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This episode is about a question we hadn’t tackled yet on this podcast but have thought about every day since our ’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis: what does this mean for our own risk of getting the disease.

Today we share more about what we learned regarding inherited risk of Alzheimer’s disease. More commonly genetics is just one contributing factor among many. We use the APOE2, APOE3, and APOE4 gene variants (our mom is A3/A3, or “neutral risk”) and we found a garden analogy — genetics as the soil, risk factors as weeds you can manage but never fully control — to explain how we’ve been think about this.

We also share the specific lifestyle changes we’ve each made since her diagnosis: strength training for hippocampal health and insulin sensitivity, cutting sugar, sauna use, treating hearing loss and sleep apnea early, managing blood pressure, and staying socially connected — plus the 2024 Lancet Commission finding that 45% of dementia cases link to 14 modifiable risk factors.

This episode covers Alzheimer’s risk factors, the APOE gene, Alzheimer’s prevention, genetic risk of early onset Alzheimer’s, modifiable dementia risk factors, hippocampus health, sleep apnea and Alzheimer’s, and lifestyle changes to reduce Alzheimer’s risk.

Healthy brain habits: https://www.alz.org/help-support/brain_health/10-healthy-habits-for-your-brain

Support the show

Thanks for walking this journey with us. Conversations Through Alzheimer's is hosted by sisters Amber and Felicia, and new episodes drop every Monday through September 2026.

If this show has resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Follow along on our socials:

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@conversationsthroughalz
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ConversationsThroughALZ

Support the Alzheimer's Association by joining our Walk to End Alzheimer's team or donating: https://act.alz.org/site/TR/Walk2026/NY-WesternNewYork?pg=team&team_id=1057467&fr_id=19818

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This episode is about the connection between stress and Alzheimer’s disease progression, and the specific ways we’ve changed how we communicate with our mom Rosemary to help lower her stress.

We start with a short update on the small logistical things that came up this week — mom scheduling her own doctor’s appointment and using shared medical portal access so she doesn’t have to re-explain results, and a reset of our system for managing her supplement refills across four people.

Then we get into the research: in a healthy brain, the hippocampus signals the body to stand down after a stress response, but the hippocampus is one of the first regions damaged by Alzheimer’s, so that off-switch doesn’t work the same way. This means cortisol stays elevated longer, which further damages the hippocampus, creating a cycle. We also talk about how Alzheimer’s affects the prefrontal cortex’s ability to separate the source of an emotional trigger from its target, meaning a loved one raising their voice at the TV or being frustrated about an unrelated situation can still register in an Alzheimer’s patient’s brain as a direct threat.

We share specific examples of how this showed up with our mom, including a genuinely difficult conversation about our dad’s tone of voice, and how something as simple as an unplanned password reset or a disrupted morning routine could affect her for the rest of the day. We also talk through what worked, including how we approached a family trip to Disney World with her routine, food, and cognitive load in mind, and end with a practical list of communication strategies for lowering stress with someone who has Alzheimer’s: keeping tone positive and reassuring, letting go of small mistakes instead of revisiting them, giving space to find words without rushing in, and not carrying tension from one moment into the next.

Articles referenced in the show about lowering the stress on alzheimers:

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8315237/
  
  
• https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/alzheimers-changes-behavior-and-communication/communicating-someone-who-has-alzheimers

Support the show

Thanks for walking this journey with us. Conversations Through Alzheimer's is hosted by sisters Amber and Felicia, and new episodes drop every Monday through September 2026.

If this show has resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Follow along on our socials:

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@conversationsthroughalz
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ConversationsThroughALZ

Support the Alzheimer's Association by joining our Walk to End Alzheimer's team or donating: https://act.alz.org/site/TR/Walk2026/NY-WesternNewYork?pg=team&team_id=1057467&fr_id=19818

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This is a real-time update on our mom Rosemary's early onset Alzheimer's journey from April 2026. We had been going through months of testing and workups to understanding if our mom would be a candidate for anti-amyloid infusion therapies — lecanemab and donanemab.

We walk through the full workup: the APOE genetic testing, the lumbar puncture required to confirm eligibility, and the genetic counseling to rule out inherited mutations tied to early onset Alzheimer's. We also get into what happened after the lumbar puncture — a spinal headache that sent our mom to the ER for a blood patch while our dad was out of town, and what we learned about aftercare instructions and coordinating care from a distance.

Then we talk through the call that changed the direction of this whole decision: her tau levels were high enough that the studies show almost no measurable benefit from the infusion therapy for someone at her level, even though she wasn't formally ruled out as a candidate. We talk about how that news landed for her, for us, and how we've had to separate the clinical data from the grief of hearing it.

This episode covers real time processing of our mom's Alzheimer's diagnosis and what it's like as adult children trying to make these decisions as part of our mom's care team.

Support the show

Thanks for walking this journey with us. Conversations Through Alzheimer's is hosted by sisters Amber and Felicia, and new episodes drop every Monday through September 2026.

If this show has resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Follow along on our socials:

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@conversationsthroughalz
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ConversationsThroughALZ

Support the Alzheimer's Association by joining our Walk to End Alzheimer's team or donating: https://act.alz.org/site/TR/Walk2026/NY-WesternNewYork?pg=team&team_id=1057467&fr_id=19818