Dr. Alessi goes more in-depth on the topic of dementia in follow-up to his earlier conversation with Dr. Kristina Zdanys, geriatric psychiatrist at UConn Health and co-director of the James E. C. Walker Memory Assessment Program in the UConn Center on Aging.
He takes a closer look at the multifaceted nature of an effective memory assessment program, the role of imaging and monoclonal antibodies in slowing dementia’s progression, reducing dementia risk with lifestyle choices such as the “MIND diet,” misleading medication marketing, and the challenges of decisions around continuing to drive.
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March 24, 2026, Episode: “Dealing With Dementia” with Dr. Kristina Zdanys:
https://healthyrounds.podbean.com/e/dealing-with-dementia/
Dr. Kristina Zdanys:
https://www.uconnhealth.org/providers/profiles/zdanys-kristina
UConn Center on Aging:
https://www.uconnhealth.org/geriatrics-healthy-aging
UConn Center on Aging’s Memory Assessment Program:
https://www.uconnhealth.org/geriatrics-healthy-aging/services-specialties/memory-assessment-program
Geriatric Psychiatry at UConn Health:
https://www.uconnhealth.org/behavioral-mental-health/services-specialties/geriatric-psychiatry
UConn Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine
https://www.uconnhealth.org/orthopedics-sports-medicine
UConn Health:
https://www.uconnhealth.org
Grant support from Coverys:
www.coverys.com
Transcript
Dr. Alessi: Welcome to the Healthy Rounds Podcast, where we provide you with up-to-date and timely information from national and international leaders in their fields. This podcast is brought to you by UConn Health, with support from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a grant from Coverys. This podcast is not designed to direct your personal health care, which should only be done by your physician.
And today we’re doing what we call the deep dive where we look back at, in this case the interview we did with Dr. Kristina Zdanys. Dr. Zdanys is a geriatric psychiatrist and she’s associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut. She’s also the director of the James E.C. Walker Memory Assessment Program at the UConn Center on Aging.
It was great to chat with her and I think there were several points worth discussing. First of all, her directorship in a memory assessment program. I think this goes back to things that we’ve discussed before, and the fact that approaching a problem now is not the purview of one single specialty. And the fact that these programs are multidisciplinary and involve a variety of specialists, typically they will have a geriatric psychiatrist.
You can have neurologists as well as support staff, nurse practitioners, nurse navigators, as well as neuropsychologists as being part of the team. Radiologists who specialize in various imaging studies of the brain, as she discussed, are all part of a program and a multifaceted approach to a problem, in this case, the problem being dementia.
And dementia, as she mentioned, affecting currently 7 million Americans, with the thoughts that that’s going to go up to 14 million Americans over the course of the next several decades, so again, that multidisciplinary approach and making funds available for more research in the field of memory disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
She also talked a lot about imaging, and it’s something I just mentioned with neuroradiologists, because now we can get images due to PET scanning that look for amyloid, which is one of the main culprits that we find in the brains of people who have dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. So the fact that we can do a scan and look at these deposits and where they’re located helps us a lot in terms of planning for treatment.
Now we do have some new treatments, and those are in the form of the monoclonal antibodies. In this case, and we hear that term a lot, monoclonal antibodies are used for a variety of problems, typically autoimmune problems, but in this case, these monoclonal antibodies are directed against the amyloid in the brain.
So essentially it goes in and cleans up the amyloid that’s been deposited. Now, is that a cure? It’s not. It will slow the progression of dementia, a neurodegenerative disease like dementia, and it does involve going for very expensive infusions every two weeks. So there is a real time commitment, but there has been really good data to show that it slows the progression of the process. So I think that that’s a very important finding and something that’s available to us at UConn Health.
Also, we talked with her somewhat about how to avoid. Dementia. And it was interesting because we’ve talked in the past about stroke and heart disease, and it seems like it also pertains to heart health and brain health overall, and that’s why when we think of ways to avoid dementia.
We think of things that are just basic, right? Adequate sleep, exercise, diet. It’s not rocket science. And naturally you have to control those risk factors. Blood pressure, smoking, drinking alcohol, all work against you in the long run. So it’s important for us to realize that. And she brought up the idea of what’s called the MIND diet, M-I-N-D, and basically it’s called that because it’s the Mediterranean-DASH intervention for neurodegenerative delay. So it’s a diet that’s designed to help avoid progression of a neurodegenerative process, not just dementia. And it consists a lot of the Mediterranean things, lean meats, fish nuts using olive oil, things such as that. So really changing the diet overall, because we also want to control blood pressure and salt intake, and that’s where the DASH [dietary approaches to stop hypertension] part of it comes in. So again, it’s a combination diet to affect heart disease as well as changes in the brain.
We also brought up the topic of some misleading ads. You know, we’re seeing a lot of these ads now. I know we mentioned a product called Prevagen and making false claims. There’s so many of these and they seem to target broadcasts where older people are more likely to be tuned in, like news broadcasts and things such as that. So it’s important to really discuss, before you start taking any of these supplements, really talk to your physician and find out what is a legitimate thing to be taking and what you need.
The other topic we mentioned toward the end of the interview is operating a motor vehicle. And this is a tough one because obviously when someone has dementia, they’re going to be slow to react, slow to pick up the signs of potential accidents and what we call defensive driving. And it’s a problem as we all get older, but specifically in people who have dementia.
Unfortunately, we’ve created a society where we rely so much on operating a motor vehicle. People who live in big cities don’t have the same problem because there’s plenty of public transportation, things within walking distance. If you live in the suburbs, it becomes much more difficult. It’s also a problem because people feel so much like they’re giving up their freedom, their independence, having to rely on others.
Now, what has helped is the fact that we have services like Lyft and Uber, and I think promising technology is going to be these vehicles that are self-operating. But the important thing is to realize your loved one is not safe operating a motor vehicle. And they may not have that same insight. Now, it’ll cause some distress, and actually the best thing is to have them go for a driving test. In our area, Easterseals provides that and they will tell you if it’s safe or not to operate a vehicle. But again, it’s a very difficult decision point for families.
So we learned quite a bit about dementia and the things that are going on at UConn Health in this regard with Dr. Zdanys and her fine work. I want to thank her for her time, and I really want to thank Jennifer Walker, who’s our executive producer here at Healthy Rounds.
If you have any questions or ideas for future programs, you can reach out to me at healthyrounds@uchc.edu.
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