Maria Shriver Sheds New Light on Alzheimer’s

As both a journalist and the first lady of California, Maria Shriver has long taken a leading role in women’s-health issues. Her new report on Alzheimer’s disease is part of her quest to bring renewed urgency to the fight against this feared condition. In a recent news conference, she spoke about how women can join the fight…

Maria Shriver’s father no longer recognizes her. Sargent Shriver – former politician, U.S. ambassador and Peace Corps director – was diagnosed with Azheimer’s disease in 2003.

It’s a poignant detail in an all-too-common story that Maria Shriver, TV journalist and wife of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, has examined in print – with a children’s book, What’s Happening to Grandpa? – and through a camera lens on HBO’s “The Alzheimer’s Project.”

This week, Shriver approaches the subject scientifically with a new study, conducted in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association, detailing the effects this disease has on women – as caretakers and advocates for patients, and patients themselves.

The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s is the most comprehensive analysis on women and Alzheimer’s ever, said Angela Geiger, the Alzheimer’s Association’s chief strategy officer, in a press conference held yesterday.

More than 5 million Americans suffer from the disease today, and that will triple by 2050, according to Shriver. Based in part on a poll of more than 3,000 adults nationwide, the study found that more than half the U.S. population knows someone with Alzheimer’s, and almost 30% have it in their families.

Women are at the “epicenter” of the epidemic, according to Shriver, making up 65% of people with Alzheimer’s and about 60% of those caring for someone with the disease.

But there’s no coherent national strategy for dealing with this epidemic.

“It will be up to baby boomer women to push for advancements in this disease,” Shriver says, adding that a third of female Alzheimer’s or dementia caregivers are in the “sandwich generation,” meaning they’re caring both for older relatives and children or grandkids at the same time.

Part of the problem is that few Americans have disability insurance or plans for long-term care. And many women become caretakers because there’s no other family to do it.

The financial investment can be as large as the personal one: Caring for an Alzheimer’s patient costs an average of $56,800 per year, and most of that is shouldered by families, the report contends.

Working women face an additional challenge. According to the report, 64% of caretakers with jobs said they’ve had to go to work late, leave early or take time off, yet 46% said they were unable to leave work when they needed to.

“It’s easier to get time off to care for children than elder care,” Shriver says. As a result: Many women caring for Alzheimer’s patients face the “highest possible” emotional stress.

To address Alzheimer’s more effectively, women need to get involved politically, Shriver says, by encouraging representatives to support a nationwide Alzheimer’s plan and to amend the Family Leave Act so men and women can take time off to care for ailing grandparents, spouses and in-laws.

As for prevention, while little is known about the causes of Alzheimer’s, Shriver recommends that women “connect the dots between their heart and brain health” by exercising, eating foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids and keeping their minds challenged.

The scientific studies are conflicting, she admits, but adds that “from my own reporting, I haven’t met a person who doesn’t say that exercise is important cognitively.... Anything that’s good for your heart is going to be good for your brain.”

Even if there’s a 20% chance that healthy behaviors will help stave off the disease, they’ll be worth it, according to Shriver.

And given her own family history with the disease, how does she cope with the fear that she may get it herself? “I get busy and do things like this.”