Clinton/Obama: Hillary's Story

"Since her path-breaking election to the United States Senate, Hillary has been a steadfast advocate for middle-class families, working to help create jobs, expand children's health care and protect Social Security from privatization. As the Senator representing New York after 9/11, Hillary has fought to strengthen our approach to homeland security and to improve our communications and intelligence operations. As the first New Yorker ever named to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hillary has been a tough critic of the administration's bungling of Iraq and a fierce advocate for proper equipment, health benefits, and treatment for military families."

Read Hillary's Story

The Seven Stages of Alzheimer's

Experts have documented common patterns of symptom progression that occur in many individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and developed several methods of “staging” based on these patterns."

You can read this article by following the link
The Alzheimer's Reading Room: The Seven Stages of Alzheimer's

Clinton/Obama: An email from the Obama camp

I received an interesting email from the OBama camp that you can read by following this link.


"Last night was an evening for rhetoric and promises. But now is the time for action - now is the time to actually get something done. You deserve leadership that's commensurate to the challenges we face in this country, and I look forward to working with all of you to make this happen in the days and months to come."

Clinton/Obama: A Message from Barack

Follow the link to see the video Clinton/Obama .

Cutting Medicaid drug payments?

"The Bush Administration is proposing “sweeping reductions in payments to pharmacies” to save money for Medicaid, the health program for more than 50 million low-income (and poor) people. God help them, the pharmacies and beneficiaries . . ."

Read the entire article Cutting Medicaid drug payments?:

The Alzheimer's Reading Room: Alzheimer's Vaccine Patch Works in Mice

Read the article Alzheimer's Vaccine Patch Works in Mice

"The Alzheimer's vaccine being tested works by triggering the immune system to recognize and attack Ab -- a protein that abnormally builds up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients."

Clinton/Obama: Sen. Clinton returns focus to health care

"I will be introducing legislation to make quality, affordable health care available to every child in America,' she told a roomful of reporters at a public health center in New York City as a girl clutched her hand."

Read this article in its entirety.

Alzheimer's: Understand and control wandering

Read this article in its entirety Alzheimer's: Understand and control wandering.

"One of the questions I am most frequently asked is if I am worried that my mother might wander away from me and get lost. Wandering is one of the more widely known behaviors of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This article from the Mayo Clinic explains this behavior and some of the likely causes and remedies."

Medicare Florida: Five Ways to Lower your Cost of Drugs During the Coverage Cap

Medicare Florida: Five Ways to Lower your Cost of Drugs During the Coverage Cap

Ethanol inflames grain market

It's grains gone wild.

Corn, soybean and wheat prices exploded Friday after the government said corn stockpiles were shrinking fast amid the ethanol boom. The report fanned fears that ethanol was starting to become a runaway train, as corn prices hit a 10-year high.

Corn and wheat prices Friday rose the daily maximum allowed on the Chicago Board of Trade. Soybean prices soared 43 cents a bushel. In Minneapolis, spring wheat futures rose 25 cents a bushel. So in a single day, the markets added one-third of a billion dollars to the value of grain stored in Minnesota's bins and elevators.

"It's being driven by the mania that's going on in ethanol production," said Ed Usset, a grain marketing specialist at the University of Minnesota. "These (corn-based ethanol) plants are going up so fast we can hardly track 'em."





Ethanol inflames grain market
Corn, wheat prices hit daily maximum

BY TOM WEBB
Pioneer Press


It's grains gone wild.

Corn, soybean and wheat prices exploded Friday after the government said corn stockpiles were shrinking fast amid the ethanol boom. The report fanned fears that ethanol was starting to become a runaway train, as corn prices hit a 10-year high.

Corn and wheat prices Friday rose the daily maximum allowed on the Chicago Board of Trade. Soybean prices soared 43 cents a bushel. In Minneapolis, spring wheat futures rose 25 cents a bushel. So in a single day, the markets added one-third of a billion dollars to the value of grain stored in Minnesota's bins and elevators.

"It's being driven by the mania that's going on in ethanol production," said Ed Usset, a grain marketing specialist at the University of Minnesota. "These (corn-based ethanol) plants are going up so fast we can hardly track 'em."

Friday's market moves were ignited when the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported a lower U.S. corn harvest from last fall and predicted tighter supplies ahead. Foreign growers aren't providing much cushion, either, with world grain stockpiles forecast to be the smallest since the late 1970s.

"We are simply using corn faster than what we're able to produce it these days, and ethanol of course is the big contributor," said Dennis Smith, a commodity broker at Archer Financial Services.

Smith notes that U.S. farmers will plant more corn in 2007, lured by prices nearing $4 a bushel in Chicago. That affects soybean prices too, because more corn means fewer soybeans. But even 7 million additional acres of corn — as much as Minnesota farmers planted in 2006 — won't suffice, Smith warned.

"It's gotta be 8 million (acres) or more to keep a status-quo situation here," he said. "We're talking about a shift in acreage like we've never experienced before, and we're talking about more corn acreage than we've seen in the last 50 years."

The rising price and tight forecast is increasingly worrisome to grain users, said Daryn McBeth, executive director of the Minnesota AgriGrowth Council, a trade group for state agribusinesses.

"Every time I talk to some of our members who are users of corn, primarily the livestock industry and poultry even more so, they're feeling it and worried about it big-time," he said. "We know there is a break-point, and we're getting there."

Meanwhile, the ethanol boom continues. On Friday, US BioEnergy announced that it has begun site preparation for a 100-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant near Janesville, Minn.

In Chicago, corn futures for March delivery rose 20 cents, to $3.965 a bushel. Soybeans rose 43.25 cents a bushel to $7.175. Chicago wheat rose 30 cents, to $4.865 cents a bushel. At the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, spring wheat for March delivery rose 25 cents to $5.07 a bushel.

"Your average (grain) producer likes it, I think," Usset said of Friday's surge. "But the livestock industry, this is not a fun event for them. They just feel like they're on the bottom of the pecking order."

Other Articles

Keeping Time With Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s Disease: What is it? Who gets it? What causes it?
I Just Wanted to Scream, STOP!

The Alzheimer's Reading Room: New Gene Linked to Alzheimer's

"It fits into what we believe is the main mechanism of Alzheimer's already," Gandy said. "This reinforces the idea that we're on the right track with therapies already in the pipeline, while also suggesting a totally new strategy that could be used to target entirely new classes of drugs."

To read the article in its entirety go to the The Alzheimer's Reading Room.

Alzheimer's Announcement: CareGiver the Book

I started a new Weblog that is more directly related to the interactions of my mother and myself and our current journey.

To read the book in progress go to Alzheimer'sCaregiver: the Book.

The CareGiver Blog

Robert T DeMarco

AllAmerican Senior Care

AllAmerican Senior Care Weblog

Senior CareElder CareCareGiver Alzheimer'sDementia CareGiver

Health and wellnessWeblog

The Alzheimer’s Reading Room

Everything Alzheimer's Disease. This weblog is for Alzheimer's CareGivers, those touched by Alzheimer's, and those interested in learning more about Alzheimer's disease. The content on this weblog is wide ranging and includes: research, definitions, education, important articles, clinical trials, and content from other CareGiver Weblogs.

To visit the weblog follow this line The Alzheimer’s Reading Room

The Alzheimer's Reading Room: Decoding Alzheimer's: After a century, promising treatments at last—and whispers of a cure

This is a fascinating article that discusses treatments for Alzheimer’s disease that are on the near term horizon.

"After a century, promising treatments at last—and whispers of a cure"

Read this article in its entirety at The Alzheimer’s Reading Room

Imaging Method Detects Alzheimer's Risk

The study was published in the Dec. 21 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. It was funded by National Institutes of Health,the Department of Energy, General Clinical Research Centers Program and numerous foundations. The DoE funds supported FDDNP synthesis, which was performed at the UCLA Cyclotron Laboratory.

Read the article in its entirety at The Alzheimer's Reading Room

All American Senior Care

The CareGiver

Dorothy DeMarco

I just wanted to scream, STOP! Part One.

I can still remember the day. An experience that told me: you are not alone; it’s all about the disease. An experience that let me know I could learn from the experience of others that came before me. That it would be possible for me to get ahead of the curve and get “mentally” prepared.




Taken from Alzheimer's CareGiver: The Book

I can still remember the day. An experience that told me: you are not alone; it’s all about the disease. An experience that let me know I could learn from the experience of others that came before me. That it would be possible for me to get ahead of the curve and get “mentally” prepared.

In the beginning one of the things that drove me crazy was my mother’s constant eating. My mother would just eat and eat and eat. Even though she was overeating she would tell her friends on the telephone that she had not eaten a thing all day. And, this was at 4:30 in the afternoon. It seemed that the more she ate the more she denied eating. And it only continued to get crazier and crazier. My mother who was a good 30 pounds overweight told her friends I was trying to starve her. The friends believed her. They called me in the background to ask me why I wasn’t feeding my mother. They couldn’t accept she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease so they believed her. When I asked them if it looked like she was being starved they just did not know how to respond. They just got confused. They knew then it wasn’t true.

It might not be easy to envision this but my mother could eat a five course meal and then turn around and eat again in 30 minutes. This happened for the first time on Easter Sunday. We went to a buffet style brunch at the Delray Country Club. My mother had everything that day ranging from a ham and cheese omelet, to a slice of prime rib, turkey, potatoes, and even a couple of desserts. When we arrived home she changed her cloths and ate a large bowl of cereal with a banana. I had been thinking to myself that I was going to be unable to eat anything for the rest of the day. Seeing her eating the cereal drove me crazy, literally up the wall. This was becoming a common experience for me. It left me angry, confused and completely out of sorts. I just wanted to scream, Stop!

I am not talking about a gigantic woman. Before the Alzheimer’s really started taking hold, I doubt her weight fluctuated more than five to seven pounds over the previous 15 years. She wore a size 6-8 all those years.

Now, it was not unusual for my mother to eat at 11:30 at night, to get up out of bed and eat at 1:30 in the morning and 4.27 AM. She would eat breakfast at 7 AM and again at 9. She would eat lunch, several snacks, and everyday at 4:30 in the afternoon shortly after I reminded her that we would be eating dinner in half an hour--a sandwich. You could set your clock to the time of day. I could go out into the kitchen and just wait for her or better yet just perk my ears up at 4:30 and listen for the refrigerator to start beeping. Later she would have dinner and begin the cycle all over again beginning around 9 o’clock at night.

This pattern of eating was driving me crazier and crazier. My tiny 5 foot tall mother had ballooned to 152 pounds. I knew this was dangerous to her health (she was developing visceral fat and this can be life threatening). She could barely walk to the mailbox and back. It was causing her to become more and more sedentary. It was a vicious cycle. I didn’t know what to do or where to turn.

Finally, I decided to get us into the gym for some exercise (my own weight had ballooned all the way up to 206). As I was thinking about how I might accomplish this mission we received a flyer in the mail from my mother’s healthcare provider (Humana). It was almost as if I was receiving an answer to a prayer: the Silver Sneakers Program. The flyer announced that on January 1, 2005 all Humana Gold Plus members would be eligible for a free membership to a gym and enrollment into a exercise program specifically designed for Senior citizens. I enrolled my mother into the Silver Sneakers Program (SSP) and bought myself a two year membership to Gold’s Gym in Delray Beach. Since the SSP was offered at Gold’s this allowed us to go to the gym and to work out at the same time. And this is where it happened.

Next time Part 2. Some startling realizations, the end of denial, the beginning of an understanding of the behavior around the disease, and my own mental construct of how to deal emotionally with the behavior.