When someone suffers a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, their lives change in an instant. While some brain function may return through healing and rehabilitation, many sufferers plateau, and never return to their former selves.

​However, hope is on the horizon thanks to functional neurosurgeons like Jocelyn Bloch. In Dr. Bloch's recent TEDx talk in Zurich, she explains how she and her colleagues discovered a particular kind of cells that may enable brains to help heal themselves.
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Dr. Bloch and her colleagues have proven their theories through developing cell cultures using monkey brains, and reintroducing those cells. They did so with a monkey that didn't have any neurological issues, and discovered that the reintroduced cells disappeared. However, when the cells were reintroduced into a monkey that had damaged his brain, the cells remained. She and her colleagues believe that the cells remained to repair the damage.

Moreover, they performed this same experiment with a monkey that had suffered neurological damage, and had rehabilitated until he plateaued. Prior to reintroducing the cells, they had the monkey take a motor skills test. Then, they reintroduced the cells, and two months later, had the monkey take the same test. His progress was clearly and remarkably better. 

Medical breakthroughs like this provide hope to those of us who care for sufferers of stroke or other brain injury.  

Through years of experience, we've developed better ways to communicate with our clients who have Alzheimer's disease.

Today, we'd like to share one of these key tips, in the hopes that it can help you through this difficult journey.

Sympathize with their reality
People who have Alzheimer's tend to feel very vulnerable in their confusion, and can perceive threats that aren't actually there. Our natural tendency is to let our loved one know that these threats don't exist, yet that approach can lead them to experience an increased sense of vulnerability.

Sympathizing with the angst that your loved one is experiencing can go a long way to guiding the conversation in a way that eases the suffering of your loved one with Alzheimer's. If your loved one is accusing their neighbor of stealing something, you can say, "I'm sorry that happened to you. You seem really angry. I'd be angry, too, if that happened to me."

Helping clients-- and their families--through the Alzheimer's journey
Watching someone we love suffer from Alzheimer's is extremely difficult and painful. We often want to bring them back to our reality, to an earlier sense of normal. Instead, we have to find a way to come to terms with their loss of function, grieve that loss, and guide them through their new reality.

That's why we provide training and resources to our caregivers and to the families of our clients. We know that providing care is a team effort, and that our clients benefit from a unified approach. If you would like to find out more, send me an email. We're here to help.