Confessions of a Grandma

Mike has gone off to the beach this morning.  I will give that a pass for the rest of the week, but he doesn’t seem to be as sensitive to the red tide and smell of dead fish.  My stomach lurches at the thought. We cleaned shutters and windows this past weekend.  The shutters on the shady side of the house were badly mildewed.  After a few attempts to get it off, we ended up using a product that attached a spray bottle at the end of the hose.  It contained bleach and it worked, but boy, did I suffer all day yesterday.  Renewed commitment to my homemade cleaners and respiratory masks if I ever attempt that again.  And, I am staying away from the red tide. Last night was one of those toss and turn and fling pillows around the room nights.  I never woke up for long enough to have to get out of bed, but it was NOT a refreshing night’s sleep.  Probably related to chlorine poisoning (over dramatic?).  Earlier this summer I was having nigh...

I worry about dementia.  I have watched two aunts, an uncle and my own mother fade away in that manner. Maybe you heard the story on NPR.  I read about it on Changing Aging .  Sleep problems are associated with cognitive decline.  Forty percent of American adults have trouble sleeping, and according to Dr. Kristine Yaffe of the University of California at San Francisco, those with sleep disorders are twice as likely to develop some type of dementia in later life. Of course, her research was done on individuals over 75, a population that seems more likely to develop dementia in any case.  (I don’t understand statistics very well.)  In any case, a connection is there, but that does not mean that sleep disorders actually cause dementia.  Maybe dementia causes sleep disorder.  Or maybe some other factor is at work that might result in both sleep problems and dementia. It seems to me that there is no reason to assume that the thing to do is slee...