The FDA has approved the use of Memantine for treatment of moderate to severe Alzheimers. The drug has been used in Europe for twenty years and has been shown relatively safe and effective in treatment of Alzheimers in advanced stages.

Many American families have been obtaining the drug from European Internet suppliers over the last ten years and will be relieved to find it in American pharmacies. Memantine will be marketed under the trade name Namenda and should be available by late January 2004.

While patients will not show a dramatic improvement immediately after starting the drug, 28-week duration studies have shown a steady improvement in most activities of daily living in those using the drug. Namenda works by regulation the flow of calcium and glutamate in brain nerve cells protecting those cells from the damage of calcium overload. Older Alzheimers medications have focused on blocking the breakdown of the brain cell neurotransmitter, acetylcholine.

We estimate 65 to 75% of our patients make a New Year’s Resolution to exercise more and another 15% promise to lose more weight and eat healthier. Most of these patients are really earnest in their resolution wishes, hopes and dreams, but fewer than 20% stick to their ambitions past February and only 10% achieve their goals.

The most common excuse heard for not living up to their year-end resolution is “I just don’t have enough time”. The second most common excuse is “exercise is difficult and boring”. Well, whatever the excuse, here are 7 simple tips on motivating yourself to exercise and keep your New Year’s promise to yourself.

1. Plan to exercise with a person who can give you “positive feedback” and monitor your progress. A lot of gyms have coaches who charge on an hourly basis if you don’t have a friend willing to help.
2. Make a portion of your exercise routine serve a purpose such as briskly walking or bicycling to work or school.
3. Keep your exercise sessions in the 30 minute range to avoid fatigue and the tendency to give up. Three ten minute workouts a day probably provide the same benefit as a single 30 minute session, but offer more room for excuses and failure.
4. Avoid the tendency to wait on a structured exercise program or special equipment. Exercise simply involves body movements, use of muscles and sweating. The other things are just window dressing.
5. Incorporate an enrichment activity into your exercise routine, such as listening to audiotapes on business or personal life skills. This will keep you from feeling guilty about the time you spent.
6. Try to avoid excuses such as its snowing or raining. Plan ahead for bad weather days and have alternate places to exercise such as your church activities building or a shopping mall. If worse comes to shove, you won’t melt or freeze to death if properly dressed.
7. Be realistic in your goals for exercising. You don’t have to exercise just to lose weight. You can usually be in great shape no matter what you weigh, if you properly exercise. Just think about those 300 pound football players and how fast they can run.

Your heart doesn’t appear to benefit from exercise unless it occurs everyday and burns up about 2000 kilocalories a week. That’s a lot of calories considering a 30-minute jog may only burn 300 to 400 calories. So, our advice for your “exercise New Year’s resolution” is just exercise. You can work on your weight loss by sticking to a good diet.
 

Since many of us don’t really understand the emotions of an ADHD child, we often try to make them explain why they do something or say a particular word or phrase.

I know most parents say when their teens respond to questions with the word “duh!”, it really gets under their skin. They think their child is just avoiding answering the question or is automatically guilty of something.

It’s important to remember in communicating with an ADHDer, his or her executive thought and reasoning processes are sometimes not capable of effective verbal or social communication. Often, the ADHDer believes you should know what he is thinking and shouldn’t have to ask.

If your ADHDer seems lost for words, uses inappropriate words such as I hate you when under pressure, or expresses physical anger, it’s often a sign of communication processing block in the brain. For some reason at that moment his or her brain just isn’t correctly processing what goes in and can’t formulate a response without getting frustrated and angry.

You should defuse the situation and allow them to calm down or cool off for a while before asking for answers again. Sometimes the response “I don’t know” is not a manipulation. Later, you may find rephrasing your question in simpler, non-threatening terms allows your ADHDer to answer without all the fuss and emotional stress. After all, most of us do tend to have confused thoughts when under a lot of pressure to perform immediately.

Uncle Frank has really been under the weather and just doesn’t have his “Success In Business” newsletter ready to go yet!

We’re watching closely as Frank recovers from his recent illness and hope to have him back on line in the spring of 2004.

“Uncle Frank’s Tips for Success in Business” will offer even more of his down to earth, common sense advice for the everyday hard working employee or business owner, as well as a healthy dose of his homespun humor.

Uncle Frank believes everybody wants to be a success in life. And he believes his assigned job in life is to help as many people as possible reach their maximum level of success in everything they do!