Health
Aging in Place: How Technology Might Help You Grow Old at Home
Dr. Megan Jack, a neurosurgeon in Cleveland, often works 60 or 70 hours a week. And she’s completely unavailable when she’s in the operating room. That makes it tough to be a caregiver for her 76-year-old mother, who lives in a separate unit on Dr. Jack’s property, 30 minutes away from the hospital.
To help care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Jack uses an array of high-tech tools, some of which didn’t exist just a few years ago. She manages her mother’s medications with a smart pill box. She changes her television channels with an app, sends appointment reminders through a digital message board — and, with her mother’s blessing, uses cameras for communication and monitoring.
“It’s been invaluable that I can both make sure she’s safe and make sure everything is going well,” Dr. Jack said, “but also give her the independence and the freedom that she still deserves.”
America is aging rapidly. Roughly 11,000 people are turning 65 each day in the United States. And many of them — 75 percent of people over 50, according to AARP’s most recent survey, from 2024 — hope to spend their remaining years in the comfort of their homes, rather than in assisted-living or other care facilities.
One thing that could help fulfill those wishes is the budding field of “age tech,” which encompasses tools that support older adults. Industry experts say that age tech is making homes safer for older adults and is easing the minds of their caregivers, especially those who live far away or work outside the home.
Dr. Jack said that age tech had “really allowed me to integrate caregiving into my life, as opposed to caregiving taking over my life.”
The age tech boom
If older adults don’t have loved ones who are both close by and able to help, they might believe they don’t have a ton of options. They can live independently, or, if they can afford it and qualify medically, they can move to an assisted-living facility or a nursing home, without a lot of choices in between. In-home help can be expensive without Medicaid and can also be difficult to find, given the serious shortage of home care workers.
Age tech can help bridge some important gaps, said Emily Nabors, the associate director of innovation at the National Council on Aging, a nonprofit advocacy group. Already, AARP reports that 25 percent of caregivers are remotely monitoring their loved ones with apps, videos or wearables, nearly double the percentage from five years ago.
“We used to say homes are the health care settings of the future, but they really are health care settings now,” Ms. Nabors said. “Aging in place is very realistic.”
More than 700 companies are in AARP’s AgeTech Collaborative, a group that connects businesses, nonprofits and funders to help get new technologies off the ground. Altogether, the collaborative’s start-ups have raised nearly $1 billion in the past four years.
The products include smart walkers, glasses with lenses that provide real-time captions of conversations for those with hearing issues, and a concierge service that connects older people to drivers and deliveries, even if they don’t have a smartphone.
Ms. Nabors does foresee some affordability and access barriers to age tech, including the lack of high-speed internet in rural areas, but she said one vital resource would be local aging agencies, which can offer advice and, sometimes, free support.
Janet Marasa leaned on the agency near her home in Rockland County, N.Y., to get a free robotic pet for her mother, Carol DeMaio, 80, who has dementia. The pets, manufactured by a company called Joy for All, aim to offer emotional support without the upkeep.
Ms. DeMaio named the robotic dog Sabrina, after a golden retriever who died. The new Sabrina stays at the foot of her bed at night. As soon as Ms. DeMaio stirs awake, the dog reacts. “She said it gives her a reason to get up in the morning,” Ms. Marasa said.
The dog has been a boon to her, too. “It provides comfort and interaction that I can’t provide every second,” said Ms. Marasa, who lives with her mother but works full time for the county government. “It gives her something that she can feel like is totally her own.”
In Broward County, Fla., where the population of residents over 85 is expected to nearly triple over the next few decades, the local agency on aging has used state and federal money and private grants to provide technologies to nearly 4,000 of the county’s seniors at no cost.
Its offerings include a company that uses radar to sense falls and a program that allows seniors to make video calls through their televisions.
“The possibilities are endless,” Charlotte Mather-Taylor, the agency’s chief executive, said. “It’s pretty great to see all the new technology coming out so quickly, and I think that can only benefit our older population and also our caregivers.”
Here comes A.I.
Even technologies not specifically marketed as age tech can help older adults maintain their independence, said Laurie Orlov, founder of the blog Aging and Health Technology Watch. She pointed to video-calling and telehealth platforms; remotely controlled thermostats and lights; and smart speakers, doorbells and watches.
“All technology can be customized to help older adults stay longer in their homes and help their family members feel good about it, or at least tolerate it,” Ms. Orlov said.
That will only become more true with the continued proliferation of artificial intelligence, Ms. Orlov added. Some older adults are already using conversational A.I. to get answers about things like the weather or their medications. (Relying too heavily on A.I. can, however, have negative consequences because chatbots often give flawed medical advice and can lead patients astray.) A.I. can also assist in pattern detection: alerting caregivers to signals that might indicate declines in someone’s cognition or mental health, such as changing their speech pattern or leaving the house less frequently.
One A.I.-powered age tech tool is ElliQ, a tabletop companion robot that looks like a sleek silver desk lamp with a screen. About a year and a half ago, Camille Wolsonovich got one for free, thanks to a local nonprofit, for her 90-year-old father, Bill Castellano. He lives alone in a senior community.
Ms. Wolsonovich, who runs a consulting business, relies on ElliQ to lead her father in exercises and remind him to take his pills and drink water. The robot also asks her father about his sleep and mood via automated check-ins.
“Everything’s just another layer that gives us more confidence, from a caregiving standpoint, that he’s good,” Ms. Wolsonovich said. “I don’t have to necessarily track everything all the time and be overbearing.”
As for Mr. Castellano? He plays trivia digitally and converses daily with ElliQ. The robot, which has a friendly female voice, asks questions, cracks jokes and remembers his likes, dislikes and friends. “She’s great company,” he said. “Everybody around me wants one.”
What about ethical concerns?
Clara Berridge studies the ethics of age tech at the University of Washington.
She has many privacy concerns, namely that most direct-to-consumer products aren’t subject to medical privacy laws, despite being privy to sensitive health information. Though she hopes the federal government will eventually step in to regulate these products, as it has in other countries, the onus remains on the consumer for now.
And even if an age tech product isn’t selling mom’s personal data to the lowest bidder, Dr. Berridge said there’s still the question of whether certain tools are ethical.
“It’s really important for caregivers to recognize that using these new technologies that give them more information about someone can represent greater intrusion into someone’s life,” she said.
What may be well-intentioned monitoring could reveal information that an older adult would rather keep private, such as issues with incontinence, or the comings and goings of a romantic partner.
“It can lead to somebody feeling infantilized,” Dr. Berridge said. “Like there’s not a place to hide within your own home.”
Her research shows that adult children often underestimate how much their parents can understand about technology and how much they want to be involved in tech-related decisions.
She encouraged caregivers to have transparent conversations about privacy implications and to avoid ultimatums or the idea that any decision must be permanent. She said caregivers should put themselves in their parents’ shoes: Is this something they’d want their own children monitoring?
Dr. Berridge is working on an advanced directive for technology, which outlines older people’s wishes for how technology is used in their care. Ultimately, she hopes that questions about age tech will become a standard part of planning for the future.
“If you’re at the start of what, for many people, ends up being a long road of supporting someone potentially through the end of their life,” she said, “seeking to understand each other’s concerns and priorities better is time very well spent.”
For years, the opioid supply in Arizona was dominated by little blue pills pressed and stamped to look like 30 milligram oxycodone tablets, often called “blues.” But two years ago, that began to change. Now the market is mostly powdered fentanyl, and drug deaths are rising. In Phoenix, this shift in the illicit drug supply has combined with heat, meth and homelessness to create an emerging crisis of overdose deaths in America’s fifth-largest city.
Marck Martinez grew up outside Phoenix, and when he first encountered fentanyl, it was those blue pills. But when he relapsed this past February, he had trouble finding them. “I tried to look for blues again, and there were no blues at all,” he said. In their place, he found fentanyl powder, which was stronger and less predictable.
With the switch to powder, he began to overdose much more frequently, most recently in April in a public park next to his 5-year-old son. He survived only because his mother found him and called paramedics, who were able to revive him with naloxone. After being driven to a hospital, Mr. Martinez, 26, fled to a gas station bathroom to smoke fentanyl again.
Harm reduction workers, local researchers and people who use drugs all echoed the same idea: Blues with significant quantities of active ingredients have been disappearing. Blues didn’t vanish all at once, they said. Rather, over the past year or two, it became increasingly difficult to find pills with enough fentanyl in them to have any effect at all. For the most part, the pills remaining on Phoenix streets today are “fake,” Mr. Martinez said, no longer containing enough fentanyl to prevent withdrawal. For drug users in Phoenix, it’s mostly powdered fentanyl that remains.
Brian Clark, associate chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Pacific and Southwest region, said the suppliers of fentanyl haven’t changed, with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels remaining the primary movers of fentanyl across the southern border. But he couldn’t say why these cartels shifted from counterfeit pills to powder in Arizona.
Neighboring New Mexico is seeing the same transition from pills to powder, said Dave Daniels, harm reduction manager for the New Mexico Department of Health. These two Southwestern states had the largest increases in the drug death rate in 2025, all while drug deaths in West Virginia, once the center of the opioid epidemic, have plummeted. According to a New York Times analysis of provisional mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the drug death rate in Arizona last year overtook West Virginia’s for the first time since the proliferation of prescription painkillers in the late 1990s. Arizona and New Mexico now have the highest rate of drug deaths in the contiguous United States.
The rising drug deaths in the Southwest are in sharp contrast to the large-scale decline that has returned the U.S. drug death rate to its pre-Covid level. The reasons for this decline are still a matter of debate. “Epidemic curves can only go up for so long,” said Caleb Banta-Green, a research professor at the University of Washington. And the shift to powdered fentanyl in the Southwest already happened in much of the country years ago.
The surge of powder in Arizona, however, has spread through a population that is not accustomed to using it. “People adapt to market changes,” said Raminta Daniulaityte, a professor at Arizona State University who researches illicit drug use. “But initially when things change, it can have devastating consequences because people haven’t developed strategies to adapt.”
Margarita Macías, Marck’s mother, remembers coming home one day to find him lying limp in the driveway, soon after he’d returned from four months in rehab, after powdered fentanyl had taken over. Foam was coming out of his mouth. She screamed for her husband. “I felt so helpless,” she said in Spanish, “seeing things spiraling out of control and being unable to do a thing.”
Powdered fentanyl sold on the streets is particularly dangerous because of its higher variability. One recent study of the fentanyl supply in Los Angeles, for example, found that one gram of what was sold as “fentanyl” contained anywhere from less than one milligram of fentanyl to almost 650 milligrams. The variability combined with the potential for extreme potency makes it difficult to dose properly. “With the powder, you would overdose instantly if you weren’t careful,” said Francisco Cabrera, who has used fentanyl for over a decade.
Among the people interviewed for this article who use opioids, most expressed a preference for blues over powdered fentanyl, all else being equal. But ultimately they would use whatever product was available to stave off withdrawal, which causes debilitating pain, vomiting and mental anguish. “It’s like your blood is itching,” said Mr. Martinez, who would scratch himself so severely that his mother would often find him bleeding through his shirt.
‘It is like a blast furnace’
Phoenix, the largest city in Maricopa County and the center of the broader metro area, sits low in the Salt River Valley, under a blanket of warm air at the northeastern edge of the Sonoran Desert. The relentless heat of the city has only compounded the dangers of the fentanyl supply shift. Drug deaths in Phoenix typically peak during the summer months, when temperatures routinely exceed 110 degrees, often remaining above 90 degrees even at night.
The hot nights make it harder for vulnerable populations to recover from hot days spent in a city with wide boulevards and relatively sparse tree cover. “There’s nowhere to hide,” said Scott Greenwood, C.E.O. of Sonoran Prevention Works, a local harm reduction agency. “It is like a blast furnace. It’s like taking a hair dryer and pointing it at your face. That’s what it feels like when there’s a breeze here in July.”
According to a Times analysis of data from the Maricopa County medical examiner’s office from 2024 through March 2026, when the daily high in Phoenix crossed 110 degrees, drug deaths in the county increased by 40 percent. On the 17 days in that period when the temperature reached 115 degrees, drug deaths nearly doubled.
Drug deaths begin to rise once temperatures in Phoenix cross 110 degrees. Above 115 degrees, they nearly double.
In Maricopa County, drug deaths rise along with the temperature
As part of the street medicine team for Circle the City, a nonprofit organization that provides medical care to homeless people in Maricopa County, Dr. Matt Evans has witnessed these dangers firsthand, describing patients who had passed out from fentanyl and suffered third degree burns from pavement superheated by the desert sun. “Substance use and extreme heat do not mix,” he said.
These dangers are aggravated by the widespread use of methamphetamine. Ms. Daniulaityte said 80 to 90 percent of fentanyl users in the region also use meth. The depressive effects of fentanyl are so strong that many drug users said they use meth just to function, smoking fentanyl to bring themselves down and then meth to bring themselves back up again. Several described using methamphetamine to ease the pain of withdrawal.
The combination of heat and meth can be deadly. Whereas a fentanyl overdose causes the brain to stop reminding the body to breathe, methamphetamine kills by pushing the body past its limits, effects that are heightened by heat exposure, lack of sleep and dehydration. “It raises your body temperature, it makes you tachycardic,” Dr. Evans said. “It puts you at risk for heat exhaustion, heat illness, heat stroke in a way that is very dangerous.” The body can quite simply overheat.
In 2025, over half of heat-related deaths in Maricopa County involved drugs. At least 19 people in Maricopa County have died from heat exposure already in 2026, with drug use implicated in 11 of those deaths. In all but one of those drug-related cases, methamphetamine intoxication was listed among the causes.
The interplay between heat and meth is one of the reasons the Maricopa County Department of Public Health broadened its internal definition of drug deaths in 2024 to include any death where drug toxicity was a contributing factor. “There really isn’t a bright line” between a heat death and a meth death, said Dr. Jeffrey Johnston, the chief medical examiner for Maricopa County.
The twin pressures of heat and meth are felt by the large homeless population in the area, who have few options to escape the heat and often use meth as a tool of survival, to stay vigilant. Annual surveys estimate that on any given night there are about 10,000 homeless people in Maricopa County; roughly half are unsheltered, living on the streets, in parks and river beds. Sustained meth use can easily trigger meth-induced psychosis, in which a person begins hearing voices. One man described starting using fentanyl merely to quiet the voices in his head so he could sleep.
According to Arlene Mahoney, the executive director of the Southwest Recovery Alliance, displacement from homeless encampments — like the 2023 dismantling of “the Zone,” the city’s largest encampment — has further heightened the risk. When people can no longer find the drug supply they’re used to, they’re forced to choose between the agony of withdrawal or new, untested sources. “It’s about destabilization,” Ms. Mahoney said. “People are losing the places and people they rely on.”
Advocates for the homeless are especially concerned about a new city parks ordinance that restricts the provision of medical care and food in city parks. City officials have defended the measure as a way to improve safety and sanitation. Outreach workers and medical providers say it will make it harder to reach people who already have little access to health care, at a time when city parks, with shade and grass, can provide a rare respite from the heat. “I think what’s coming here is terrifying,” Ms. Mahoney said. “That’s not public health, that’s not public safety.”
A ‘wake-up call’
After Mr. Martinez overdosed in the park, he returned to living on the streets. Shortly after, a close friend who’d just left rehab, unable to find the blues he was used to, turned to fentanyl powder. The friend died. A few days later, Mr. Martinez checked into the HOPESS Residential Recovery Center.
“It was kind of like my wake-up call,” Mr. Martinez said. He guesses he’s entered inpatient treatment around a dozen times, but he’s determined to make this visit his last. “Every time I come across fentanyl now,” he overdoses, he said. “I’m not gonna make it, you know? It just gets worse and worse.”
The initial data from 2026 appears promising. Reports of nonfatal overdoses in Phoenix through June are 17 percent lower this year than last. Data pulled from the Maricopa County medical examiner’s office shows drug deaths through March tracking lower than last year. It’s possible the crisis has begun to ebb. But it takes months to classify many drug deaths; a complete picture won’t emerge until well after summer is over.
Mr. Martinez has entered a sober living house and has started taking classes at the local community college, where he hopes to pursue welding. Ms. Macías follows his progress closely, eager to see the return of the son she knew from before he started using: “People would say to me, ‘Listen, why do you keep chasing after him?’ But I’d say: I have to help him. If I don’t, who will?”
Methodology
The chart of drug death rates is a Times analysis of mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths before 1999 reflect the underlying cause of death, using ICD-9 codes E850-E858, E950.0-E950.5, E962.0 and E980.0-E980.5. Deaths from 1999 onward include all deaths in which acute drug toxicity was listed among the contributing causes, using ICD-10 codes X40-X44, X60-X64, X85 and Y10-Y14.
Drug death numbers for Arizona in 2008 are omitted due to a known data issue. Death numbers for 2025 are preliminary, with rates calculated using the Vintage 2025 state population estimates from the Census Bureau.
The chart of Maricopa County drug deaths classifies a death as drug-related if either the primary or contributory cause of death contains any of these words: acetaminophen, alprazolam, amphetamine, amlodipine, buprenorphine, buproprion, bupropion, caffeine, chlordiazepoxide, citalopram, cocaine, codeine, cyclobenzaprine, diphenhydramine, doxepin, fentanyl, fluoxetine, gabapentin, heroin, hydrocodone, ketamine, kratom, kratum, lorazepam, methadone, methamphetamine, mitragynine, morphine, oxycodone, phenobarbital, polydrug, polysubstance, sertraline, tramadol, venlafaxine or zolpidem; or the phrases acute drug, drug intoxication or drug toxicity. It excludes homicides, in which causes of death are redacted. Drug deaths classified as homicides are rare. Some case data is preliminary and subject to change.
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Eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish and olive oil may help keep the mind strong even into old age, according to new research.
Older adults in England who followed a Mediterranean diet — which is primarily composed of the above foods — during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic reported higher psychological well-being than peers who did not.
The researchers tracked more than 3,000 adults between the ages of 50 and 90 to determine how their daily food choices related to their long-term outlook on life, according to a press release.
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The participants filled out specialized surveys that measured positive psychological traits, including their sense of autonomy, life satisfaction, purpose and control over daily routines.
Each participant also received a score based on how closely their eating habits matched a traditional Mediterranean dietary pattern.
The boost in well-being was not driven by differences in caloric intake, meaning the specific types of food eaten played an important role, the researchers said. (iStock)
Adults who stuck closely to the Mediterranean diet reported a significantly stronger sense of overall well-being.
This finding held even after researchers accounted for factors like income, education, physical activity, smoking habits and general physical health.
The boost in well-being did not appear to be driven by differences in caloric intake, which suggests the specific types of food played an important role.
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As the researchers tracked the participants over several years, they were able to measure how their well-being shifted during the early months of the pandemic.
While emotional well-being and happiness dropped across the entire group during the lockdowns, the study – which was published in BMJ Open – showed the decline was less intense for people who stuck to the Mediterranean diet.
The Mediterranean diet is naturally packed with anti-inflammatory elements, such as antioxidants called polyphenols found in extra virgin olive oil. (iStock)
Previous research points to a few explanations for this.
“This study shows what we’ve been seeing in other research,” Kim Kulp, registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of the Gut Health Connection in the San Francisco Bay Area, told Fox News Digital.
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The Mediterranean diet is naturally rich in anti-inflammatory nutrients, including omega-3 fatty acids from fish and antioxidants called polyphenols found in extra-virgin olive oil.
These nutrients help to lower inflammation in the brain and support a healthy gut microbiome, which is directly linked to the chemical production of mood-regulating hormones, experts say.
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“Since the Mediterranean diet is loaded with a variety of plant foods, it provides an increase in nutrients for the body and brain, special compounds that reduce inflammation, and prebiotics to feed the good gut microbes,” said Kulp, who was not involved in the study.
The participants shared how they felt about their sense of autonomy, life satisfaction, purpose and control over their daily routines. (iStock)
Researchers noted some limitations to the data, including the fact that the study relied on self-reported dietary surveys, which can sometimes be inaccurate.
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Additionally, the participants who completed the tracking tended to be healthier and wealthier than the general public, meaning the results might not fully apply to more diverse or vulnerable populations.
The Mediterranean diet can help reduce stress and depression and improve a sense of well-being, a nutritionist confirmed. (iStock)
“There were only two days of dietary data, and the psychological well-being test was only administered on two occasions, both early on during COVID,” Kulp noted. “Two days of data may not be enough to form conclusions.”
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Because the study was observational, it could not prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the diet and improved mental health, the researchers acknowledged.
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“Eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes provides the ultimate combination of nutrients to improve overall health as we age,” said Kulp.
“Together, this diet can help reduce stress and depression and improve a sense of well-being, even during the toughest times.”
America 250: Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger
Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger is a former U.S. Air Force officer and commercial airline pilot. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, he served as a fighter pilot, flight leader, and training officer. After leaving active duty in 1980, he became an airline pilot with Pacific Southwest Airlines, later part of US Airways. On January 15, 2009, Sullenberger safely landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after a bird strike caused both engines to lose thrust. All 155 people on board survived, in what became known as the ‘Miracle on the Hudson.’ In 2021, he was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as U.S. ambassador to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a role he held until 2022.
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One of the nation’s most famous aviators and great heroes has announced a heartbreaking diagnosis.
Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III, the pilot who saved 155 people after making an emergency landing in New York’s Hudson River in what became known as “The Miracle on the Hudson,” shared in a public statement that he was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
“It is early stage,” he revealed. “For now, this means a name may not come easily to me, I forget a story I have recently told, or I don’t sleep as well, but I am in the beginning of this long journey.”
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Sullenberger, 75, shared with People magazine that he’s had trouble recalling details within the last year, despite having a photographic memory. He received his official diagnosis in August 2025.
U.S. Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III prepares to testify before the House Judiciary Committee’s Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee on Capitol Hill in December 2009. He was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. (Chip Somodevilla/Reuters)
The pilot became a celebrity when he carried out the emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15, 2009, after colliding with a flock of geese that resulted in engine failure. Everyone onboard survived.
Alzheimer’s, the most common type of dementia, impacts more than seven million people in the U.S. over the age of 65, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
“It is the unwanted visitor at the door.”
“My doctor, Dr. Gil Rabinovici with UCSF Medical Center, has opened my eyes to the prevalence of Alzheimer’s,” Sullenberger said in his statement. “This disease, he has told me, spares no age group and impacts millions of people around the world. It is the unwanted visitor at the door.”
Sullenberger’s wife, Lorrie, shared with People that the diagnosis has not dimmed his strong demeanor.
Capt. Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger is pictured with wife Lorrie Sullenberger in 2018. She said the diagnosis has not dimmed his strong demeanor. (Dave Kotinsky/FilmMagic)
“Just as he was the same steady person before and after Flight 1549, he is the same steady person now, before and after this diagnosis,” she said. “That strength and steadiness is guiding us as a family.”
“We’re supporting him on this journey that we now walk with so many other families. Though the future is uncertain, we continue to live our lives, have hope and find joy in the everyday.”
THE BEST TIME TO TALK TO YOUR PARENTS ABOUT SENIOR CARE — BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
Flight 1549 first officer Capt. Jeff Skiles also commented on the news of his friend’s diagnosis.
“Sully is larger than life, even to me,” Skiles told People. “He’s somebody I’ve always looked up to, and I think a lot of other people do, too. Hopefully, it’s going to progress slowly and he’s going to be able to create the kind of life going forward that he would be proud of.”
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger attends the “Sully” New York premiere at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, in New York City on Sept. 6, 2016. (Jim Spellman/WireImage)
Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel noted that Sullenberger had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the Miracle on the Hudson, which could have increased his risk.
“Age 75 is relatively late-onset,” he told Fox News Digital. “PTSD doubles the risk of developing Alzheimer’s because of changing brain chemistry and structure and sleep disruption.”
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Sullenberger reflected on how he has been a staunch advocate for travel safety, often addressing roadblocks in the aviation industry, fighting for increased pilot training and care.
Now, Capt. Sully, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, plans to continue serving the public by focusing on raising Alzheimer’s awareness.
Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease, meaning the symptoms gradually worsen over time. (iStock)
“This new phase of my life has challenged what it means to be of service,” he said. “And the answer is to speak up. It is my hope that by sharing this, other families living in the shadows with this disease will feel they, too, can step forward.”
“So many people told us after Flight 1549, that the outcome gave them hope,” he went on. “Lorrie, my incredible partner of 37 years, says we can all use a little of that hope right now.”
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Though the soon-to-be National Aviation Hall of Fame inductee’s memory of the past may be impacted, Sullenberger said his diagnosis “will not prevent me from looking forward to and appreciating our future. I will navigate this chapter with my wonderful family by my side.”
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III testifies before the House Judiciary Committee’s Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. He represented the U.S. Airline Pilots Association and spoke about airline bankruptcy and employee vulnerability. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Over the years, when people would ask about the successful outcome of Flight 1549, I would say that ‘courage can be contagious,’ and on that day it helped everyone band together to get everyone off that airplane successfully,” he said.
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“Now we need that courage to battle this disease. I am now part of a larger community with many of you, and we will be courageous together.”
What to know about Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia affecting memory, thinking and behavior, as described by the Alzheimer’s Association. It accounts for 60% to 80% of all dementia cases.
It is a progressive disease, meaning the symptoms gradually worsen over time. The memory loss is usually mild in early stages, but late-stage Alzheimer’s can include loss of ability to carry a conversation and respond to environmental factors.
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While there is no cure for Alzheimer’s, there are treatments that can help slow symptoms. Newer, more effective therapies are on the horizon, experts say.
Certain lifestyle changes, including mental and physical activity, have been shown to help prevent the disease.
Dr. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist, brain imaging doctor and founder of Amen Clinics in California, previously spoke with Fox News Digital about Alzheimer’s risk and management.
“Alzheimer’s starts in your brain decades before you have any symptoms,” he said. “So, a 59-year-old woman I diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease likely had negative changes in her brain in her 20s.”
“It’s really never too early to think about protecting your brain and your mind.”
“I will navigate this chapter with my wonderful family by my side.”
Amen listed 11 major protective factors that can help ward off Alzheimer’s. These include promoting blood flow, reducing inflammation, and avoiding toxins like alcohol and drugs. Improving mental health, boosting immunity, getting adequate sleep and keeping diet and weight in check can also help reduce risk.
The doctor also recommends staying informed of hereditary diseases, maintaining a healthy hormonal balance and keeping the brain active in retirement.
Sullenberger’s 2009 bestselling autobiography, “Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters,” co-written with Jeffrey Zaslow, was adapted into a 2016 film, “Sully,” directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Tom Hanks.
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