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Online resources
Lucie Arbuthnot’s article on preventing Alzheimer's disease, “Can a Healthy Lifestyle Prevent Alzheimer's disease?” is available at http://www.mofga.org/Default.aspx?tabid=753.
Alzheimer’s Association, www.alz.org. Click on the “Maintain Your Brain” icon. Or FMI call toll-free 24/7, 1-800-272-3900.
AARP, www.aarp.org. Type “Staying Sharp” in the search window. Check the dates of documents, focusing on the most recent.
The Mayo Clinic, www.MayoClinic.com, is one of the best all-around sites for health-related topics. A recent search yielded more than 80 entries for Alzheimer's disease, and around 150 entried for both “memory” and “healthy diet.”
Two key resources from the United States National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health:
1. http://medlineplus.gov is an excellent site for documents geared to the general public. “Memory” and “Alzheimer’s” are useful search terms.
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez provides abstracts of worldwide medical research. A query for “Alzheimer’s” will give you 50,000+ results. You can limit the results by using the Limits tab (such as “2006-2008”) and include AND, OR, NOT (as in “Alzheimer’s AND prevention”). Check out the Tutorial for details.
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Print resources
Aaron Nelson, MD & Susan Gilbert. Achieving Optimal Memory. NY: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
Harvey B. Simon, MD. The No Sweat Exercise Plan. NY: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Gene D. Gohen, MD. The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain. NY: Basic Books, 2005.
Virginia Bell & David Troxel. A Dignified life: The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer’s Care ~ A Guide for Family Caregivers. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 2002.
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Important research guidelines
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Use only trustworthy sources. Key examples of credible research sites include the Mayo Clinic, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the Cleveland Clinic.
• Focus on the most recent resources. Knowledge about memory loss and Alzheimer’s prevention is constantly updated, with more than 100 new research articles about Alzheimer's disease published each week. Trust only the most recent resources.
• Discover how to evaluate online information at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) site, “Evaluating Health Information”: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/evaluatinghealthinformation.html.
• Most of all, practice healthy skepticism about “breakthroughs” that are touted on TV, or in mass market newspapers and magazines, especially when they are not written by experts in the field.
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