Oct 1, 2026 · 53 min · 14 segments
Aging. We'll all get there, someday.(Shutterstock / Shutterstock) This week on Eastern Standard: Kentucky has hundreds of nursing homes caring for some of the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable…
John ChevesGuest
Gregory JichaGuestHolly CorbyGuestTom MartinHostBridget BlomBill GoodmanHostJeff FoxHost
This is probably a number one question and point of confusion, not just for folks in the community, but for physicians as well.
Dementia really just implies trouble with memory or some other aspect of thinking that is starting to negatively impact your daily life.
it's not a medical diagnosis for all intents and purposes it's a description of symptoms and alzheimer's is just one cause it may be one of the largest causes about 50 sometimes 60 of dementia is caused by alzheimer's disease but we have a lot else going on especially here in the commonwealth a lot of vascular cognitive impairment what we used to call hardening of the arteries and other conditions like Lewy body disease and frontotemporal dementia, among many, many others.
But for most folks, just to recognize, yeah, when that memory becomes a problem, we're heading, if we're not already there at dementia where it's affecting our lives, it potentially may threaten to affect our functioning quality of life in the next year or two, that's the time to be proactive and to say, is there a dementia brewing here? If so, what type is it and what can I do about it?
Tell us a little bit about the length of time you've been at Sanders Brown at the University of Kentucky and the work that you've done, how you've seen it progress from when you began to today.
You know, I've been here for over two decades now, and I came in and was recruited here largely on the base of all the great things that Kentucky has to offer.
I don't know if the state's adopted me yet or not, but I've adopted it anyway.
We've been doing great research trying to understand aging for decades before that.
But, you know, what we were missing was what are we going to do about it? That critical component.
So if there's anything to capture in a nutshell about how things have changed and what I've been working on over the past several decades is what are we going to do about it? How are we going to fix it? How are we going to help? That's where the rubber hits the road.
Well, in the time that you've been at Sanders Brown, are you seeing now that things are beginning to change, at least through the course of diagnosis, the course of treatment in Alzheimer's? And are you really working on now slowing the disease, diagnosing it when it's in its early stages? Tell us a little bit about the progression of what you do.
This is probably a number one question and point of confusion, not just for folks in the community, but for physicians as well.
Dementia really just implies trouble with memory or some other aspect of thinking that is starting to negatively impact your daily life.
it's not a medical diagnosis for all intents and purposes it's a description of symptoms and alzheimer's is just one cause it may be one of the largest causes about 50 sometimes 60 of dementia is caused by alzheimer's disease but we have a lot else going on especially here in the commonwealth a lot of vascular cognitive impairment what we used to call hardening of the arteries and other conditions like Lewy body disease and frontotemporal dementia, among many, many others.
But for most folks, just to recognize, yeah, when that memory becomes a problem, we're heading, if we're not already there at dementia where it's affecting our lives, it potentially may threaten to affect our functioning quality of life in the next year or two, that's the time to be proactive and to say, is there a dementia brewing here? If so, what type is it and what can I do about it?
Tell us a little bit about the length of time you've been at Sanders Brown at the University of Kentucky and the work that you've done, how you've seen it progress from when you began to today.
You know, I've been here for over two decades now, and I came in and was recruited here largely on the base of all the great things that Kentucky has to offer.
I don't know if the state's adopted me yet or not, but I've adopted it anyway.
We've been doing great research trying to understand aging for decades before that.
But, you know, what we were missing was what are we going to do about it? That critical component.
So if there's anything to capture in a nutshell about how things have changed and what I've been working on over the past several decades is what are we going to do about it? How are we going to fix it? How are we going to help? That's where the rubber hits the road.
Well, in the time that you've been at Sanders Brown, are you seeing now that things are beginning to change, at least through the course of diagnosis, the course of treatment in Alzheimer's? And are you really working on now slowing the disease, diagnosing it when it's in its early stages? Tell us a little bit about the progression of what you do.
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