Alzheimer App Developer - What technologies and types of technology do you use to manage your disease?

[l2silver]

@stavia Adding cognitive enhancement exercises

@circular You know it's probably my own personal stigma against self health apps. I've never really been successful using them, and I feel like they don't have the same importance as an application that is potentially used by a professional care giver. I could definitely see a self health angle.

[Nords]

I've already seen some incredibly complex routines that people have developed to improve their cognitive state, and I'm wondering what technologies people are using to do it? Pen and Paper? Habbit building apps from the ios store? Fitness tracker? Blood test analysis? Anything at all would be extremely helpful.

My father (an electrical engineer) used Post-It notes, wall calendars, and spreadsheets.

This worked well as long as he had the cognition to write a note, parse a calendar, and use a computer. (He never bothered with cell phones.) He lived independently (alone) with Alzheimer's for almost three years from first recognizing his symptoms, although I'm pretty sure the final couple months of that were pretty scary before he finally moved into a full-care facility.

I know that cognitive reserve can be improved, but people have to want to do it. Once Alzheimer's symptoms appear, it's difficult to retain the internal motivation to continue the effort. On the Alzheimer's Reading Room, Bob DeMarco's mother once told him that "No" was the easiest word to use when you're living with AD.

[l2silver]

That's a really good point. I think there was a similar anecdote in bredesens book too. If you get too close, the desire can wain.

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[circular]

I2silver don't miss this new thread, wherein there's a link to a paper in Nature indicating some of our biomarker targets might eventually vary with the season and location. To be ahead of this curve, your app might include a way to select the season when and the hemisphere where the biomarker was measured. It would be cool if the account settings could include the location, then when a month is entered that a test was done, the app would automatically color it blue for winter, yellow for spring, green for summer, and red for fall (or some such scheme). I'm picturing the background color to the lab result being the color code.

Let us know if you are getting underway developing the app. I'm inclined to hold off entering all my data into a spreadsheet if you're working on it. I may be glad I never got around to that

[l2silver]

Hey circular, that's a pretty interesting thread! You're definitely right, I'll need to account for season and location for lab tests. The app is getting underway, hopefully I'll be able to show the mockups soon. I am planning on making the app capable of importing the lab results once they're in digital form, so you should be safe to insert the data into Excel if you want. I suppose it's just analog results right now?

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[KhalifaaSheikh]

I found its a very informative article circular. Thanks for the sharing.

[floramaria]

Welcome, KhakifaaSheikh. We are happy that you have joined us and found the article circular posted to be helpful. As you are new to the site, you have a feast of informative articles awaiting!
If you haven't seen it yet, may I suggest you look at the the Primer ? It is an excellent place to begin. It is written by a physician member, Stavia, and contains a wealth of information regarding ApoE4 risks and interventions.
Our Wiki has sections devoted to many areas of interest to carriers of the ApoE4 allele, and also a section on how to use this website.
Another useful tool is the Search Function that you access by clicking the magnifying glass to the left of your user name near the top of the page. That will pull up the entire history of posts on any topic you enter.
If and when you feel ready to tell us more about yourself, the Our Stories Forum is a good place to post your introduction and let us know a little about yourself what brings you to the site.
Meanwhile, we welcome your participation.

[TWBD]

I made an a Excel spreadsheet to keep up with my labs and, like hill dweller, I also use Bredsen’s optimal ranges, then color highlight the lab results for a quick reference glance where these fall into optimal, moderate or high risk.

Hill Dweller, I desperately need to make a spreadsheet for my supplements like you do so I can keep track of the cost, purpose, frequency etc. Susanj, I also want to link references to the supplement use in the spreadsheet so I can ‘remember’ why I felt compelled to purchase them and want to track somehow my progress. I was about to start a new thread asking for help and sharing of spreadsheets so I can get this info down and usable. My monthly costs for supplements alone is climbing to $200-$300/ month. While many of these are justifiable, I’m sure I could cut this back.

12silver, I actually brainstormed this idea as well and while researching habit/ goal apps, I found Habitat and joined it. However, I get nothing out of seeking rewards in a gaming atmosphere and found the average age of the group rather young for me with too much stress trying to keep up with goal writing and reviewing my failures ( ptsd with former work performance evaluations) so I eventually dropped out. I also used cronometer and Fitbit and a fitness app, but don’t use them daily. I am horrible with organization and stress out just thinking about my shortcomings. What I personally need is better social interaction and creative learning opportunities that give me joy and stress me less with trying to keep up or reminding me how far down the road to AD I might be.

I think building an app is a great goal, but it can be a problem trying to be all things to all people. I would be very happy to share what I have and would love to see what spreadsheets or apps others are using.