STILL ALICE AUTHOR
HOW FAMILY TRAGEDY TURNED LISA GENOVA INTO A CELEBRATED AUTHOR AND ALZHEIMER’S ADVOCATE
‘My tips to improve your brain’
Author Lisa Genova’s nana Angie was a fiercely independent “smart little Italian lady”, who had nine children, swam every day, loved to cook and played in a bowling league. Her family knew she was growing forgetful, but didn’t consider it abnormal because, they reasoned, she was just getting old.
That all changed the night the retired 85-year-old grabbed her bowling bag and walked from the home where she lived alone to the bowling alley. It was 4am and pitch black, yet Angie believed it was the middle of the day.
An Alzheimer’s diagnosis followed, and it became obvious Angie was really struggling, says Lisa, who at the time had recently graduated from Harvard University with a PhD in neuroscience. “I didn’t know how to be with her as a granddaughter. I didn’t know how to stay connected with her.”
Chatting to the Weekly from her home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 50-year-old Lisa says she looked for books to help educate her on how others lived with the disease. She didn’t plan to become an author herself, but inspired by Angie, she thought telling a story from the perspective of a person with the disease sounded like a good idea for a book.
The result was her 2007 novel Still Alice, which centred on a fictional psychology professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. It became a movie starring actress Julianne Moore and turned Lisa into a best-selling author and Alzheimer’s advocate. Her TED talk, ‘What you can do to prevent Alzheimer’s’ has been viewed online more than five million times.
“It’s one of the happiest, trippiest things that’s ever happened to me,” says mother-of-three Lisa. “All I was trying to do was write a good story in honour of my grandmother. The fact that
Still Alice went all the way to the Oscars is mind-blowing! It shined a spotlight on the disease, which is such a scary topic for so many.”
Lisa’s latest book Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting explores the intricacies of how we remember, why we forget and what we can do to protect our memories.
“Part of the fear of Alzheimer’s stems from the fear that there’s no cure and it appears to be our brain’s destiny,” she says. “But I want people to be encouraged that there is something they
can do to influence their brain health. You don’t just want to live a long life. We want to match our brain span to our lifespan, so we need to keep learning. Every time we learn something new, we’re creating new neural connections. Sameness is the kiss of death to memory – that’s why during COVID-19 lockdown we all started to forget what day it was. We remember what’s new, surprising, emotional and meaningful.”
So, contrary to popular belief, doing a daily crossword puzzle isn’t going to be much help, then?
“I really want to get rid of the idea that crosswords are going to save us – they’re not!” Lisa mock-shouts. “You don’t want to retrieve information you’ve already learned or walk the same neighbourhoods you already know. Pave new neural roads.”
Other mentally stimulating activities might be to learn a new language, join a book club, visit a new restaurant or watch something new on TV and talk about it afterwards.
“We need to pause and talk about what we’ve learned, so the details become more permanently etched in our brains,” she explains.
Although the risk of Alzheimer’s is a combination of age, genes and lifestyle,
Lisa reveals that two-thirds of sufferers are women. “We used to just think it’s because women outlive men, but there’s more going on, perhaps with the onset of menopause and changing hormones.”
Lisa says many scientists predict that poor sleep might also be a big predictor of Alzheimer’s. “[Deep sleep] clears out our metabolic waste. As a culture, we’ve developed a dangerously dismissive attitude toward sleep, yet it’s so important for your memory and overall health. Don’t feel bad about day naps, either – 20 minutes is the ideal time and great for consolidating memories.”
‘Sameness is the kiss of death to memory. We remember what’s new and surprising’