The "Fog of Aging"

Monday, February 25, 2008

The Fog of Aging

(The term "fog of war" refers to the uncertainty that descends over a battlefield once fighting begins.) I have two very good friends who recently have had new/different/strange health episodes...that ending up sending them to the emergency room. Now they are being put through a list of medical test....and have entered what I have come to call "The Fog of Aging".....where no one know what went wrong, why, or what to do about it.....an uncertainty has descended over the medical field once their age was taken into consideration. 

In researching their problems I came across David Solie's wonderful blog Aging Parents Insight this week called:Brain Aging

In his blog entry he talks about a new book by Dr. Peter Whitehouse entitled Myth of Alzheimer's: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis

Apparently, he feels strongly about how the concept of  “normal brain aging” is being abused:

1. It has once again made aging, the natural changes that are programmed into the human life span, a pathological event. The shame of aging has been intensified by the shame of anything less than perfect brain function. There is no middle ground. We are summoned to a war against poor brain behavior at almost any cost. It is a fear that might convince us to “pre-medicate” the normal drift of forgetting names or reduced multi-tasking as a containment strategy.

2. It has created a twenty-first century “leper syndrome” at a time when 125,000,000 adults are struggling to get through the second half of life. Once the first “mental lesion” a change in brain function is detected, the outcast process begins. A flurry of scans, exams, and lab test mark the official entry into the dementia colony.
There are several other good topic's on David Solie's blog: Check It Out.
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