Long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution linked to increased risk of dementia

My sympathies.

As hard as it is, supporting family members also need to learn to prioritize taking care of themselves and avoiding a spiral towards burnout. With dementia, there is often a time when the patient needs a more controlled environment with 24x7 supervision. Dementia sleep schedules and behaviors fall apart and are not really compatible with a family caregiver's own health needs.

Depending on the dementia case, risky behaviors may emerge at night, and having observant caregivers awake 24x7 may be very important. The financial picture for this is quite difficult in the US. Normally this requires a care facility at some point, as it is impossibly expensive to bring sufficient dementia care via visiting professionals.

To safely handle dementia with "sundowning" and wandering behaviors, you usually need a facility that has about a dozen residents or more. Then, budgets allow for multiple onsite staff and overnight wakeful staff. This can bring more distinct staff roles too, e.g. cooking and housekeeping versus care.

Even this may be overwhelmingly costly, to the point where the dementia ends up depleting the estate and then shifting to some kind of government support. For family or trustees managing this process, it is full of difficult decisions regarding budget and care tradeoffs. For example, do you splurge on "nicer" facilities or other caregiver factors early on, or try to reserve more funds for the inevitable crises? Dementia can be a drawn-out process, where care needs expand to a crescendo before collapsing back to hospice care, which may be more like other terminal illnesses.

You have my condolences. I helped my wife care for her late father with Lewy body dementia. I think many people recognize they may need to care for the people that raised them at some point, but the realities of the costs--both financially and emotionally--are rarely discussed. @lemonberry feel free to reach out if you need a friendly ear, my email is in my profile.

On a personal note to anyone in this situation: Do not go it alone. Being a caregiver is hard, but being a caregiver for someone with serious memory issues is brutal and requires 24/7 monitoring. Your loved one will not always cooperate. They may change into someone who does not resemble the person you knew. Many states require such persons to be homed somewhere with a 24/7 nursing staff. Plan accordingly.

One major reason I'm working extra years despite being FI is so I have money to provide for memory care for my parents if they end up needing that. They have downright nothing to their name and memory care can easily run into half a million dollars total.

The two have been posited:

Lithium can be viewed an antioxidant – correctly or not?, I do not know.

Air pollution can be viewed as oxidative stress.

It’s interesting to search Google Scholar for “lithium antioxidant”.

Exposure to another similar metal could in theory displace lithium in biological processes.

Nice to know I've got bits of tire in my brain.

I wish all diesels could be included in the ULEZ ban. Or at minimum all non commercial diesel engines.

As a motorbike rider I can taste the diesel fumes as soon as I'm behind one in a way that's unlike any petrol car.

There's large particulates being thrown out by even the most luxurious diesel cars that you simply couldn't tell if you're behind in a car.

Current AQI in london ULEZ is 48 according to google maps which is not that good. Does that mean AQI is not a very good measure of air quality?

That was before the invention of fire? I think we had even worse problems back then.

Well, the Yuramal in Colombia are the people that hold the record for the most Alzeihmer cases because many possess the gene for early onset and exhibit the diseases at 40 year of age. So for them the age is quite young. This goes to show that currently the record is held by genetic factors and not environmental factors.

But they also show that it instead of eliminating the root cause of the disease, the solution might be eliminating its symptoms instead. Cause one woman who had the gene defied all odds and exhibited the symptom of the disease in her 70s. The reasoning is that another gene she had, the Christchurch gene, protected her brain from the disease. So if someone can use that info to prevent symptoms of the disease eliminating the root cause would become secondary.

Yes, as everyone knows, air pollution is harmless.