Has Alzheimer’s Disease has touched your family? There are 50,000 Utahns affected by Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Utah has the nation’s highest growth rate of AD (127%). There are more than 5 million cases of AD in the US today and by 2050, that number is expected to nearly triple to 13.8 million and care costs will reach over $1.2 trillion. There is no known cure and the impact on afflicted individuals and their families is devastating. The AD process may begin decades before diagnosis. But Maria Norton, USU Associate Professor of Family Consumer and Human Development, says that while there are some factors we are born with (e.g. genes) that can't be modified, there are a host of factors that have been shown to affect our risk for Alzheimer’s that ARE modifiable, and if we can encourage individuals, families and communities to adopt healthy lifestyle habits, we may be able to make a "course correction" to avoid or at least delay AD as individuals, and as a society.
Maria Norton will give a Sunrise Sessions talk on Friday in Salt Lake City (presented by the USU Office of Research & Graduate Studies) titled "Healthy Aging, Healthy Society." Norton and USU Psychology Professor JoAnn Tschanz are among researchers at Utah State University who have been carrying out a landmark study on AD which has observed more than 5,000 older adults in Cache County for 18 years. Maria Norton and JoAnn Tschanz will join Tom Williams for Access Utah Tuesday 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
