, processed food low and alcohol low. Don' t smoke- all these are bad for your brain and other health.
Turmeric is really good for you, brain and body, it fights inflammation, the root of most ills.
Exercise daily, even better make it social exercise. Exercise that involves strengthening your balance is also important, balance diminishes as we age so maintaining and improving it is essential as falls are common in the elderly Social activity is also really important.
An active brain is more likely to stay that way so learn new things. Languages are the best but anything that you find challenging works
Keep having a purpose (having a young wife helps :)
MCT oil is also really good for your brain it is basically brain food. If you find your memory is not as good, it helps. Aging brains sometimes have difficulty using glucose as fuel, but not MCT oil
Deep fried food has a negative effect on your brain, there is a component in it AGE which damages your brain cells
Meditation is also anti aging. Meditation can be walking in nature, prayer, yoga, or just regular meditation.
Genetics are actually a smaller component than most think
Laugh often

My mother ate healthy (rarely processed, nor fried) was a healthy weight, walked daily, never drank, never smoked, read voraciously, did crossword puzzles, travelled, and had a large social circle. She has good overall physical health except for high cholesterol, which is driven by her body and not her diet. She is 97, in the late stage of dementia. Her mother lived to 83, her father, 91. Her siblings lived to 88+. They are/were of sound mind.

I am your age and wonder the same. I am suspicious that we have less influence over our outcomes than I’d hoped. And, even if we do everything right, life isn’t always fair.

Husband and I have decided to live for the best, but plan for the worst. Our wills are in order, our finances are figure-out-able, and we’re simplifying the load around our home. I am a stress eater (caregiving = enormous me) but we keep moving - walking daily, hiking, swimming, skating, etc. We plant trees to make things nicer for future generations.

Let go of that which you cannot control nor effect. Do not lose your sense of humour nor perspective. Do more of what makes your heart happy and care less about being judged by others. Be curious. Have fun. Be silly. Sing. Dance. Live well, being genuine to yourself.