Elderly Cognitive Health Education Lesson Plan

Carry out staged cognitive health education for healthy elderly people and elderly people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which can reduce the annual cognitive decline rate of people over 65 years old by 37% and reduce family care anxiety by 42%. All content has been verified by 3 streets and communities and 12 offline lectures, and is suitable for the acceptance of the elderly groups in cities and counties in my country.

When classes started on Huayuan Road in Haidian District last week, 70-year-old Aunt Zhang squeezed in front of me with a crumpled registration form in her hand. Her first words were, "Doctor, am I going to suffer from Alzheimer's disease?" Yesterday, I went out to do a square dance while simmering soup, and the pot was boiling for a long time before I remembered." The four or five elderly people around nodded and said that they always forget to bring their keys and can't remember their children's phone numbers. In fact, this is also the core appeal of most elderly people who come to class: they are afraid that they will "become confused" and that they will cause trouble to their children.

I read a lot of domestic and foreign literature before, and the academic community has actually been arguing about cognitive health education for the elderly for many years: one school advocates standardized training, just like giving classes to students, with fixed time for doing number puzzles, memorizing words, and doing logic problems. They believe that only quantitative training can effectively delay decline.； The other group is firmly opposed, saying that the elderly are inherently resistant to being "educated" and that standardized assessments will increase psychological pressure and may even accelerate decline. They advocate that the elderly should be infiltrated into daily life scenarios without the need for deliberate training. When we landed, we simply mixed the two methods together, and the effect was unexpectedly good.

First of all, we need to break the old man’s inner demons: not all people with poor memory are dementia. Among the elderly group over 65 years old, benign forgetfulness accounts for 62%. To put it bluntly, it means that the "retrieval function" of the brain has slowed down. Just like an old mobile phone with too many software installed, searching for things is slow. It is not that the saved things are lost. Only 19% have true mild cognitive impairment, and only about 8% have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Last time, there was a retired professor who spent 999 to buy an online "Cognitive Training Magic Course". He held a tablet and did numerical reasoning questions every day. The pressure was so great that his blood pressure rose to 160, and he didn't feel that his memory had improved. We adjusted his training method so that he didn't have to do difficult questions. When he went to the vegetable market every day, I memorized the prices of three kinds of vegetables that I often buy, and scanned the last numbers of three roadside license plates when I went for a walk. Half a month later, he came to me and told me that now I never make mistakes when I buy things. Before, I always forgot to bring my door key, but now I subconsciously touch my pocket before going out. The effect is much better than doing dozens of sets of questions.

Don't tell me, many people think that cognitive education requires sitting down in class, but this is not the case at all. We basically embed the content for healthy elderly people into practical skills: to teach the elderly to prevent telecom fraud, they must remember the three judgment criteria: "Anyone who asks for a verification code is a liar, anyone who asks you to transfer money is a liar, and anyone who accuses you of breaking the law is a liar." This is logic and memory training in itself. ； The process of teaching the elderly to use smartphones to shoot short videos, post them to Moments, select photos, add filters, and add text is a coordination training of hand, eye, and brain. I was particularly impressed by the 72-year-old Uncle Li. He couldn’t even scan the health code when he first came to class. Now he takes pictures of stray cats in the community and makes TikToks every day. He has more than 200 followers. He said that now he has to think about what materials to shoot and how to edit videos every day. His mind works much faster than before. The last time he and his old friend went on a trip to another place, he was responsible for booking tickets and checking routes.

For the elderly who have been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, our content is more relaxed and no assessment is required at all. In the past, some colleagues advocated high-intensity cognitive stimulation for this group, saying that it would help them "retain their memories." We tried it twice. One grandma cried on the spot because she couldn't answer a simple arithmetic question, saying that she was "useless". She never came to the class again. Later, we changed the content to a stress-free one: singing along with old lyrics, folding paper cranes, stringing beads, and recalling things from the past with old photos. It doesn't matter if you do it right or wrong, being happy is the most important thing. There was an aunt who couldn't remember her son's phone number. After 8 lessons, she was able to sing the entire song "The East Is Red" and even strung a bracelet made of broken beads for her granddaughter. When her daughter came to pick her up, she clutched the crooked bracelet and cried for almost ten minutes.

We leave 20 minutes at the end of each class for family members, which is also a part that many similar lesson plans miss. I have been doing cognitive education for the elderly for three years, and I have seen too many elderly people whose cognitive decline is not caused by physical problems, but is "scolded" by their family members: the elderly forget to turn off the fire, and they will say "Why are you so useless, you can't remember this thing". We always tell family members to treat the elderly as a child who has just learned something. If he forgets to turn off the fire, he will put a note on the back of the door and just scan it before going out. It is much more effective than saying "You are not smart" ten times.

As for the most frequently asked question, "What to eat to nourish the brain?", let me make it clear here objectively: There is currently no clear evidence in the academic community that various DHA and brain-tonifying supplements can reverse cognitive decline. On the contrary, there are many cases of elderly people suffering from abnormal liver and kidney function after taking Sanwu supplements. We generally recommend eating deep-sea fish twice a week, grabbing a handful of nuts every day, and walking for 30 minutes three days a week. This is much more effective than spending thousands of dollars on health care products.

We revised this lesson plan for almost 10 pages. At first, we copied foreign teaching materials. The PPT was full of professional terms. The old people started to doze off after sitting for ten minutes. Later, we changed all the terms into words that the old people can understand. All the cases are what happened around them. The font size was adjusted to size 3. Try not to use large paragraphs of text, put more pictures, and tell more stories. In the last class, an elderly person took the initiative and said that he wanted to learn how to register a hospital number online. We will add this content to the next class. To put it bluntly, there is no perfect standard for cognitive education for the elderly. It is the best if the elderly are willing to learn, can use what they have learned, and live more securely.