Dementia Connect - SA

02/09/2026

Hello,

As part of Dementia Action Week 2026, join the Wicking Dementia Centre for a special week of free lunchtime webinars from Monday 21 to Friday 25 September 2026.

Across five engaging sessions, you'll hear from leading experts, gain valuable knowledge, and learn how each of us can help build more dementia-friendly communities.

Monday 21 September 2026 - 12pm - 12.30pm (AEST)

What Every Aged Care Professional Should Know About the Brain and Dementia - Presenter: Dr Sharn Perry
Tuesday 22 September 2026 - 12pm - 12.30pm (AEST)

Seeing the person, hearing the message - what do people with lived experience of dementia think we need to do better? - Presenter: Dr Alison Canty
Wednesday 23 September 2026 - 12pm - 12.30pm (AEST)

Bite-Sized Learning for the Workplace - Presenter: Dr Kathleen Doherty
Thursday 24 September 2026 - 12pm - 12.30pm (AEST)

Understanding Responsive Behaviours Through a Neuroscience Lens - Presenter: Neurologist, Dr Matt Kirkcaldie
Friday 25 September 2026 - 12pm - 12.30pm (AEST)

Dementia Inclusive Design and Environments - Presenters: Dr Jo Sun and Dr Pauline Marsh
Whether you're a health professional, carer, student, or simply interested in learning more, we encourage you to register and be part of the conversation.

Our webinars will challenge perceptions, share practical insights, and empower you to create positive change for people living with dementia, register today!

Don't keep this to yourself! Share this email with colleagues, friends, and community networks, and help us grow the conversation around dementia.

Kind regards

Wicking Dementia Centre

As part of Dementia Action Week 2026, join the Wicking Dementia Centre for a special week of free lunchtime webinars from Monday 21 to Friday 25 September 2026.

31/08/2026

28/08/2026

Demensie-diagnose: Só kan families betyds beplan https://maroelamedia.co.za/nuus/sa-nuus/demensie-diagnose-so-kan-families-betyds-beplan/

21/08/2026

This is so sad 😢 but so worth sharing the advise ….
"If I ever get dementia, I’d like my family to hang this wish list up on the wall where I live. I want them to remember these things.

1. Every time you enter the room announce yourself. “Hi- it’s ………...” NEVER ask- Do you know who I am??? That causes anxiety.

2. If I get dementia, I want my friends and family to embrace my reality. 🌸

3. If I think my dead friend is still alive, or if I think we’re visiting my parents for dinner, let me believe those things. I’ll be much happier for it.❤️

4. If I get dementia, don’t argue with me about what is true for me versus what is true for you.👍🏻❤️👍🏻

5. If I get dementia, and I am not sure who you are, do not take it personally. My timeline is confusing to me.👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

6. If I get dementia and can no longer use utensils, do not start feeding me. Instead, switch me to a finger-food diet, and see if I can still feed myself.❤️🥰❤️🥰

7. If I get dementia, and I am sad or anxious, hold my hand and listen. Do not tell me that my feelings are unfounded.

8. If I get dementia, I don’t want to be treated like a child. Talk to me like the adult that I am. ❤️

9. If I get dementia, I still want to enjoy the things that I’ve always enjoyed. Help me find a way to exercise, read and visit with friends. ❤️

10. If I get dementia, ask me to tell you a story from my past.

11. If I get dementia, and I become agitated, take the time to figure out what is bothering me. ❤️

12. If I get dementia, treat me the way that you would want to be treated. ❤️

13. If I get dementia, make sure that there are plenty of snacks for me in the house. Even now if I don’t eat I get angry, and if I have dementia, I may have trouble explaining what I need.❤️

14. If I get dementia, don’t talk about me as if I’m not in the room.👍🏻

15. If I get dementia, don’t feel guilty if you cannot care for me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s not your fault, and you’ve done your best. Find someone who can help you, or choose a great new place for me to live.👍🏻

16. If I get dementia, and I live in a dementia care community, please visit me often.❤️

17. If I get dementia, don’t act frustrated if I mix up names, events, or places. Take a deep breath. It’s not my fault.👍🏻

18. If I get dementia, make sure I always have my favorite music playing within earshot.❤️❤️❤️

19. If I get dementia, and I like to pick up items and carry them around, help me return those items to their original place.👍🏻

20. If I get dementia, don’t exclude me from parties and family gatherings.❤️

21. If I get dementia, know that I still like receiving hugs and plenty of laughing ❤️🥰❤️

22. If I get dementia, remember that I am still the person you know and love.”🌼❤️

In honor of someone you know or knew who has dementia. In Honor of all those I know and love and lost who are fighting Dementia/Alzheimer’s.

Someone once said if you take care of someone with dementia, you lose them more and more every day. When they get the diagnosis, when they go through different stages, when they need treatment, and when they pass away.

This is called "the longest goodbye ". As the brain slowly dies, they change physically and eventually forget who their loved ones are. They could end up lying in bed, not moving and not eating or drinking.

There will be people who will scroll past this post because
dementia has not touched them. They may not know what it's like to have a loved one who has battled or is still battling dementia.

To raise awareness of this cruel disease, I would like my friends to put this on their page today.

Hold your finger on the post to copy and paste to your timeline.

A special thank you to anyone willing to put this on their timeline for Dementia Awareness Week.
💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Copy and paste
Please Share This"

19/08/2026

19 August 2026: You are not alone. Therefore I highly recommend the attendance of the monthly Dementia Connect SA support group facilitated by Santa van Rooyen as many people don’t understand dementia and find it frightening and unnerving. They often don’t know how to respond to someone with dementia and don’t know how to feel when family members suddenly think we’re complete strangers. This support group are a place where people can meet in a safe environment to express their feelings and fears, and can get support, advice and guidance from others who know what it feels like to care for someone with dementia. Further each month a topic applicable towards Dementia was here discussed, and this month the Dr Heather Rauch from ADASA Eastern Cape stood in for Santa who had a foot operation, and her topic focused on The Earlier You Know, The More You Can Do: A Dementia Diagnosis Matters. Diagnosis through the Mocha, Mini Mental, and blood test for the Thyroid, and Vitamin deficiencies for B, K and D is the key to unlocking treatment (but it is also important that the the one size fit all approach is not applicable), care (medication, lifestyle, stimulation, finances etc.) and support options. Having any illness can be very isolating and you may feel very lonely. Support groups help ease the pain and offer you a place where people really understand you and what you are going through. Further the group wish Santa a speedy recovery. See less

Thank you Heather Rauch for facilitating the Support Group, and Buks Hayman for summarize the content so brilliantly 👏 😊 😀

08/08/2026

🇫🇮 WHY DOES FINLAND HAVE ONE OF THE HIGHEST DEMENTIA DEATH RATES IN THE WORLD?
This caught my attention.

Finland is one of the healthiest, most highly developed countries in the world — yet dementia appears extraordinarily high in its mortality statistics.

So what is going on? First, there is an important distinction: High dementia mortality does NOT necessarily mean Finland has the highest risk of developing dementia.

Finland has an aging, long-lived population and excellent medical diagnosis and death reporting. In countries where dementia is underdiagnosed, a person with Alzheimer’s who dies following pneumonia, for example, may have pneumonia recorded as the cause of death rather than dementia.

Finland’s very high dementia mortality is partly a “success-of-aging” phenomenon: people live long enough to reach ages where dementia becomes common. Dementia risk rises extremely steeply with age. Across OECD countries, prevalence goes from roughly 2% in the late 60s to extraordinarily high levels among people over 90. Finland’s life expectancy is now about 81.6 years, above the OECD average.

But there is another piece of the story that I find particularly interesting. Finland historically carried a very high burden of cardiovascular disease. And what damages the heart and blood vessels can also damage the brain. The brain is an exquisitely vascular organ; what damages arteries over 30 or 40 years can eventually show up as strokes, small-vessel disease, vascular cognitive impairment, or mixed vascular-plus-Alzheimer pathology.

High blood pressure.
Insulin resistance and diabetes.
Obesity.
Smoking.
Physical inactivity.
Elevated cholesterol.
Vascular disease.

These aren’t just cardiovascular issues. They are brain-health issues.

The 2024 Lancet Commission identified 14 potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia and estimated that addressing them across the lifespan could potentially prevent or delay around 45% of dementia cases.

And here comes the fascinating irony…

🇫🇮 Finland also gave us one of the world’s landmark dementia-prevention studies: the FINGER trial. Instead of looking for ONE intervention, researchers simultaneously targeted several areas:

🧠 Nutrition
🧠 Physical exercise
🧠 Cognitive training
🧠 Blood pressure
🧠 Cardiovascular health
🧠 Metabolic health

And the intervention helped protect cognitive function in older adults at increased risk of cognitive decline.

This is one of the most important lessons I believe we can take from dementia research: The brain doesn’t exist separately from the rest of the body.

Metabolic health matters.
Vascular health matters.
Movement matters.
Nutrition matters.
Hearing and vision matter.
Social connection matters.

And what we do in our 40s, 50s and 60s can influence what happens to our brains decades later.

We may not be able to control every risk factor — genetics and age obviously matter — but there is FAR more that we can influence than people were once led to believe.

And that is why I believe the question shouldn’t only be: “How do we treat dementia?” We also need to ask: “What is driving cognitive decline — and which of those drivers can we change?”

The best strategy is not one magical food or one supplement. It is lower cumulative metabolic, vascular, sensory and lifestyle burden across decades.

That is where hope becomes action.

— Julie Zanforlin
Founder, Reversing Alzheimer’s and Cognitive Decline

29/07/2026

It can be helpful to think of dementia progressing in three stages.

This is a guide to some of the common symptoms at each stage, although it’s important to remember that everyone’s dementia journey is different.

Dementia is progressive. This means signs and symptoms may be relatively mild at first but they get worse with time.

Knowing a little about what to expect in each stage can help us understand how dementia changes over time and how to prepare for the future. The stages also act as a guide to when certain treatments, such as medicines for Alzheimer’s disease, are likely to work best.

It can sometimes be difficult to tell when a person’s dementia has progressed from one stage to another because some symptoms may appear in a different order to how we’ve presented them here, and the stages may overlap.

Some symptoms, particularly those linked to behaviours, may develop at one stage and then reduce or even disappear later on. Other symptoms, such as memory loss and problems with language and thinking, tend to stay and get worse with time.

As dementia progresses, a person will need more help and, at some point, will need a lot of support with daily living. However, how soon this happens and the type of support needed will vary from person to person.

It’s natural to want to know which stage a person is at or what might happen next. But the most important thing we can do is focus on the person in the present moment, to help them live well for as long as possible.

If you need more help or advice we’re here for you, just give our Dementia Support Line a call on 0333 150 3456