Welcome Back: Catching Up With Dementia Expert Lisa Skinner
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Namaste. Ever misplace your keys or forget somebody’s name and wonder if you’re sliding down that slippery slope towards Alzheimer’s? It’s not an uncommon fear once you, you know, get over 50. And today’s guest is here to help you differentiate between normal aging, forgetfulness and dementia. Lisa Skinner is a best selling author, behavioral specialist and certified dementia care trainer.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And in her 30 plus year career working with family members and caregivers, Lisa has taught them how to successfully navigate the many challenges that accompany this heartbreaking disease. So I am going to bring her up onto the stage right now and get this party started. So welcome Lisa, to Design Your Life, Your Way.
LISA SKINNER: Hi Gloria.
LISA SKINNER: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it so much.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Well, I am delighted to have you. And for those of you who are watching or listening, this is actually not the first time I have talked with Lisa. We talked four years ago on my Live Love Engage podcast and I’ve wanted to have you back ever since.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And I finally got the opportunity. So I thought this would be a place to start — what’s happened in your world, what’s happened in this field since we last spoke?
LISA SKINNER: There’s been a lot of changes since we were last together four years ago. And it turns out this is a great place to start, because there was a new statistic published — I think it was last year — that the number one fear of people today 55 and older is: are they developing Alzheimer’s disease, or one of the other brain diseases that causes similar symptoms that we call dementia? If they misplace their keys, if they walk into a room and can’t remember why they went into it, if they forget a name in a conversation — people really panic when these things occur.
Memory Hiccups vs. Warning Signs: How to Tell the Difference
LISA SKINNER: And to put everybody’s mind to rest, these are actually very common occurrences that start to happen to us at around the age of 40, but they happen periodically, infrequently, and they don’t interfere with or impact our day to day living activities. So there’s a huge distinction there. I call them memory hiccups — because kind of like a little hiccup, all of a sudden, what was that name that I was trying to refer to? It’s really no need for concern, if it’s just to that extent.
LISA SKINNER: What I tell people is: if you notice that these things start to happen more frequently, like on a daily basis, they become blatantly obvious. They really start to impact your function ability on a day to day basis. And that usually means that Alzheimer’s disease has now progressed to about the mid stage. That is the average time when people are diagnosed with a brain disease, because in the very beginning the signs are so subtle and sometimes we just dismiss them, or we just say, oh, normal aging.
LISA SKINNER: And they are so similar, and it’s very, very difficult to differentiate in the beginning. But when they do become severe enough to where — oh my goodness, this is not just normal aging forgetfulness — then most people know.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Now so many things are going through my head right now. Number one, I think sometimes we do maybe panic, but I kind of chalk it up to the fact that if you have lived this long, you’ve experienced a lot of stuff, and I think sometimes it does get hard to retrieve that information from your computer brain, you know, because you’ve accumulated so much information. And something else you brought up, which also makes me wonder — because you mentioned that when those symptoms start happening more frequently, then you’re in mid stage — is there any risk to waiting on treatment, like if you start noticing some stuff but you’re not sure if it’s just forgetfulness? Is it better to err on the side of caution and get checked out earlier, rather than waiting until it becomes more prevalent?
Should You Get an Early Diagnosis for Alzheimer’s or Dementia?
LISA SKINNER: The medical community is telling us that it’s always beneficial to get as early a diagnosis as you possibly can. But again, the challenge is that the signs, symptoms and behaviors that surface in the earlier stages are so subtle that doctors really have a very difficult time making that differentiation themselves. So they could put you through a very long cognitive assessment and do brain scans and blood tests — there’s a lot of diagnostic tools available to us today — but many of them are still kind of reluctant to test if it really could be just normal aging forgetfulness. The other thing I want to point out is there are other medical conditions that mirror the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and some of these other brain diseases that we know of.
Conditions That Mimic Alzheimer’s: Thyroid Issues, UTIs, and Lyme Disease
LISA SKINNER: There’s about 150 of them, to be honest with you, that cause similar symptoms to Alzheimer’s. That could be a simple — well, not simple, but a thyroid condition. And if the thyroid condition is left untreated, you could start displaying a lot of the cognitive impairment and dysfunction that we see with Alzheimer’s disease. You can have a urinary tract infection —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: No way.
LISA SKINNER: Yes. And if it goes untreated — because it is treatable with antibiotics — but if it goes untreated and gets into the blood system, then the same or similar symptoms to dementia will show up. But the difference is it usually comes on very, very quickly with a urinary tract infection, and that doesn’t happen with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a much slower process — where you go from the little memory hiccups to, oh my goodness, I can’t even remember what I’m supposed to do with this toaster.
LISA SKINNER: So I definitely recommend, if something comes on all of a sudden and it really is mirroring possible brain disease, you might want to have your doctor test you for another medical condition that can mirror similar symptoms.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Right. Are there any other — I wouldn’t say necessarily common — but other types of diseases that people would hear of? Because obviously, if there’s 150, there’s probably a ton that only a doctor would know of.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: But are there any others, besides the thyroid and urinary, that we should be aware of?
LISA SKINNER: Several people have been misdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease who actually have Lyme disease — another infection that gets into our system.
LISA SKINNER: A lot of the symptoms are very similar, especially once it gets into your brain stem, and it mimics Alzheimer’s disease. The thing is, Lyme disease can be tested and pretty much definitively diagnosed — where Alzheimer’s can’t.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: 100%.
LISA SKINNER: We’re up to about 90% now. And I have seen many people over the years that were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, treated for Alzheimer’s disease for years — it turned out they actually had Lyme disease.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Wow, that’s amazing. Are there any specific types of memory lapses that are almost always benign, that you can chalk up to just the normal aging process, versus ones that you definitely should go straight to your doctor and get checked out?
LISA SKINNER: Well, I would say — because they both start out very subtly — but the ones that don’t continue to worsen: once in a while you forget a name.
LISA SKINNER: Once in a while you forget why you walked into a room, once in a while you can’t remember where you put your phone down and have to call it. If that stays pretty steady and doesn’t start happening much more frequently — and then finally gets to the point where it is truly impacting your ability to function on a daily basis — then I would say the chances of it being normal aging forgetfulness are pretty strong. But if your family notices significant changes — and I say that because not everybody who’s developing Alzheimer’s or one of the other brain diseases even notices it — but family members, of course, do.
Living Alone With Dementia: What to Watch For
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah. And I was just thinking that a lot of people — we live alone.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: I mean, I live alone. I talk by phone with my spouse because we just don’t live under the same roof anymore. And I know a couple of my other close friends who are actually women even older than I am, and they live alone too. So I wonder — is there anything that someone who lives alone should be maybe more aware of?
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Because, as you say, sometimes you’re not really aware of it unless you’re talking with other people.
LISA SKINNER: Well, I’ve seen time and time again where people who live alone — about 50%, the statistic is about 50% of the people who are developing an actual brain disease are aware of their cognitive decline, their cognitive losses. And the other 50% don’t realize it at all. I have a girlfriend whose neighbor is in that 50% that just absolutely does not realize there’s anything wrong with her. And she’s constantly coming over to my friend’s house next door, telling her these really far-fetched, bizarre stories of things she believes to be true — and honestly believes these things are really happening. And they’re not, but they are in her mind.
LISA SKINNER: So that makes it very difficult when you don’t have somebody — she’s expressed her concerns to me, so I gave her some suggestions. But here’s a lady that is clearly at some point in the progression of dementia, and she’s still driving, and just really has lost a lot of her cognitive function ability, and has no idea she’s at this stage. She finally went and visited some relatives in San Jose, and they noticed it, and now they’ve intervened and done something — but before that, nobody was really doing anything.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Wow. Well — you mentioned that your friend came to you for advice.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: What kind of advice did you give her?
LISA SKINNER: Well, I asked her if she had any known relatives she could contact and voice her concern to. She was really reluctant — she didn’t know how to get a hold of any of her relatives. But I did tell her she could ask for a wellness check through a couple different organizations, like the Alzheimer’s Association, and they could send somebody like a social worker or a geriatric manager to do a wellness check. Because everything she described to me was a serious state — especially the driving aspect of it, because she was not only putting herself in harm’s way, but she was putting other people in harm’s way, and didn’t have a clue there was anything wrong with her.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And this is common.
LISA SKINNER: Yeah.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Oh, it’s — it’s such a tough disease.
A Family Story: My Grandmother’s Husband and the Memory “Switch”
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And I was, in getting ready for today’s interview, thinking back to when I was little. My grandmother had remarried when I was like seven years old.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And then, as I got older, her husband started to develop dementia. I don’t know exactly what he had, but I do remember very distinctly — we were there for Christmas one year, and he wandered out of the —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: — out of the apartment. And my sister, who was 10 years older than me, had to go driving around the neighborhood trying to find him and bring him back, because — and we were in Florida at the time, and he —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: — he had grown up in Michigan, and that’s where he had lived most of his life. So he was trying to find a place, like in the Detroit area, that you’re not going to find in Coral Gables, Florida. It was, I know, scary for my grandmother, and I know it’s really hard on family members. And when you’re going through —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: — either you’re going through this yourself, but also if you have a family member or a good friend — what do you advise? Especially when family members notice there’s maybe a change happening to their loved one — how can they get them some help?
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Because I know sometimes — I know for me, I’m quite independent, and we like to be independent. And so to say, oh, something’s wrong with you — it’s like, what do you mean, something’s wrong with me?
GLORIA GRACE RAND: So how do you kind of bridge that sort of initial resistance that I imagine a lot of people would have?
LISA SKINNER: Well, I think it would be to kind of take the reins and make an appointment for your loved one to be assessed by their physician, and make sure that you cite examples of things you have personally witnessed and things you’re concerned about. And this is the reason why these situations can become so extreme and so catastrophic, especially with Alzheimer’s disease — because the first part of the brain that the disease starts to damage and attack is our short-term memory. With Alzheimer’s disease, that’s the hallmark. Some of the other brain diseases we know about attack other parts of the brain, but short-term memory decline is the hallmark of Alzheimer’s.
LISA SKINNER: And what tends to happen — and this is really important for people to be aware of, and why it presents such a dangerous situation for the people living with this disease — is that by the time we progress to about the mid stage, our short-term memory is kind of malfunctioning and short-circuiting, if you will, and it’s completely unpredictable. So about half the time it’s functioning normally and we retain our short-term memories, and the other half of the time it’s just like a switch turns off on our short-term memory. And that’s — like your grandmother’s husband — is this exactly what happened to him?
LISA SKINNER: He just — out of nowhere — that short-term memory switch flipped off. And when that happens, we have no short-term memory for a temporary period of time, and then we travel back in our minds to another time frame of our life, because our long-term memories stay intact.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Right.
LISA SKINNER: And this is what happened to him, based on what you’re telling me — he’s thinking that he was in Detroit. He’s looking for familiarity, like his home, because that’s the time frame he’s living in.
LISA SKINNER: Yeah, I can tell you hundreds and hundreds of stories where people seem to be absolutely fine one minute, and then they take their dog for a walk and that short-term memory switch flips off just out of nowhere. They can’t remember their name, they can’t remember how to get back to where they came from, they don’t know their address, and they’re wandering around. So obviously they’re putting themselves in harm’s way. This can happen unexpectedly, with no notice at all.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Just real quick —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: My grandmother was my very first experience with Alzheimer’s disease, and she did this. She got in her car one day, she had a grocery list in her hand, she drove the same road to the grocery store she frequented — and that short-term memory switch flipped off on the way to the store. So she parks her car in the middle of a two-lane road, one going each direction, with cars coming, thinking she was parked in the grocery store parking lot. And she got out of her car and was wandering in and out, trying to find the entrance to the store, because her short-term memory just shut down.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And fortunately a man in a car behind her noticed — gee, what’s wrong with this poor lady? — and got out, and then the police called my mom.
LISA SKINNER: This type of thing happens on a regular basis with dementia, and you just never know when it’s going to happen.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah. And it is freaky when it happens.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And for me — it happened where it was a type of amnesia that I had, where I was driving. I was on my way to a voice lesson, heading down there, and all of a sudden I was like, where am I going? Why am I in the car? Why do I have music next to me? Fortunately I was able to pull into a parking garage, and then I wound up calling my daughter and saying I think I’m having a stroke or something, because I don’t know what’s going on with me.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And I called her — she told me later I called her like 10 times, and I said the exact same thing every single time, and I only remember calling her once. So thankfully, at that time, it was a type of short-term amnesia that I’d gone through — I was under a lot of different stress, and I’d done a marathon two days before, so it was chalked up to that. But it was very frightening, when you don’t know where you’re going and what’s going on.
Does Dementia Affect Women Differently Than Men?
GLORIA GRACE RAND: So, okay, we’ve talked about so much. I’m trying to think — oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. I know I have women and men watching the show or listening to the podcast — is there any difference?
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Have there been any studies into whether dementia is more prevalent in women versus men, or presents differently — or even at different ages?
LISA SKINNER: So let me answer each one of those questions separately. We have a saying in the dementia world: if you’ve met one person who’s living with dementia — regardless of the brain disease causing it — you’ve only met one person living with dementia, because everybody experiences it differently.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Oh, wow.
LISA SKINNER: Some people, like my grandmother, lived with it for 20 years.
LISA SKINNER: The average is 8 to 15. So regardless of gender, there’s really no distinction, because everybody experiences it differently. And the other thing that throws a wrench into the mix is we know now that people can actually be living with and developing more than one brain disease simultaneously — they can have Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, or frontotemporal dementia, or vascular dementia, all at the exact same time. So they’re going to go through the progression differently than somebody who just has a singular neurodegenerative disease.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Oh, man.
LISA SKINNER: We do know, and this is a true statistic, that more women do develop Alzheimer’s disease than men — except there’s an exception. Among Indigenous people, Native American people, in that culture more men actually develop Alzheimer’s disease.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: That’s interesting.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: I wonder why.
LISA SKINNER: With that being the exception, the theory of why more women develop Alzheimer’s disease than men in all the other cultures is twofold, and it makes sense. Number one, women outlive men — that hasn’t changed for a long time.
LISA SKINNER: So that stands to reason, because it shows up starting around age 65, and by the time any of us are 85, our chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease is 1 in 3. So if we’re living to that age and men aren’t, then it stands to reason more women would develop it. And the other theory has to do with the fact that we go through so many more hormonal changes — starting in adolescence, and then when we’re carrying our children, and midlife, and all the different stages where our bodies are constantly going through hormonal changes. There is a degree of evidence that there’s a correlation there —
LISA SKINNER: I don’t know if it’s 100% proven — I think it’s still kind of a hypothesis or theory, but it is definitely something being seriously looked at.
[Editor note: the transcript reads “starting at the age of 16” where context suggests “around age 65” — corrected above for clarity, verify against audio]
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Absolutely. Yeah. And both things make sense, too.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: You know, longevity of women versus men, and then the hormones — that makes perfect sense. Now, before we started recording today, I want to let our audience know that there is some hope here.
New Research: Reducing Your Alzheimer’s Risk by Up to 45%
GLORIA GRACE RAND: You mentioned that there are some things we can do — if not prevent it, certainly maybe slow the progression of it. So can you talk a little about what we can do to keep ourselves and our brains healthy as we age?
LISA SKINNER: Yes. I’m actually really, really excited about the latest statistics that have just come out in the last couple of months, published by the Lancet Commission.
LISA SKINNER: They increased the percentage from 40% to 45% — of things that we now know we can do, making certain lifestyle choices and taking care of medical conditions we may have, that can minimize our risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, or if we have it, slow the progression down by up to 45%. This is recent — it was 40, and now they’ve actually increased it to 45%. This is really exciting, because the more research and studies we do year after year and see the results, the more confident they felt to raise that statistic.
LISA SKINNER: This is what we know — this is the most accurate, up-to-date information. There are many, many more risk factors that we now know have a correlation to increasing our risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease that we didn’t know about 20, 30, 40 years ago. And there are four that we categorize as non-modifiable.
Non-Modifiable Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease
LISA SKINNER: In other words, we can’t change them as a risk factor for any one of us. Those are our age, our gender — I just explained why gender — age, because the common type of Alzheimer’s disease and these other brain diseases typically start showing up around age 65. There is an exception, the early-onset type, but it’s much rarer.
LISA SKINNER: Our race — we do know that some races are at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s than others. And then genetics — there is a gene called the APOE4 gene, and it’s passed down from our parents. So if you’re carrying either one of these APOE4 genes, or two of them, you inherited either one from your mom and one from your dad, or both.
LISA SKINNER: That is going to increase your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. But does it mean it’s a foregone conclusion that you will? Absolutely not. There are many, many people who carry one or both of those genes and never develop Alzheimer’s disease — it just increases risk. Then, on the other side of the coin, we have what we call modifiable risk factors — a variety of medical conditions that we now know increase our risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Modifiable Risk Factors: Heart Disease, Diabetes, and Hearing Loss
LISA SKINNER: I’ll come back to that in just a second — there are lifestyle choices we can make that will either increase our risk or minimize it. So, some of the medical conditions we know: the number one modifiable medical condition that raises a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease is having heart condition or cardiovascular disease.
LISA SKINNER: And the reason we say it’s modifiable is because if you’re under a doctor’s care — if they’ve prescribed a healthier diet and an exercise regimen, and are treating you with medications — that negates it from really raising your risk.
LISA SKINNER: Diabetes — so many people who live with diabetes are at a huge risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. But again, it’s treatable with diet, exercise, and medications. Now, one of the surprising ones — and the Lancet Commission actually just raised this one to the top of the risk chart — is hearing loss.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Who knew, right?
[Editor note: this line is garbled in the source transcript (“Who to th right”) — best-guess reconstruction, verify against audio]
LISA SKINNER: There’s a couple of reasons. When we don’t hear as well as a healthy ear does, our brains have to work doubly — even harder — to process information than if we didn’t have a hearing deficit. And the other thing that tends to happen is people who don’t hear very well tend to withdraw from social situations — they might not get engaged or contribute to a conversation because they’re having trouble hearing. And isolation is one of the risk factors.
LISA SKINNER: So that stands to reason also. But you can wear hearing aids and improve your hearing loss, and that would lower that risk back down. Vision loss, isolation, depression — these are all risk factors we now know contribute to increasing our risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Then the lifestyle choices — if your doctor says you have hypertension and your heart is at risk of failing if we don’t treat this, they’re going to probably prescribe a medication.
LISA SKINNER: But typically they will also prescribe a healthy diet and an exercise regimen to enhance the improvement of that health condition.
Why Diet Matters for Brain Health
LISA SKINNER: But let’s say you don’t have a heart condition, you don’t have diabetes, and your doctor isn’t really emphasizing healthier diet choices — we know that regardless of whether or not it’s due to an underlying medical condition, it will still minimize your risk if you make healthier food choices. So the two worst foods we now know we can eat, that will increase our risk, are ultra-processed foods and processed foods. It’s recommended that we lean more on complex carbohydrates than simple carbohydrates — leafy green vegetables, leaner cuts of meat, things like that. That’s a choice we all have to make.
LISA SKINNER: But, you know, kind of the way I look at it — yeah, a lot of these risk factors do apply to me. I’ve had eight family members who have lived with one of the brain diseases that causes dementia, and five of those are blood relatives.
LISA SKINNER: And that doesn’t necessarily fit into the genetics bucket — the genetic bucket is really the APOE4 gene that can be passed down — but it does tend to run in families. So five blood relatives in my family puts me automatically in a higher risk category. Does that mean I’m going to get it? No.
LISA SKINNER: Right — but I probably will pay closer attention to the things I can do now, knowing it could decrease my risk enough that I won’t develop it starting at age 65. So I do things — things I know I can do to maybe change that course for myself.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah. So really, I think that’s what it comes down to — education and knowledge.
Learning a New Language, Playing Music, and Building Brain Reserve
LISA SKINNER: Absolutely.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah. And one other thing I wanted to ask you about, because this is something I’ve been doing for myself — and I’ve heard it —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: There are apps that advertise strengthening your brain health, doing these games and things like that. I’m actually studying Hungarian right now — I’ve been doing that for several years, using Duolingo to study.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: What have you found? How much of a difference does it make to do something like that? Because it kind of goes along with making sure you’re engaged with other people, so you’re not isolated. But how much does doing something to keep your brain active — teaching yourself, taking up a new hobby, or studying something you never studied before — how much of an impact does that have as one of those lifestyle choices?
LISA SKINNER: I’m glad you brought that up, Gloria, because there actually is a huge debate in the medical community about how impactful doing certain brain games and puzzles actually is. But we do know — and this is different than what we believed 50, 40, 30 years ago — we thought our brains stopped expanding and replenishing our neurons after childhood. We now know it continues throughout our entire life. It’s called neuroplasticity, and we gain neuroplasticity from keeping our brains active.
LISA SKINNER: People who have higher education have more neuroplasticity already built into their brains, from that earlier advanced education, than people who don’t. But we now know we can continue to expand that just by doing certain things. And one of the top things we know we can do is exactly what you’re doing now, Gloria — learning a foreign language. Because the parts of our brain we have to use to translate from one language to another — our brains have to work to do that.
LISA SKINNER: Another highly recommended thing is to learn a musical instrument, for the same reason.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: I like that, too.
LISA SKINNER: And crossword puzzles and things like that — I think the jury is still kind of out on some of those.
LISA SKINNER: But there’s definitely things that will stimulate our brains enough that it expands our brain reserve capacity. And that, in itself, is like a protection for our brains — it will reduce our risk, because we have that extra protection we’ve built up. And we can continue to do that at any age, at any stage in our life.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: I love that. And especially for music, I think that has got to be one of the best avenues around, because that requires a lot of different skills.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Because you’ve got to learn how to read music — you’re engaging, figuring that out. Depending on the instrument, you might have to learn new fingerings, or you might have to learn how to breathe differently. That’s a whole thing. And that’s why they recommend learning music for kids — it helps them with other studies.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And because of that, it really engages so many different things. So I love that. And maybe I have to see if there’s something else I need to learn — because I already play a couple different instruments, but maybe I need to learn to play something else.
LISA SKINNER: Now, based on what you just described — think about all the multitasking you have to do to coordinate everything together.
LISA SKINNER: Yeah, that really makes your brain work hard to do all those things. It’s a lot to concentrate on in the beginning — to focus and pay attention to — until it eventually becomes second nature, like sitting down at your piano and just playing.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Right.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Did it start that way?
LISA SKINNER: No, definitely not.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: So, yeah, everything that you’re saying is real, and it’s true.
LISA SKINNER: And we will continue to build what we call cognitive reserve by doing these things. And that cognitive reserve does continue to protect our brains from disease.
What Every Caregiver Should Know After a Diagnosis
GLORIA GRACE RAND: I know I mentioned at the beginning that you’re a certified dementia care trainer. So as we’re getting close to wrapping up here — once a family has a diagnosis, what is the single most important thing you wish every caregiver knew going in?
LISA SKINNER: This is something I can’t emphasize enough, in what I have experienced and seen in the 30 years I’ve been doing this professionally. There are so many harmful myths out there — so much misinformation, it’s hard to delineate between what’s accurate and true and what’s not. So my recommendation is: learn as much as you can from a psychosocial perspective. What I mean by that is, what we can expect on a day-to-day basis, so you can be proactively prepared for it.
How to Support — Not Correct — Someone Living With Dementia
LISA SKINNER: Because what will happen — and I’ve seen it so many times — is if we don’t understand what’s happening to the brains of the people living with these diseases, then every one of our responses, the way we react to the different signs, symptoms and behaviors, personality changes, cognitive loss — we keep ourselves in a constant state of just reacting to everything, instead of knowing how to proactively and effectively respond. These are not insane instinctive responses — our instinctive response, if somebody tells us something we know is not our truth, is to correct them, to try to fix them. And this is the old methodology, and it didn’t work. So now what we do is what we call join their reality.
LISA SKINNER: And the reason we finally figured out the old way doesn’t work is because it might not be our reality. If somebody tells us that their spouse is still alive, and we know they passed away several years ago — but it’s their reality, they believe it a thousand percent. We learned, through the school of hard knocks, that no matter what we say to somebody living with dementia, whatever their story is, they believe it — it’s their truth. And there’s nothing we can say or do to change that. So we need to rethink how we respond.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah.
LISA SKINNER: And what it comes down to is acknowledgement, validation, and reassurance. These are all just basic human needs that never leave us — you all remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — it never leaves us, I don’t care if we’re healthy or we have dementia.
LISA SKINNER: Those basic human needs stay with us. So we have to adapt to leaning into those basic human needs, to turn the situations that arise into positive outcomes instead of negative ones.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah, and I think that is so true, because — as you said — it’s their reality that they’ve lost that memory. So just getting mad at them, or trying to correct them, is just going to aggravate them, and then that’s going to aggravate you, and that’s a no-win situation.
LISA SKINNER: Oh, it turns into a vicious cycle.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
LISA SKINNER: But most people don’t even know that these other skills and strategies are available, let alone that they work.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yeah. And then the thing I was going to say is — if you find yourself in this situation, learn all you can about it, and then also reach out for help. And if someone —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: What — like if someone — let’s say, God forbid, I had to do this today, and now I need to take care of this person — what would —
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Who do you recommend contacting? What would be my first course of action? I’m guessing maybe even just the physician — but is there any other organization or group to reach out to?
Where to Turn for Help: The Alzheimer’s Association Helpline
LISA SKINNER: Probably the quickest — if you find yourself in a situation you feel you’re losing control over, and it’s really escalating to not such a good thing — the Alzheimer’s Association provides us with a 1-800 number. Sorry, I don’t have it memorized, but it’s a 1-800 number, and when you call it, you get a live person who answers the phone.
LISA SKINNER: And that’s available to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These are trained people who can help walk you through any situation you might find yourself in, or even if it’s something you’re just concerned about. So that’s probably the quickest and best resource. I know there are lots of resources, but that one is 24/7, with a trained person to actually help you get that situation back under control, so you can turn it into a positive outcome. And then there are other organizations.
LISA SKINNER: There’s the Office of Aging, and there are social workers and geriatric managers out there. There’s your physician. So there are a lot of resources. But I want to restate — the more empowered you’re going to be, it’ll be like giving you superpowers you didn’t even know were possible, to help manage a lot of these unexpected things that show up on a day-to-day basis with dementia.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Thank you. And I will be sure to find that 800 number and put it in the show notes, so not to worry, you’ll be able to have it.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: But of course, I know you can always Google it.
LISA SKINNER: But you know — why Google it? Memorize it!
GLORIA GRACE RAND: But yeah, that’s all right.
LISA SKINNER: Hey, you know, like I said — there are lots of things we have to know that get stuck in our brains, and then we need to make room for new stuff.
[Editor note: this short back-and-forth is crosstalk in the source transcript — speaker split is a best guess, verify against audio]
LISA SKINNER: So — some resources we can just rely on other ways to get that info, without having to memorize another number.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Oh goodness, we could go on talking about this for a whole other hour, I’m quite sure. So — another resource is your resource. So how can people listening to this today reach you?
Connect With Lisa Skinner
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And we didn’t even mention — I know that you’ve written a book on this subject as well. So I hope people can contact you and find out more about you, and if you want to mention the book you wrote as well, let people know about that.
LISA SKINNER: Okay, well — it just went up on the screen. My website is mindingdementia.com, and I’ve got a lot of resources on there.
LISA SKINNER: But I also have written two bestselling books on the subject. And for the last three years I’ve been hosting a podcast — it’s called the Truth, Lies and Alzheimer’s Show. And I’ve more recently launched a TV show called Truth, Lies and Alzheimer’s. So one’s a streaming TV show, one is an actual podcast.
LISA SKINNER: Completely different audiences, but it ends up being a pretty nice resource for people out there looking to educate themselves — because I talk about a different aspect of living with dementia, from all walks of life, family dynamics, caregiver tips, things like that. And they’re free — I have 165 episodes that would be very educational for people on the podcast. And I don’t remember how many on the TV show — it streams on E360TV, but we also upload it to my YouTube channel, Lisa Skinner.
LISA SKINNER: So there’s some resources for people who really don’t even know where to start. You can pick whatever topic happens to interest you — they’re all listed. And I do spend so much time researching the information.
LISA SKINNER: It’s almost like a full-time job, because I want to make sure I’m bringing people accurate and honest information, so we can dispel some of these harmful myths that are out there.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Absolutely. Well — again, congrats on that, and I’ll definitely mention that in the show notes as well. And I love that you’re on E360TV, because I do another show on that network as well.
LISA SKINNER: So — you did?
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Yes. The Let’s Talk Fabulous show.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: I’m one of the hosts of that one.
LISA SKINNER: So it’s nice to meet another member of the family. Yeah — I thought I saw you when I was looking for a particular show, and then I tried to find it again yesterday and couldn’t.
Closing
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Well, thank you so much for being here today. It’s been wonderful, and I’m sure our audience has learned a lot today, and I so appreciate you for being here.
LISA SKINNER: Oh, it’s been my pleasure. And thanks again for having me, Gloria — it was a delight to see you again.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Oh, thank you. And I do want to thank all of you for joining us today. If you’ve been enjoying this show, I hope you’ll follow us on YouTube @GloriaGraceRand. You can also watch us on Roku TV and Amazon Fire, on the New Reality TV app — I’m on newrealitytv.com. And of course, listen wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a comment on YouTube and let us know what you think of the show.
GLORIA GRACE RAND: And if you have any other ideas for future episodes, let me know that as well. We’ll be back again next week with another topic on how to design your life your way. So until then, I encourage you to go out and live boldly and on purpose.
