Until just a few years ago, the typical work-up for Alzheimer’s disease began when someone walked into my office with noticeable symptoms. The advice: Get your affairs in order, and fairly quickly.
By contrast, many work-ups now begin with patients seeking to improve their lives by either preventing or lessening mild symptoms, prompted by a host of new findings about the cognitive benefits of lifestyle interventions, as well as conditions that can exacerbate decline. I encourage patients to stop smoking, moderate their drinking, eat better, exercise, deal with their depression and keep their brain active, among other things.
Now there are tests for several physical indicators of Alzheimer’s, called biomarkers, that can reveal whether there are the telltale toxic proteins of beta-amyloid and tau in the brain. When combined with other information, these results can provide a relatively definitive diagnosis of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and enable the person to make lifestyle changes, as well as start new treatments or clinical trials right away to attempt to alter its course.
