At 5:44 the tinkle sound of PDG Nancy’s bell marked the start of the meeting, which was followed by the District Land Acknowledgement statement, and a musical version of O Canada (to which several members sang along). This in turn was followed by this thought of the week – words spoken by Paul Harris at the Rotary Club of Buffalo, New York in 1922 (i.e. 67 years before women were allowed to join Rotary):

“There is a secret of course to Rotary’s remarkable success, and I don’t mind letting it be known. Rotary has succeeded because in Rotary the standing of a man depends upon his deeds, not his creeds; and because its course leads toward the brightest and more alluring human objectives: the brotherhood of man.”

ROTARY MOMENTS

• Bill Johnson, a long-time club member, called Dave Morris late last week to advise that he will not be able to renew his club membership due to health issues, but would appreciate receiving reports of club activities.
• Lorraine has spoken to member Ed Toews and learned that his son Colin has been moved from Grace Hospital’s intensive care unit into a ward. Ed thanks club members for their good wishes.
• Lorraine has also advised that two Winnipeg Rotarians have passed away this week – Roy Adams and Karl Busch.
• Chase the Ace – Last Thursday’s winner (Week Ten) of $40 was PDG Nancy. Buy your tickets – routinely! - at https://www.rotarychasetheace.org/.
• Club membership invoices for 2021-2022 have been sent out. Please drop off cash/cheque (made out to Rotary Club of Winnipeg-Charleswood) or mail cheque to 5250 Roblin Blvd, Winnipeg, R3R 0H1 / Attention Dave Morris – ROTARY.
• Jack read an email from Wendy MacDonald (Executive Director and Co-Founder of Urban Stables) thanking our club for our donation and for our support for Urban Stables’ test program for Grade 4 and 5 students at Westgrove School. (Previous programs have been for students in Grades 6, 7 and 8.)
• Jack thanked Peter for organizing the wildflower planting for Westgrove School (done by Bob, Cathy, Nancy and Greg) and at the Assiniboine Forest (done by Bob, Glenn, PDG Ed and Jack). The Green Team completed the planting job in the forest and promised to do the watering of the wildflowers. Pictures were taken (with Rotarians wearing club vests) and Jack plans to submit them to the Metro publication.
• Jack asked if everyone had read the Assiniboine Forest Question & Answer email that Mike had prepared – many had and were impressed! He also mentioned that Mike had spoken to the Rotary Club of Winnipeg West, whose members made a proposal (with some requests attached) to donate up to $5000 to the Assinboine Forest enhancement program.
• Jack indicated that our club is still waiting to hear from the City of Winnipeg’s legal department regarding the grant application for Assiniboine Forest enhancement from the city’s Land Dedication Reserve fund.

After informing the club that Rohit had contacted Dr. Zahra Moussavi about making this presentation, PDG Nancy proceeded to read our speaker’s biography.

Zahra Moussavi is a professor, the founder and director of the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program at University of Manitoba, and a former Canada Research Chair (2009-2019). Her current research focuses are on medical devices, instrumentation and signal analysis for sleep apnea management and Alzheimer’s diagnosis and treatment using virtual reality, Electrovestibulography (EVestG), repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) technologies.  She is currently the principle investigator of the largest rTMS treatment clinical trial of the Alzheimer’s disease with McGill and Monash Universities. She has published more than 295 peer-reviewed scientific papers in journals and conferences, and has given 94 invited scientific talks. In addition, she has given >23 outreach scientific talks for the public including 2 TEDx talks. In her spare time, she writes science articles for the public. She has also developed and offered memory fitness programs for the aging population. 

Zahra began her presentation by indicating that she is not a neurologist, but an electrical engineer who is self-educated in neuroscience out of a personal desire to work on Alzheimer’s disease. Speaking to the title of her first slide – “Dementia Types, Diagnosis, Treatment” – she indicated that her work concentrates on diagnoses and treatments.

In her opinion, Alzheimer’s is a thief – it steals the most precious memories that people identify themselves with. Furthermore, people who are affected don’t know what they have lost – they just feel lost in time and space. There are several types of dementia:

• Alzheimer’s
• Vascular Dementia (resulting from mini-strokes – even MRI doesn’t show anything)
• Mixed Dementia (often Alzheimer’s with cerebrovascular symptomology – most common)
• Lewy Body Dementia (caused by a different type of protein instead of the Tau or Beta Amyloid proteins associated with Alzheimer’s – dementia starts early, motion symptoms come later)
• Parkinsonian Dementia occurs towards the end of Parkinson’s disease (which involves movement symptoms)
• Posterior Cortical Atrophy – very similar to Alzheimer’s in some people – atrophy in the posterior part of the brain
• Mild Cognitive Impairment - like a beginning of Alzheimer’s that doesn’t necessarily lead to major Dementia – but could be caused by “natural aging” (a debated idea)
• LATE is the acronym for Limbic-predominated Age-related TDP-43 Encephelopathy (a different type of protein); it cannot be identified until after the patient dies.
• Aphasia – which means “forgetfulness” – involves significant memory loss. An example was a 53-year old man who could not speak beyond a few words so he could not be “assessed” in a study.

When a person has Alzheimer’s, the brain’s cortex shrinks and in the process damages areas of the brain involved in thinking, planning and remembering. The shrinkage is especially severe in the brain’s hippocampus, which plays a key role in forming new memories. In addition, ventricles (fluid filled spaces in the brain) grow larger and many nerve cells and synapses are depleted in number as plaques (abnormal clusters of protein fragments - beta amyloids and tau) - build up between the nerve cells, isolating them and causing them to die due to lack of communication channels with other neurons. (This is similar to humans, who die in isolation, because we need each other.)

Diagnosis of dementia is done by a neurologist or neuropsychiatrist through a thorough clinical examination using diagnostic tools. It is claimed that Alzheimer’ s can start up to 20 years before symptoms appear. Once the symptoms appear, treatments are not usually effective.

• Cognitive assessments and imaging tools are pretty much useless because the brain is always changing, and these changes are similar to early stages of dementia.
• A spinal tap (which is an invasive test) can give the concentration of beta-amyloid which provides an indication of how much of that protein is in the brain. However, it’s the tau protein that is the main culprit.
• An electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis can detect abnormalities in brain waves or in the brain’s electrical activity.
• Electrovestbulography analysis appears to be one test that may be capable of detecting the early onset of dementia, which is when treatments are most likely to be effective.
• Zahra developed the Virtual Reality Navigation Test about 10 years ago and tested it on more than 400 patients and she feels that it is predictive of Alzheimer’s almost two years before it’s clinically diagnosed, although it cannot separate Alzheimer’s patients from Vascular Dementia patients. Doing all the diagnostic tests is the best approach to take to get a better idea of what is going on. Such an approach may be able to separate Alzheimers from Mixed or Vascular Dementia. Some treatments for Alzheimer’s may even do harm to patients with Vascular Dementia.

Suggestions for slowing the progress of dementia include:

• a medication like Aricept (approved to treat all stages of Alzheimer's disease but isn’t particularly effective)
• repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), which activates the neurons, is about 50% effective for pure Alzheimer’s but not good for Vascular Dementia
• transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS), which increases the excitability of the neurons
• transcranial Electromagnetic Treatment (reduces the number of beta amyloid proteins)
• oxygen therapy (effectiveness is debatable)
• daily cognitive exercises (effective for all dementias), and
• music or physical therapies (also effective for all dementias).

We learned the following during the Question and Answer session that followed the presentation:

• The rTMS procedure for treating Alzheimer’s is very expensive. However, Zhara does it for free, and even pays patients.
• Alzheimer’s can be inherited. So far, there are 52 genes that are identified as culprit for the Alzheimer’s disease, but of those 52 genes there are only two particular genes that will ensure that their owner will develop Alzheimer’s at the age of 30 years or younger.
• Tau protein content rises during dementia.
• Zhara is not hopeful about having a cure for dementia, but she is hopeful for a treatment.
• Stress is the number one killer for all diseases, not just dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Rohit thanked Dr. Moussavi for her presentation.

Acting Sarge Darvin got everyone moving by asking participants to get the following items ready – paper, pencil and an empty glass. The empty glass was for depositing any “Happy Bucks” and the pencil and paper were for a game that was played at the end of the meeting (or to prepare an IOU). Sarge then proceeded to welcome the following guests to our meeting - Dr. Zahra Moussavi, Rohit Goenka, Lorena Andrade and her husband Luis Jativa.

HAPPY BUCKS

PDG Nancy – for the second shot of vaccine that she will be getting on Tuesday.

Chuck – for going to Brandon on Thursday to watch their son’s graduation in a drive-through ceremony, hoping to “thoroughly embarrass him”.

PDG Elaine – for the assistance of Chuck and his truck to pick up a 10-foot tall pear tree (from Shelmerdines) that was a Father’s Day gift for her husband (PDG Ed) – plus the loan of a rope to tie that pear tree to a carport pillar to keep the tree from falling over before it could be planted in the family’s urban forest.

Rohit – was happy to see Dr. Zahra Moussavi again. He hadn’t seen her since he left Winnipeg about two years ago.

Acting Sarge Darvin – was looking forward to an online celebration of his grandson’s graduation with an Honours Commerce degree from the Asper School of Business.

President Doug had several happy bucks:

• He got to hold his 6-month old granddaughter this week for the first time in a long time.
• His son is back home from military police training and has worked his first shift.
• Contractors are in the process of restoring his dog-destroyed backyard to a green area with a patio.

Jagdish – was happy about having received his second dose of anti-COVID vaccine on June 10th.

MEETING WIND-UP

Acting Sarge Darvin drew the meeting to a close by posing four questions:

Q1. What are the 4 Avenues of Service at Rotary International?
A1. Actually, Rotary now has 5 Avenues of Service: Club service, Vocational service, Community service, International service and Youth service.

Q2. What year was the male only membership requirement removed?
A2. 1989

Q3. What month is World Understanding Month in Rotary’s calendar?
A3. February

Q4. What was the date of the first ever Rotary meeting?
A4. February 23, 1905

Last task was to identify a picture of a lady. It was Jennifer Jones, member of the Rotary Club of Windsor-Roseland, Ontario, Canada, who will become Rotary International’s president for 2022-23, making her the first woman to hold that office in Rotary’s 115-year history.

NEXT MEETING

Next meeting will take place on June 28th at the usual time. Speaker to be determined.