Thank You to Everyone Who Attended the Healthy Brain Expo!

Thank you to everyone who attended the Healthy Brain Expo at Laguna Woods Village on Saturday October 13! We had over 170 people in attendance with 60 of them partaking in free memory checkups and 50 participating in the Virtual Dementia Tour.

The main room was used as both the presentation and exhibitor room, where attendees could tour the 10 different vendors and listen to the three lectures at the same time. At 10:30, the presentations began with Cheryl Alvarez, Psy.D, who laid out the proper steps to take after getting a dementia diagnosis; at 11:30, Dr. Nasira Burkeholder-Cooley discussed brain-healthy foods and diets; At 12:15, there was a short break for lunch, where Las Palmas Senior Living gave out free turkey or veggie wraps to all guests. Lastly, at 1:00 William Liu, Pharm.D lectured on the dangers of overmedication in seniors.

But the speakers were not the only draw to the event. The Virtual Dementia Tour and memory checkups were also available for guests to take part in. The Virtual Dementia Tour, operated by Senior Helpers, is an interactive experience, where participants put on glasses, gloves, and in soles to feel the overwhelming effects that dementia patients feel every day. The responses were gripping, with many participants saying that they wanted to feel what their loved one went through.

We also had six memory screeners available to conduct memory checkups for attendees. The checkup was a 20-minute assessment that helped determine a baseline for whether memory related concerns were due to normal aging or needed additional evaluation.  This free service was an extension of Alzheimer’s Family Center’s (AFC) memory checkup program. The program is available once a month in three different locations (AFC, Laguna Woods Village, and the Mind & memory Program at Mission Hospital).

We would like to thank the following vendors for their help in making our expo a success:

• Senior Helpers
• Mind & Memory Program at Mission Hospital
• Las Palmas
• Clear Choice
• Humana
• Freedom Village
• Infinity Medicine
• Seniors Helping Seniors
• Swiss Bionic Solutions

We would also like to thank Wellness in the Woods’ Leslie Carretti for her exceptional work in  promoting the event and making sure that everything ran smoothly.

We will be hosting another Healthy Brain Expo at the AFC facility in Huntington Beach in May 2019. Stay tuned for more details.