I HEALTH I

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Fabulous Fashions &
Incredible Accessories
For the. Fuller
Figured Woman

SUGAR TREE PLAZA

Sizes 14 Plus

6209 Orchard Lake Rd.
West Bloomfield, Just N. of Maple
851-8001

10th and 11th Grade Students:

SPEND A SEMESTER
IN ISRAEL

WITH PROJECT DISCOVERY

The High School Program in Israel

•Live and study at an American-
accredited high school
February - June 1989

•Study in English including
preparation for S.A.T. as well
as Hebrew, Judaica, history

•Learn Israel's geography at first-hand

•Develop friendships with Israelis and students
from around the world

Cost of program:
$2,000
Registration $25.00
Subsidized by Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit

Affiliated with Youth Aliyah Project Discovery
Co-Sponsors: Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit, United Hebrew Schools

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46 FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1988

" E§

Alzheimer Patients
Receive New Support

DAVID LANDAU

erusalem — The fam-
ilies of the 50,000
Israelis suffering from
Alzheimers' disease — a
debilitating form of senile
dementia that causes dis-
orientation, loss of memory,
hallucinations, paranoia and
finally death — are about to
receive the support they so
desperately need.
A national organization of
Alzheimer's disease health
care is being organized, and a
seminar on the disease, open
to the public and especially to
relatives of Alzheimer pa-
tients, was held recently in
Jerusalem.
The organizer of the
seminar, Dr. Yehuda Op-
penheim, a psychiatrist at
Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek
hospital, says the disease is
an exhausting strain on the
family.
One patient, he said,
wandered away from home,
unable to find her way back.
The frantic family eventually
found her, lost and
bewildered, near the house
they had lived in years before.
Another sufferer was sudden-
ly unable to recognize her
husband and asked her son:
"Who is that man living in
my house?"
Oppenheim said that
although a cure for
Alzheimer's disease is still
distant, despite optimistic
reports a few years ago, some
of the psychiatric symptoms
can be alleviated. Drugs are
being used successfully to
calm the aggressiveness and
hypersexuality common in
Alzheimer patients, as well as
restoring normal sleep pat-
terns disturbed by the disease
and decreasing the paranoid
fears of patients.
Four day care centers run
by two other Shaare Zedek ex-
perts, Dr. Arnold Rosin, a
gerontologist, and Lea
Abramowitz, a social worker
specializing in geriatrics, pro-
vide many Alzheimer victims
in Jerusalem with daytime
activities, thus lessening the
burden of family members.
Oppenheim teaches coping
techniques to families who
need help with patients who
are often irrational, enabling
these families to keep their
relatives at home for as long
as possible before the often
unavoidable move to an in-
stitution, such as the Ezrat
Nashim Mental Health
Center in Jerusalem.
News of a possible cure was
generated in Britain some

j

years ago by the discovery of
a 70 percent deficiency in a
certain chemical, acetylo-
chine, essential for normal
brain functioning.
Doctors at the time thought
that by supplying this
chemical, they would be able
to cure the disease, but so far
they have been unsuccessful.
Some 6 percent of those over
65 are stricken with the
disease, and the proportion
rises to 20 percent of peple
over the age of 80. Incidence
of the disease is extremely
rare in younger people and,
although Alzheimer does
develop gradually over a
period of years* there are no
early warning signs.
Oppenheim recommends a
full medical assessment of
elderly people whose mental
functioning seems to be
deteriorating, though he said
that in his experience, most
families do not seek help for
anywhere between one and
five years after the onset of
Alzheimer characteristic
symptoms.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEWS

Lawmakers Hit
Anti-Semitism

Washington (JTA) — One
hundred and seventy
members of Congress are ask-
ing Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev to formally in-
vestigate the activities of new
anti-Semitic nationalistic
groups that have recently sur-
faced under "glasnost."
In an Aug. 8 letter, the
lawmakers said that in the
new era of openess, "anti-
Semitic acts are currently be-
ing organized against Jews in
Moscow and other cities in
the Soviet Union."
They praised Gorbachev for
recent human rights ad-
vances but asked him to of-
ficially condemn anti-
Semitism and to halt further
incidents against Jews.
None of the estimated 2.5
million Jews in the USSR
have been killed or injured in
any of the incidents, but the
lawmakers told Gorbachev
that Jewish property, in-
cluding 60 tombstones in
Moscow, has been desecrated
by vandals.
A newly formed Soviet na-
tionalistic group called
"Pamyat" or "Remembrance"
has been accused of being at
the forefront of the anti-
Semitic activity.

