Music and Alshimers

pdl20 · Post by **pdl20** » 7 Mar 2009 1:18 pm

We can joke about this but its really not funny.i lost my Mother last November and i saw her mind go away ,its a painful thing to see this happen to anyone ,it breaks your heart to look into their eyes and see that deer in the head light look.they don't remember you ,we need to push for more funding to find a cause and cure if thats even possible. Please

Charles Davidson · Post by **Charles Davidson** » 7 Mar 2009 2:30 pm

PDl20, I agree,when this thread started I was as GUILTY as anyone joking about this,I did'nt and am SURE no one else here meant any harm to anyone,Even tho no one in my family has ever suffered AD,My wife has had a lot of experience with AD patients on her job as an in home care nurse.it's devastating for the patient AND the family,We need to pray someday a cure will be found. DYKBC.

Susan Alcorn (deceased) · Post by **Susan Alcorn (deceased)** » 7 Mar 2009 4:26 pm

This thread may have gone on too long, but I've been meaning to put in my own two cents worth (hopefully without offending anyone).

My father who died recently had been for the past fifteen years or so been sliding into an Alzheimer-like dementia. It was heartbreaking to see this happening and also a little unnerving to see the early signs and wonder if this was something that may happen to me (that fear still haunts me).

My, perhaps misinformed, feeling is that the best thing to do is to stay physically and mentally active. To me this means not falling back on rote patterns that I'm used to (this applies also to my approach to music) and to maintain an intellectual curiosity. I love listening to Ray Price, the Beatles, etc. as much as anyone else, and I find that music very comforting, perhaps too comforting.

At times I have to force myself to listen to music that is "current" (and played by musicians much younger than me). It's difficult to do, but there is so much good music out there. It's heartening to see and listen to what younger musicians are doing in all sorts of genres -- there are musicians who can really play well, who are melodic (or blissfully non-melodic), who have fresh ideas, and who have a healthy respect for the roots of their music. I think if you maintain an open mind, you will find some things you really like, though it is not comfortable in the same was that listening to the same music you grew up with is -- perhaps this is what they meant in the article about Alzheimers.

As far as hip hop goes, there is much to dislike, and the misogynist bent of a lot of the songs I find personally offensive. However, there is a lot of good hip hop music as well. When I was in Philadelphia, I was very impressed with Mike Brenner's hip hop group Slo Mo -- incredibly musical. I found myself humming their songs all the way back to Baltimore.

I remember my parents couldn't stand rock and roll's thinly-veiled allusions to drugs, and sometimes I think we're guilty of the same knee jerk reactions with regard to hip hop, etc.

So, I think, to keep our minds intact while we are getting older (as all of us slowly are), stay active, find new things to like, learn another language or do the crosswords, and break out of our collective musical bubbles.

Just mho.

-- Susan

Bob Hoffnar · Post by **Bob Hoffnar** » 7 Mar 2009 5:15 pm

I just went to the memorial for a dear friend who passed due to Alzheimers. I'm not sure if by staying open minded and intellectually curious that he slowed the vicious disease. But I am sure he had a better life because of it.

Paul Graupp · Post by **Paul Graupp** » 8 Mar 2009 10:31 am

Susan: Your notes on current music are surely right on spot ! I remember how much my father dispised my choices in music and now I find myself doing the very same thing. I am going to try your outlook for some time and see if anything changes for me. At 77, I know something is going to get me sooner or later but I just don't know what or when...

Regrets, Paul

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 8 Mar 2009 11:15 am

To make it very clear - my post on the first page was not joking about Alzheimer's - I was making a comment on any study that ascribes cause and effect of one's music-listening habits and Alzheimer's. I admit that I don't know the inner details of the study, but I have seen an awful lot of (IMHO) very dubious claims in social and medical research, based on statistical data, about cause and effect. I think it is extremely difficult to determine if there is any non-spurious relationship like this, and if there is one, what is cause and what is effect.

I also agree that there is a lot of great music being made as we speak. I honestly don't see what any of this has to do with hip-hop or other modern music, except that there are quite a few people on this board who like to vent their spleen about it fairly frequently. My attitude is - if you don't like it, don't listen to it. I don't think that not liking a style of music implies closed-mindedness - but if the shoe fits ...

My personal experience is that - it seems to me - people I've seen who keep an open and active mind as they get older tend to stay sharp longer. This goes way beyond music. But my sample size is small, there are a huge number of complicating variables, and even if I believe the seeming correlation, I honestly wonder aloud which is cause and which is effect.

Jim Sliff · Post by **Jim Sliff** » 8 Mar 2009 7:39 pm

What Susan and Dave said.

Slightly off topic - what the heck does "DYKBC" means??

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 9 Mar 2009 12:02 pm

<bump>

Jeff Evans · Post by **Jeff Evans** » 9 Mar 2009 1:14 pm

Slightly off topic - what the heck does "DYKBC" means??

Darn Yappin' Kills Blissful Contentment

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 10 Mar 2009 6:06 am

In some ways it's most cruel to the people left behind. Alzheimer's basically killed my father - not his Alzheimer's but my mother's - watching her decline, having to put her in a home after 50 years of marriage. He died a few years after that, and she's still hanging on. My life is basically tied to staying in this town till she dies.... probably as good as anything I'd think up on my own, but the family wreckage is massive (go to a dementia ward sometime & watch the husbands visiting wives and vice-versa - maybe they'd appreciate a stand-up comedian).

As I understand it, it's primarily a function of plaque buildup in the neurons, which has both dietary and genetic influences. Keeping active (always) reduces fats in the blood, and keeping mentally active and refreshed has a proven effect in offsetting the worst symptoms - but whether that's physically reducing plaque formation is a wide-open and somewhat unlikely idea. Statins seem to help, but much more research could be done. Some glamour diseases tend to draw a share of funding disproportionate to the number of people they affect.

I do subscribe to the notion that a very large number of our "modern diseases" are just a function of outliving our bodies - cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer's, congestive heart failure never used to be any problem when the sabre-toothed tigers picked off the slow ones first. It's near-trippy that more Americans die of complications from being fat than starve to death, given that most of the 65 billion who came before us put chasing food as their #1 priority their whole lives long.

Charles Davidson · Post by **Charles Davidson** » 10 Mar 2009 12:47 pm

In regards to gangster rap.Maybe it's because I'm just an illiterate country boy,But I can't understand why some very intelligent,articulate,law abiding person could condone or defend Gangster rap,it's hardly a week goes by there is something on the news about these thugs being charged with gun violations,drugs,domestic violence,and they make millions spewing this vile crap to children,[don't think very YOUNG childeren are not exposed to it] Some 6 year olds can recite the words to this stuff.Young minds are indoctrinated into thinking it's COOL to murder a police officer,incest,rape, and women are good for nothing except for a man's pleasure,When someone like myself speaks out about this,WE are a villainous scoungrel that's trying to step on the thugs civil rights,At three am,when some punk drives by your home and the two thousand dollar sound system in his five hundrerd auto,rattles your walls,[who's civil rights are being violated ?] When a family man with young kids is at a red light,the punk pulls up next to him with his radio blasting,every other word is the F word.[WHO'S civil rights are being violated ?]Know I will get some flack for this,SPIN it anyway you can,but there is no LEGITIMATE defence. DYKBC.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 10 Mar 2009 2:36 pm

Charlie, I don't read anybody here defending violent gangsta rap - nobody, not a single poster. But how is gangsta rap remotely connected to any supposed relationship between modern music and Alzheimer's Disease? Are you suggesting that all modern music is equivalent to gangsta rap? That implication came across in the second part of the original post, but I think it's an absurd notion.

I really think that if anybody wants to bash gansta rap, it would make more sense to open up a separate thread about that and have at it directly. It's just confusing the blazes out of this one, which is - according to the thread title and first several sentences - about some type of supposed relationship between "listening to modern music and Alzheimer's Disease".

My opinions, as always.

Jim Sliff · Post by **Jim Sliff** » 10 Mar 2009 5:02 pm

It's just confusing the blazes out of this one, which is - according to the thread title and first several sentences - about some type of supposed relationship between "listening to modern music and Alzheimer's Disease".

Which also didn't say anything about rap music in particular.

The relationship between "older" music and Alzheimer's is still not clearly stated or background information provided in this thread, nor are "modern trends" defined in any way. Back to the original post:

She politely informed they had someone release results on a study, that said people who enjoy the older forms of music (i.e.) classic rock, classic country,big band,etc. are more likely to develop alshimers. Than people who listen to the current trends in music.

Somehow this thread got twisted into a "rap isn't music" Soapbox based on a third-hand statement from someone who hasn't bothered to find out what study he's talking about, or what "current trends" were used in the study.

Nobody is defending gangsta' rap (and that term was used later in the thread, as opposed to just "rap" earlier) as a personal listening preference; and one's opinion as to whether it qualifies as music or nor is totally irrelevant.

What would be interesting is if the person who started this thread did a little research and posted EXACTLY what the study covered, and a link to it if possible.

But complaints about musical styles are not relevant to the thread. I don't like Mariah Carey - so what? It's an opinion that is not relevant to the topic.

So - where's the study? What does it cover? THAT'S the important material, and my own searches have turned up nothing that back up the purported claims...in fact I find more information to the contrary.

So where ARE the facts?

Jeff Evans · Post by **Jeff Evans** » 10 Mar 2009 5:44 pm

. . . develop alshimers.

In North Carolina, I once saw a fellow who was developing the alshimers. Mountain alshimers . . . nice looking wood instruments, and the fellow could play them, too.

Charles Davidson · Post by **Charles Davidson** » 10 Mar 2009 5:57 pm

delete

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