Sandra, a fit 65-year-old woman, believes in the benefits of proactive health care. She exercises regularly and never misses an annual physical. So when she sees a flier for a free memory screening event at her local Kmart, she thinks it’s a great opportunity to check on her brain health too.
Sandra’s reasoning would seem to make sense. We screen for high blood pressure, breast cancer. We have our lymphatic and respiratory systems evaluated regularly for warning signs. Why shouldn’t we check the organ responsible for our executive function?
This question lies at the heart of a brewing debate fueled by disagreement among Alzheimer’s disease (AD) experts, including the nation’s leading nonprofit advocacy groups. The debate centers on “memory screening,” which uses standardized tests to determine whether a person is able to demonstrate normal cognition for their age. Such tests ask people to answer questions and complete simple tasks (e.g. remembering words or drawing a clock). These screenings, which can take up to 10 minutes, are administered face-to-face at a health fair or at a doctor’s office.
The controversy about memory screening arises from an urgent need to better manage AD, the fatal neurological disease that robs people of their ability to reason, function, and participate in life. Why wouldn’t we want everyone to be screened and to take proactive steps to manage this disease? Unfortunately, politics and the state of our health care system has a lot to do with the answer to that question.
The full article “Memory Screening: Is it worth it?” can be found here.
The question is this: Would YOU want to know if you were at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease?
One Comment
Why know about something and worry about it when there is no cure? I stay active and exercise my brain as well as my 62 year old body. I don’t want any added worry. But then I’m adopted and I have no medical history so there are probably lots of health things I should know about and don’t!