The Ultimate Booster

10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

Winning The Biological Arms Race

The human immune system (and indeed, other immune systems, but we are all humans here, after all) is in a constant state of war with pathogens, and that war is a constant biological arms race:

  • We improve our defenses and destroy the attackers; the 1% of pathogens that survived now “know” how to counter that trick.
  • The pathogens wreak havoc in our systems; the n% of us that survive now have immune systems that “know” how to counter that trick.

Vaccines are a mighty tool in our favor here, because they’re the technology that stops our n% from also being a very low number.

With vaccines, we can effectively pass on established defenses onto the population at large, as this cute video explains very well and very simply in 57 seconds:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

The problem with vaccines

The problem is that this accelerates the arms race. It’s like a chess game where we are able to respond to every move quickly (which is good for us), and/but this means passing the move over to our opponent sooner.

That problem’s hard to avoid, because the alternative has always been “let people die in much larger numbers”.

Traditional vs mRNA vaccines

A quick refresher before we continue to the big news of the day:

  • Traditional vaccines use a disabled version of a pathogen to trigger an immune response that will teach the body to recognize the pathogen ready for when the full version shows up
  • mRNA vaccines use a custom-made bit of genetic information to tell the body to make its own harmless fake pathogen and then respond to the harmless fake pathogen it made.

Note: this happens independently of the host’s DNA, so no, it does not change your DNA

See also: The Truth About Vaccines

Here’s a more detailed explainer (with a helpful diagram) using the COVID mRNA vaccine as an example:

Genome.gov | How does an mRNA vaccine work?

However, this still leaves us “chasing strains”, because as the pathogen (in this case, a virus) adapts, the vaccine has to be updated too, hence all the boosters.

This is a lot like a security update for your computer’s antivirus software. They’re annoying, but they do an important job.

No more “chasing strains”

The press conference soundbite on this sums it up well:

❝Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.❞

~ Jules Bernstein

Read in full: Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

You may be wondering: what makes this one effective against any strain?

❝What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad.

It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.

Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this.❞

~ Dr. Rong Hai

Importantly, this means it can be applied not just to one disease, let alone just one strain of COVID. Rather, it can be used for a wide variety of viruses that have similar viral functions—COVID / SARS in general, including influenza, and even viruses such as dengue.

How it does this: the above article explains in more detail, but in few words: it targets tiny strings of the genome that are present in all strains of the virus.

Illustrative example: if you wanted to block 10almonds (please don’t), you could block our email address.

But if we were malicious (we’re not) we could be sneaky and change it, so you’d have to block the new one, and the cycle repeats.

But if you were block all emails containing the tiny string of characters “10almonds”, changing our email address would no longer penetrate your defenses.

Now imagine also blocking strings such as “One-Minute Book Review” and “Today’s almonds have been activated by” and other strings we use in every email.

Now multiply this by thousands of strings (because genomes are much larger than our little newsletter), and you see its effectiveness!

Great! How can I get this?

It’s still in the testing stages for now; this is “breaking news” science, after all.

The study itself

…is paywalled for now, sadly, but if you happen to have institutional access, here it is:

Live-attenuated virus vaccine defective in RNAi suppression induces rapid protection in neonatal and adult mice lacking mature B and T cells

Take care!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • Most People Who Start GLP-1 RAs Quit Them Within A Year (Here’s Why)
  • Should You Soak Your Nuts?
    Discover the benefits of soaking nuts and how it can enhance their nutritional value and make them easier to digest.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Managing [E-word] Dysfunction Reactions

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    We had several requests pertaining to veganism, meatless mondays, and substitutions in recipes—so we’re going to cover those on a different day!

    As for questions we’re answering today…

    Q: Information on [e-word] dysfunction for those who have negative reactions to [the most common medications]?

    When it comes to that particular issue, one or more of these three factors are often involved:

    • Hormones
    • Circulation
    • Psychology

    The most common drugs (that we can’t name here) work on the circulation side of things—specifically, by increasing the localized blood pressure. The exact mechanism of this drug action is interesting, albeit beyond the scope of a quick answer here today. On the other hand, the way that they work can cause adverse blood-pressure-related side effects for some people; perhaps you’re one of them.

    To take matters into your own hands, so to speak, you can address each of those three things we just mentioned:

    Hormones

    Ask your doctor (or a reputable phlebotomy service) for a hormone test. If your free/serum testosterone levels are low (which becomes increasingly common in men over the age of 45), they may prescribe something—such as testosterone shots—specifically for that.

    This way, it treats the underlying cause, rather than offering a workaround like those common pills whose names we can’t mention here.

    Circulation

    Look after your heart health; eat for your heart health, and exercise regularly!

    Cold showers/baths also work wonders for vascular tone—which is precisely what you need in this matter. By rapidly changing temperatures (such as by turning off the hot water for the last couple of minutes of your shower, or by plunging into a cold bath), your blood vessels will get practice at constricting and maintaining that constriction as necessary.

    Psychology

    [E-word] dysfunction can also have a psychological basis. Unfortunately, this can also then be self-reinforcing, if recalling previous difficulties causes you to get distracted/insecure and lose the moment. One of the best things you can do to get out of this catch-22 situation is to not worry about it in the moment. Depending on what you and your partner(s) like to do in bed, there are plenty of other equally respectable options, so just switch track!

    Having a conversation about this in advance will probably be helpful, so that everyone’s on the same page of the script in that eventuality, and it becomes “no big deal”. Without that conversation, misunderstandings and insecurities could arise for your partner(s) as well as yourself (“aren’t I desirable enough?” etc).

    So, to recap, we recommend:

    • Have your hormones checked
    • Look after your circulation
    • Make the decision to have fun!

    Share This Post

  • How Useful Are Our Dreams

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    What’s In A Dream?

    We were recently asked:

    ❝I have a question or a suggestion for coverage in your “Psychology Sunday”. Dreams: their relevance, meanings ( if any) interpretations? I just wondered what the modern psychological opinions are about dreams in general.❞

    ~ 10almonds subscriber

    There are two main schools of thought, and one main effort to reconcile those two. The third one hasn’t quite caught on so far as to be considered a “school of thought” yet though.

    The Top-Down Model (Psychoanalysts)

    Psychoanalysts broadly follow the theories of Freud, or at least evolved from there. Freud was demonstrably wrong about very many things. Most of his theories have been debunked and ditched—hence the charitable “or at least evolved from there” phrasing when it comes to modern psychoanalytic schools of thought. Perhaps another day, we’ll go into all the ways Freud went wrong. However, for today, one thing he wasn’t bad at…

    According to Freud, our dreams reveal our subconscious desires and fears, sometimes directly and sometimes dressed in metaphor.

    Examples of literal representations might be:

    • sex dreams (revealing our subconscious desires; perhaps consciously we had not thought about that person that way, or had not considered that sex act desirable)
    • getting killed and dying (revealing our subconscious fear of death, not something most people give a lot of conscious thought to most of the time)

    Examples of metaphorical representations might be:

    • dreams of childhood (revealing our subconscious desires to feel safe and nurtured, or perhaps something else depending on the nature of the dream; maybe a return to innocence, or a clean slate)
    • dreams of being pursued (revealing our subconscious fear of bad consequences of our actions/inactions, for example, responsibilities to which we have not attended, debts are a good example for many people; or social contact where the ball was left in our court and we dropped it, that kind of thing)

    One can read all kinds of guides to dream symbology, and learn such arcane lore as “if you dream of your teeth crumbling, you have financial worries”, but the truth is that “this thing means that other thing” symbolic equations are not only highly personal, but also incredibly culture-bound.

    For example:

    • To one person, bees could be a symbol of feeling plagued by uncountable small threats; to another, they could be a symbol of abundance, or of teamwork
    • One culture’s “crow as an omen of death” is another culture’s “crow as a symbol of wisdom”
      • For that matter, in some cultures, white means purity; in others, it means death.

    Even such classically Freudian things as dreaming of one’s mother and/or father (in whatever context) will be strongly informed by one’s own waking-world relationship (or lack thereof) with same. Even in Freud’s own psychoanalysis, the “mother” for the sake of such analysis was the person who nurtured, and the “father” was the person who drew the nurturer’s attention away, so they could be switched gender roles, or even different people entirely than one’s parents.

    The only real way to know what, if anything, your dreams are trying to tell you, is to ask yourself. You can do that…

    The idea with lucid dreaming is that since any dream character is a facet of your subconscious generated by your own mind, by talking to that character you can ask questions directly of your subconscious (the popular 2010 movie “Inception” was actually quite accurate in this regard, by the way).

    To read more about how to do this kind of self-therapy through lucid dreaming, you might want to check out this book we reviewed previously; it is the go-to book of lucid dreaming enthusiasts, and will honestly give you everything you need in one go:

    Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life – by Dr. Stephen LaBerge

    The Bottom-Up Model (Neuroscientists)

    This will take a lot less writing, because it’s practically a null hypothesis (i.e., the simplest default assumption before considering any additional evidence that might support or refute it; usually some variant of “nothing unusual going on here”).

    The Bottom-Up model holds that our brains run regular maintenance cycles during REM sleep (a biological equivalent of defragging a computer), and the brain interprets these pieces of information flying by and, because of the mind’s tendency to look for patterns, fills in the rest (much like how modern generative AI can “expand” a source image to create more of the same and fill in the blanks), resulting in the often narratively wacky, but ultimately random, vivid hallucinations that we call dreams.

    The Hybrid Model (per Cartwright, 2012)

    This is really just one woman’s vision, but it’s an incredibly compelling one, that takes the Bottom-Up model and asks “what if we did all that bio-stuff, and then our subconscious mind influenced the interpretation of the random patterns, to create dreams that are subjectively meaningful, and thus do indeed represent our subconscious?

    It’s best explained in her own words, though, so it’s time for another book recommendation (we’ve reviewed this one before, too):

    The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives – by Dr. Rosalind Cartwright

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

  • How Old Is Too Old For HRT?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small 😎

    ❝I think you guys do a great job. Wondering if I can suggest a topic? Older women who were not offered hormone replacement therepy because of a long term study that was misread. Now, we need science to tell us if we are too old to benefit from begininng to take HRT. Not sure how old your readers are on average but it would be a great topic for older woman. Thanks❞

    ‌Thank you for the kind words, and the topic suggestion!

    About the menopause and older age thereafter

    We’ve talked a bit before about the menopause, for example:

    What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand

    And we’ve even discussed the unfortunate social phenomenon of post-menopausal women thinking “well, that’s over and done with now, time to forget about that”, because spoiler, it will never be over and done with—your body is always changing every day, and will continue to do so until you no longer have a body to change.

    This means, therefore, that since changes are going to happen no matter what, the onus is on us to make the changes as positive (rather than negative) as possible:

    Menopause, & When Not To Let Your Guard Down

    About cancer risk

    It sounds like you know this one, but for any who were unaware: indeed, there was an incredibly overblown and misrepresented study, and even that was about older forms of HRT (being conjugated equine estrogens, instead of bioidentical estradiol):

    HRT: A Tale Of Two Approaches

    As for those who have previously had breast cancer or similar, there is also:

    The Hormone Therapy That Reduces Breast Cancer Risk & More

    Is it too late?

    Fortunately, there is a quick and easy test to know whether you are too old to benefit:

    First, find your pulse, by touching the first two fingers of one hand, against the wrist of the other. If you’re unfamiliar with where to find the pulse at the wrist, here’s a quick explainer.

    Or if you prefer a video:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Did you find it?

    Good; in that case, it’s not too late!

    Scientists have tackled this question, looking at women of various ages, and finding that when comparing age groups taking HRT, disease risk changes do not generally vary much by age i.e., someone at 80 gets the same relative benefit from HRT as someone at 50, with no extra risks from the HRT. For example, if taking HRT at 50 reduces a risk by n% compared to an otherwise similar 50-year-old not on HRT, then doing so at 80 reduces the same risk by approximately the same percentage, compared to an otherwise similar 80-year-old not on HRT.

    There are a couple of exceptions, such as in the case of already having advanced atherosclerotic lesions (in which specific case HRT could increase inflammation; not something it usually does), or in the case of using conjugated equine estrogens instead of modern bioidentical estradiol (as we talked about before).

    Thus, for the most part, HRT is considered safe and effective regardless of age:

    How old is too old for hormone therapy?

    👆 that’s from 2015 though, so how about a new study, from 2024?

    ❝Compared with never use or discontinuation of menopausal hormone therapy after age 65 years, the use of estrogen monotherapy beyond age 65 years was associated with significant risk reductions in mortality (19% or adjusted hazards ratio, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.79-0.82), breast cancer (16%), lung cancer (13%), colorectal cancer (12%), congestive heart failure (CHF) (5%), venous thromboembolism (3%), atrial fibrillation (4%), acute myocardial infarction (11%), and dementia (2%).❞

    ❝Among senior Medicare women, the implications of menopausal hormone therapy use beyond age 65 years vary by types, routes, and strengths. In general, risk reductions appear to be greater with low rather than medium or high doses, vaginal or transdermal rather than oral preparations, and with estradiol rather than conjugated estrogen.

    Read in full: Use of menopausal hormone therapy beyond age 65 years and its effects on women’s health outcomes by types, routes, and doses

    As for more immediately-enjoyable benefits (improved mood, healthier skin, better sexual function, etc), yes, those also are benefits that people enjoy at least into their eighth decade:

    See: Use of hormone therapy in Swedish women aged 80 years or older

    What about…

    Statistically speaking, most people who take HRT have a great time with it and consider it life-changing in a good way. However, nothing is perfect; sometimes going on HRT can have a shaky start, and for those people, there may be some things that need addressing. So for that, check out:

    HRT Side Effects & Troubleshooting

    And also, while estrogen monotherapy is very common, it is absolutely worthwhile to consider also taking progesterone alongside it:

    Progesterone Menopausal HRT: When, Why, And How To Benefit

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Most People Who Start GLP-1 RAs Quit Them Within A Year (Here’s Why)
  • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness – by Alvaro Fernandez et al.

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We say “et al.” in the by-line, because this one has a flock of authors, including Dr. Pascale Michelon, Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, Dr. Elkehon Goldberg, and various others if we include the foreword, introduction, etc.

    This is relevant, because those who contributed to the meat of the book (i.e., those listed above), it makes the work a lot more scientifically reliable; one skilled science writer might make a mistake; it’s much less likely to make it through to publication when there are a bevy of doctors in the mix, each staking their reputation on the book’s content, and thus having a vested interest in checking each other’s work as well as their own.

    As for what this multidisciplinary team have to offer? The book covers such things as:

    • how the brain works (especially the possibilities of neuroplasticity), and what that means for such things as memory and attention
    • being “a coach not a patient”; i.e., being active rather than passive in one’s approach to brain health
    • the relevance of physical exercise, how much, and what kind
    • the relevance (and limitations) of diet choices for brain health
    • the relevance of such things as learning new languages and musical training
    • the relevance of social engagement, and how some (but not all) social engagement can boost cognition
    • methods for managing stress and building resilience to same (critical for maintaining a healthy brain)
    • “cross-fit for your brain”, that is to say, a multi-vector collection of tools to explore, ranging from meditation to CBT to biofeedback and more.

    The style is pop-science without being sensationalist, just communicating ideas clearly, with enough padding to feel casual, and not like a dense read. Importantly, it’s also practical and applicable too, which is something we always look for here.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to be given a good overview of what things work (and how much they can be expected to work), along with a good framework to put that knowledge into practice, then this is a great book for you.

    Click here to check out The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness, and optimize your brain health and performance!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load vs Insulin Index

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    How To Actually Use Those Indices

    Carbohydrates are essential for our life, and/but often bring about our early demise. It would be a very conveniently simple world if it were simply a matter of “enjoy in moderation”, but the truth is, it’s not that simple.

    To take an extreme example, for the sake of clearest illustration: The person who eats an 80% whole fruit diet (and makes up the necessary protein and fats etc in the other 20%) will probably be healthier than the person who eats a “standard American diet”, despite not practising moderation in their fruit-eating activities. The “standard American diet” has many faults, and one of those faults is how it promotes sporadic insulin spikes leading to metabolic disease.

    If your breakfast is a glass of orange juice, this is a supremely “moderate” consumption, but an insulin spike is an insulin spike.

    Quick sidenote: if you’re wondering why eating immoderate amounts of fruit is unlikely to cause such spikes, but a single glass of orange juice is, check out:

    Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    Glycemic Index

    The first tool in our toolbox here is glycemic index, or GI.

    GI measures how much a carb-containing food raises blood glucose levels, also called blood sugar levels, but it’s just glucose that’s actually measured, bearing in mind that more complex carbs will generally get broken down to glucose.

    Pure glucose has a GI of 100, and other foods are ranked from 0 to 100 based on how they compare.

    Sometimes, what we do to foods changes its GI.

    • Some is because it changed form, like the above example of whole fruit (low GI) vs fruit juice (high GI).
    • Some is because of more “industrial” refinement processes, such as whole grain wheat (medium GI) vs white flour and white flour products (high GI)
    • Some is because of other changes, like starches that were allowed to cool before being reheated (or eaten cold).

    Broadly speaking, a daily average GI of 45 is considered great.

    But that’s not the whole story…

    Glycemic Load

    Glycemic Load, or GL, takes the GI and says “ok, but how much of it was there?”, because this is often relevant information.

    Refined sugar may have a high GI, but half a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee isn’t going to move your blood sugar levels as much as a glass of Coke, say—the latter simply has more sugar in, and just the same zero fiber.

    GL is calculated by (grams of carbs / 100) x GI, by the way.

    But it still misses some important things, so now let’s look at…

    Insulin Index

    Insulin Index, which does not get an abbreviation (probably because of the potentially confusing appearance of “II”), measures the rise in insulin levels, regardless of glucose levels.

    This is important, because a lot of insulin response is independent of blood glucose:

    • Some is because of other sugars, some some is in response to fats, and yes, even proteins.
    • Some is a function of metabolic base rate.
    • Some is a stress response.
    • Some remains a mystery!

    Another reason it’s important is that insulin drives weight gain and metabolic disorders far more than glucose.

    Note: the indices of foods are calculated based on average non-diabetic response. If for example you have Type 1 Diabetes, then when you take a certain food, your rise in insulin is going to be whatever insulin you then take, because your body’s insulin response is disrupted by being too busy fighting a civil war in your pancreas.

    If your diabetes is type 2, or you are prediabetic, then a lot of different things could happen depending on the stage and state of your diabetes, but the insulin index is still a very good thing to be aware of, because you want to resensitize your body to insulin, which means (barring any urgent actions for immediate management of hyper- or hypoglycemia, obviously) you want to eat foods with a low insulin index where possible.

    Great! What foods have a low insulin index?

    Many factors affect insulin index, but to speak in general terms:

    • Whole plant foods are usually top-tier options
    • Lean and/or white meats generally have lower insulin index than red and/or fatty ones
    • Unprocessed is generally lower than processed
    • The more solid a food is, generally the lower its insulin index compared to a less solid version of the same food (e.g. baked potatoes vs mashed potatoes; cheese vs milk, etc)

    But do remember the non-food factors too! This means where possible:

    • reducing/managing stress
    • getting frequent exercise
    • getting good sleep
    • practising intermittent fasting

    See for example (we promise you it’s relevant):

    Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science

    …as are (especially recommendable!) the two links we drop at the bottom of that page; do check them out if you can

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Terminal lucidity: why do loved ones with dementia sometimes ‘come back’ before death?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Dementia is often described as “the long goodbye”. Although the person is still alive, dementia slowly and irreversibly chips away at their memories and the qualities that make someone “them”.

    Dementia eventually takes away the person’s ability to communicate, eat and drink on their own, understand where they are, and recognise family members.

    Since as early as the 19th century, stories from loved ones, caregivers and health-care workers have described some people with dementia suddenly becoming lucid. They have described the person engaging in meaningful conversation, sharing memories that were assumed to have been lost, making jokes, and even requesting meals.

    It is estimated 43% of people who experience this brief lucidity die within 24 hours, and 84% within a week.

    Why does this happen?

    Terminal lucidity or paradoxical lucidity?

    In 2009, researchers Michael Nahm and Bruce Greyson coined the term “terminal lucidity”, since these lucid episodes often occurred shortly before death.

    But not all lucid episodes indicate death is imminent. One study found many people with advanced dementia will show brief glimmers of their old selves more than six months before death.

    Lucidity has also been reported in other conditions that affect the brain or thinking skills, such as meningitis, schizophrenia, and in people with brain tumours or who have sustained a brain injury.

    Moments of lucidity that do not necessarily indicate death are sometimes called paradoxical lucidity. It is considered paradoxical as it defies the expected course of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia.

    But it’s important to note these episodes of lucidity are temporary and sadly do not represent a reversal of neurodegenerative disease.

    Man in hospital bed
    Sadly, these episodes of lucidity are only temporary. Pexels/Kampus Production

    Why does terminal lucidity happen?

    Scientists have struggled to explain why terminal lucidity happens. Some episodes of lucidity have been reported to occur in the presence of loved ones. Others have reported that music can sometimes improve lucidity. But many episodes of lucidity do not have a distinct trigger.

    A research team from New York University speculated that changes in brain activity before death may cause terminal lucidity. But this doesn’t fully explain why people suddenly recover abilities that were assumed to be lost.

    Paradoxical and terminal lucidity are also very difficult to study. Not everyone with advanced dementia will experience episodes of lucidity before death. Lucid episodes are also unpredictable and typically occur without a particular trigger.

    And as terminal lucidity can be a joyous time for those who witness the episode, it would be unethical for scientists to use that time to conduct their research. At the time of death, it’s also difficult for scientists to interview caregivers about any lucid moments that may have occurred.

    Explanations for terminal lucidity extend beyond science. These moments of mental clarity may be a way for the dying person to say final goodbyes, gain closure before death, and reconnect with family and friends. Some believe episodes of terminal lucidity are representative of the person connecting with an afterlife.

    Why is it important to know about terminal lucidity?

    People can have a variety of reactions to seeing terminal lucidity in a person with advanced dementia. While some will experience it as being peaceful and bittersweet, others may find it deeply confusing and upsetting. There may also be an urge to modify care plans and request lifesaving measures for the dying person.

    Being aware of terminal lucidity can help loved ones understand it is part of the dying process, acknowledge the person with dementia will not recover, and allow them to make the most of the time they have with the lucid person.

    For those who witness it, terminal lucidity can be a final, precious opportunity to reconnect with the person that existed before dementia took hold and the “long goodbye” began.

    Yen Ying Lim, Associate Professor, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University and Diny Thomson, PhD (Clinical Neuropsychology) Candidate and Provisional Psychologist, Monash University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: