Tutoring The Elderly
Why?
Progressive research proves that although cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer's cannot be cured, its symptoms can be avoided. Despite new medications, mental exercise is still our best bet in the fight against Dementia and consequential depression. With special attention and encouragement, we can help our elders with or without Dementia to avoid becoming victims of the demeaning disease.
How?
John Tronsco, director of the Brain Resource Center at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, unearthed a golden discovery in 2009. Through the infamous "Nun Study", John Tronsco performed a number of autopsies on nuns who had taken a number of cognitive tests less than one year before they died. From his discovery, he found that half of the nuns with decent cognitive results had unknowingly been living with Alzheimer's. How did they manage to live, some past 100, without its symptoms?
Despite the fact that much of their brains were injured, those that had unknowingly been living with Alzheimer's had a hippocampus with neuron cells up to three times larger than those without signs of Alzheimer's. This discovery is evidence that neurons are able to repair themselves, and make up for those that are lost.
Tronsco sites research that learning new things, which is a skill heavily reliant on working memory, does increase the size of neurons. Regardless of age or condition.
Through one-on-one training, the elderly residing at care facilities or at home can avoid being excluded from this phenomenon.
Too many elderly people who are diagnosed with some form of Dementia are set aside as if they have been sentenced to an intellectual death sentence.
If you are interested in volunteering your time to this service
Please contact me at: tutortheelderly@gmail.com