Less-stressed people may have lower dementia risk, says a new study from Journal of Neurology. And why wouldn’t stress have an equal effect on the degeneration of the brain as it does to the body? It’s something I’d never thought about before though, but it’s interesting and highly relevant, unfortunately, to our film.

Realistically, it should come as no surprise that some of the people at TVN have dementia of various forms and at various stages, and I don’t just mean memory loss, though many people often connote memory loss with dementia. Just today, in fact, we sat in on and filmed some of the second weekly meeting of the Parkinson’s Disease Support Group. The only thing that was surprising was how people seemed to come out of the woodwork for it, but it was not unexpected that maybe 15 or 20 people showed up. Suffice it to say that dementia of any kind is something that particularly bears on the lives of those living in a place such as TVN, which at a glance appears to be an active senior, independent living retirement community. This is not to say that younger people don’t have or aren’t affected by dementia, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s been so fortunate as to reach the “golden years” who hasn’t had a friend who’s suffered from, had a spouse who suffered from, or himself/herself has suffered from dementia.

This topic was one of the two original catalysts that engendered the idea to explore the inner-workings of a retirement community. I was sitting with my grandmother a year ago, having dinner at TVN, when a couple walked by holding hands. My grandmother made some off-hand remark about how they shouldn’t be doing that (her views do not reflect the opinions of the filmmakers!) and should get a room, or something to that extent, which would be preferable to seeing that PDA. (I had to explain that PDA meant Public Displays of Affection to her.) And suddenly, for the first time, I was struck by the possibility: “Maw-maw, are people here still having sex?” My grandmother tends to make bold statements, so she automatically grinned and scoffed, “Are you kidding? Of course!” Or something like that. I was shocked. I, like so many people who haven’t reached old age yet, have just never given it any thought and tacitly dismissed the idea, either out of oversight or maybe even some kind of repulsion.

As the conversation went on, I asked her what had happened to her friend whom I’ll refer to as “Molly”, who had been there the last time I’d been by. Well, she explained, Molly had dementia that had progressed so far that she couldn’t function socially anymore at TVN. She’d get frustrated because she couldn’t communicate herself and then she’d get mad and confused when things seemed out of control, and they constantly felt that way. In this sense, I reasoned, dementia plays a social function at TVN. In kid terms, it’s kind of like your best friend as a child whose parents take a job in another city. You just have to move away. But it’s more complex than that, because dementia is not an innocent or quick animal. It’s slow and painful, as much to the individual undergoing it (if they’re aware of it, depending on the type) and also to the person’s loved ones. In this case, Molly was one of my grandmother’s best friends. She didn’t leave because of death or anything like that, but rather it was a drawn out, excruciatingly disheartening and dismal process. Maw-maw tried to take care of her friend and help her over the course of a couple of years, all the while watching her good friend’s inexorable mental decline. It calls to mind Flowers for Algernon, but in this case, it’s very real, and my grandmother’s experience (and that of her friend Molly) is not singular.

To bring things quickly full circle, there’s no telling by how many parts genetic and how many parts environmental Molly’s progressive dementia was (and is to this today). We hear often about how “there’s no Alzheimer’s in my family,” but less often about the environmental factors that may cue the onset of dementia, that give rise to it, if it’s lying in wait in the first place. And I think stress makes a lot of sense. Stress is the body’s general overdrive in response to a noxious stimulus. After studying days on end for exams without any sleep but somehow staving off sickness, suddenly a cold comes on the day after the exams end. The stress, the general immunity response of the body, prevented the sickness, but the body is worn out as well after all of that overdrive, and so it’s simple to become sick as the stress leaves the body. Why wouldn’t the same go for the mind? The brain is a part of the body like any other, and we certainly all know the feeling of mental stress. Just like bodily stress can bring on aging quicker, with wrinkles, sagging of skin, injury-proneness, etc., this CNN article reports on research showing that the same goes for the brain. Very interesting.

Fascinating to me in particular, as memory and nostalgia are such emotionally powerful parts of my human experience. Dementia is the physical instantiation of memory-loss. For this reason, we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking to our characters about what it feels like to lose one’s memory ability over time, what it’s like to live with people who have various forms and stages of dementia, and what it’s like to lose friends and family, and even the self, to such a disorder.

In the words of Sam, “Don’t lose that smile. You’ve got a great laugh. Don’t stop laughing. You’ll live longer.” Or, don’t worry, be happy. A little less stress, a little less taxing on the mind, a little more mental health as we reach our golden years.

On a humorous (it takes being able to laugh about it!) note as regards memory-loss, we’re constantly asked the same questions and told the same things at TVN, sometimes by the same people, like Sam’s quote from above. He’s told us a few times – let’s leave it at that! So let me say that what you’ve heard through the grapevine is true. For the past near two months, it’s been the following: Ashley and I look like brother and sister, Ashley and I look like such a great couple, Ashley’s really pretty, I’m such a nice young man, we both have great smiles and we shouldn’t lose them or stop smiling, we sure are working hard, we should eat some candy, if we want dessert they’ll get it for us, and most forthcomingly, we should get married!

Now if only I could get up the nerve to propose again.

ashley, characters, in the news, jared, senior eSource