Start here
Your mother has Alzheimer’s. Here is where to start.
A plain guide for families: what the disease is, what might help, mainstream and alternative, and an honest grade for every study, including who paid for it.
If you have just heard the word “Alzheimer’s” said about your mother, you are probably scared and reading this late at night. You are not alone. About 7.4 million Americans 65 and over have Alzheimer’s, and more than 12 million people care for someone with dementia without pay. You do not have to do everything this week. Start with the five things below.
Where do you want to start?
If you just found out, the pages go in this order: what Alzheimer’s is, getting a proper diagnosis, then the first 30 days. If you want to know what helps, the treatment pages are medicines, nutrition and deficiencies, traditional medicine, alternative programs and the frontier.
Five things to know first
Rule out the treatable look-alikes
Medicine side effects, low vitamin B12, an underactive thyroid, depression, infection, sleep apnea and poor hearing can all cause or worsen memory problems. Ask the doctor which of these were checked. Our diagnosis page has the full list.
Get a proper diagnosis
Ask which type of dementia this is and what stage. The type changes which medicines are safe. Four blood tests for Alzheimer’s are now FDA-cleared for people with symptoms, alongside brain scans and spinal fluid tests. None diagnoses Alzheimer’s on its own.
Call the 24/7 helpline
The Alzheimer’s Association helpline is free, confidential and open every hour of every day, in more than 200 languages: 1-800-272-3900. You can call tonight. More helplines.
Do the legal and money steps while she can take part
Powers of attorney for money and health care, a living will and a will all need her signature while she can still understand them. An elder-law attorney can help. After that, the only route may be a court guardianship, which is slower and costs more.
Look after yourself too
About 6 in 10 dementia caregivers report high or very high emotional stress. Support groups, respite care and caregiver training help, and some are paid for by Medicare. See living with it.
What about medicines?
Two kinds of Alzheimer’s medicine are approved in the US. Older symptom drugs can help memory a little for a while, without changing where the disease is heading. Newer anti-amyloid drugs slow decline modestly in the early stage, with a real risk of brain swelling and bleeding. Experts disagree about whether that benefit is big enough to notice. The medicines page has the numbers. Supplements, herbs and alternative programs are graded on their own pages.
How this site grades evidence
Every study on this site gets three labels, always in the same order.
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Solid | Good trials in people show it works |
| Promising | Some human evidence, not settled |
| Too early | Mice, case reports, or no comparison group |
| Didn’t work | Tested properly, no benefit found |
| Harmful | People did worse |
| How strong the evidence is, from 1 (animals or anecdotes) to 5 (large, repeated trials) | |
| Public / nonprofit | Paid for by government or a university |
| Charity | Paid for by a disease foundation or philanthropy |
| Industry | Paid for by a drug or device maker, for its own product |
| Seller conflict | The maker of a supplement or program, or an author, profits from the result |
Read the full method, and why this site exists, on the about and how we grade page. Every study we cite is also in the study database.
This site is a draft and is not medical advice. Talk to your mother’s doctor before starting or stopping any medicine or supplement.