Sachiko Murase is a vastly changed woman. A year ago, Alzheimer's disease was so advanced in her that she could hardly recognize a pencil. Now, after having an increasingly popular treatment in Japan called Learning Therapy, her once blank expression is punctuated with occasional smiles.
"You see it's not only me. We're all having fun," said a beaming Murase, 83, at a nursing home in the city of Sendai, 300km north of Tokyo.
Alzheimer's, a brain disease whose causes are not fully understood, can start with mild forgetfulness but gradually ravages the memory and makes it hard to think and use language.
Murase is one of an estimated 1.5 million afflicted among the 24 million Japanese over the age of 65.
not a cure
She is not cured of the disease, however, and no one is pretending to be able to turn back the clock.
But thanks to methods developed by Ryuta Kawashima of Tohoku University in Sendai and backed up by an army of volunteers and textbooks from Kumon Institute of Education -- Japan's largest private education company -- she has regained an ability to communicate and interact with people.
The Learning Therapy method consists of meeting regularly in classes to perform simple calculations and read aloud passages from essays or novels.
Advocates say it works like a mental exercise to rehabilitate the frontal cortex, part of the brain thought to be important for higher-level functions, memory, reasoning and judgment.
According to Kawashima, who began his research in the Sendai nursing home, a majority of Alzheimer's patients who regularly performed these simple tasks showed improvements in their scores in a test used to determine the severity of Alzheimer's.
Even those who did not improve saw little or no deterioration in their mental state during the time they were tested, he said.
While a range of remedies from crossword puzzles to berries has been claimed to help prevent Alzheimer's, Kawashima says this is a full treatment that has been thoroughly researched with a salvo of medical tests.
For staff at the Evergreen nursing home, the improvements have been very noticeable.
behavioral problems
"In the past we used to have many behavioral problems because many of our patients had severe symptoms," nurse Rika Murakami said as she checked responses from one of the elderly women attending a recent session.
"But what we've seen since is that they've begun smiling more and many have become more serene," she said.
prevention
But the course is far from guaranteeing a full recovery, and the spotlight remains on prevention.
"Even after three years we found that there was no way we could return them to their old selves," Kawashima said.
"So the next step then was to think about prevention," Kawashima said.
Thus began courses for healthy and less elderly seniors.
These experimental classes began in Sendai, where twice a week some 40 people aged 70 and over gather at a local school to perform tasks that are similar to but slightly more difficult than those done in the nursing home.
"The course would probably be easy even for my grandchildren," grumbled one participant, Takao Kumagaya, 74.
"But that's OK. That's how it should be," he said.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
RSS