Allison Hennigan, MD, is a board-certified neurologist at UT Health East Texas Neurological Institute in Tyler. Dr. Hennigan has always been interested in learning about why people make the decisions or take the actions they do, which led to her specialty in neurology and learning more about the human brain.
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Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. About a year ago, Hollywood action film actor Bruce Willis announced that he would retire from acting because he’d been diagnosed with aphasia, which can affect speech, hearing, reading and writing. In February of 2023, Bruce Willis’s family announced that his latest diagnosis was frontotemporal dementia, a condition with no treatment.
The 67-year-old actor’s story resulted in a new spotlight on neurological disorders and diseases. If someone like an action movie star could be affected, well, anyone could, right? Our guest today is UT Tyler, neurologist, Dr. Allison Hennigan. Welcome.
Allison Hennigan: Thank you.
Mike Landess: Good to have you with us. It must be interesting for you to see this uptick in interest in the media, social media, even the show “A Million Little Things,” has a character whose father’s starting to lose his grasp on things he’d always done easily, like driving or directions.
Allison Hennigan: Absolutely. It is certainly concerning that we are seeing so many people who are aging and as they age, memory problems happen. And, the diagnosis of those memory problems is really essential to make sure that both the people who have the memory problems and their families are prepared for what comes next.
Mike Landess: We talk about memory problems, but I mean, there’s such a far-reaching area there, and I don’t even know the difference between a disorder and a disease. Can you explain that?
Allison Hennigan: Disorder is a constellation of symptoms in a disease. So aphasia is a symptom. It’s an inability to speak, understand speech, produce speech. There are different types of aphasia, but the disease itself, there could be primary progressive aphasia or frontotemporal dementia.
Mike Landess: We’ve got parents who are now facing these issues.
Allison Hennigan: Absolutely. Bruce is only 67 years old, but I mean, some of the parents who are now in their eighties are facing these issues. It is very true and it can be very scary to look and to see, well wait a minute, Mom was preparing Thanksgiving last year, and this year she’s just really struggling with it. Or, Dad put that engine together last week and now he’s really struggling. So it can be hard to see those changes — it’s a family disease, really.
Mike Landess: We’re talking about more than just losing your keys or forgetting what you came into the kitchen for, what kinds of things would you consider to be warning signs?
Allison Hennigan: There are some warning signs of confusion, so more confusion, getting people confused, forgetting people’s names that you’ve known for a long time. Certainly putting your keys in the freezer or forgetting where you’ve put your phone, not just once, but over and over and over again. Waking up at the wrong times can be a symptom as well. Waking up at two o’clock in the morning and getting ready for the day. Also just not understanding how things work. Not understanding how to use a phone, not understanding how to use a remote control. Those types of things can sometimes be a challenge as well.
Mike Landess: At what point does a patient have these kind of concerns? At what point do they come to your office?
Allison Hennigan: Usually when they get referred, when they express concern about it and they talk to their doctor, oftentimes their primary care doctor does a screening form. Sometimes people will go to the Alzheimer’s Alliance of Smith County and get screening forms there, and they’ll be screened, and if the screen shows there’s something not quite right, then that’s usually when they’re referred to my office.
Mike Landess: We’ve talked about that there’s no cure here. Is it an issue of management?
Allison Hennigan: Like so many neurologic diseases, it is an issue of management. There are some medicines that can be helpful, but for the most part it’s encouraging people. And that’s physical, mental, social, spiritual activity all help to keep our brains healthy.
Mike Landess: You whipped through those four items, would you go back through them?
Allison Hennigan: Absolutely. So we know that the brain responds to physical activity. There’s a concept called mild cognitive impairments. It’s a disorder that is kind of pre-dementia, if you will. And it is the first sign where things are maybe a little bit off. Mild cognitive impairment can actually be reversed with enough physical activity. And so usually the recommendation is at least 150 minutes a week of aerobic activity. And so …
Mike Landess: That’s just even walking, right?
Allison Hennigan: Walking. Yeah, absolutely. Walking 150 minutes a week can absolutely help keep your brain healthy. Mental activity, there are lots of different options for this. One of the reasons that we think about mental activity is that they actually did a study years ago where several nuns donated their brains to science. And what they found when they cut apart these nuns’ brains was that they also had journals from the nuns because nuns were required to journal. And so the nuns who had journals that showed more complex thoughts, had less evidence of disease in their brains, basically.
Mike Landess: Very interesting. OK, now the third item of your list.
Allison Hennigan: Social activity. We are social creatures. That is part of what we do as humans. Now we can be introverts or extroverts, but having a conversation with another person, connecting with another person, it’s not necessarily just going out and partying. It is having one-on-one conversations, it is connecting with people on a deeper level.
Mike Landess: And spiritual?
Allison Hennigan: Spiritual activity. So in, in East Texas, a lot of times it’s going to church, but that’s not necessarily just what we’re talking about because that’s really more a social experience for a lot of people than necessarily a spiritual one. It’s connecting to something greater than yourself. So for some people, fishing and gardening can fit the aspect of spiritual activity as well, but it is connecting to something greater than yourself. So meditation, prayer, anything that is going to connect you to the world around you.
Mike Landess: So back to item number two. If I’m watching Pat Sajak and Vanna White and I’m watching Wheel of Fortune, I’m still getting the mental stimulation, right?
Allison Hennigan: Absolutely. You were getting mental stimula…
Mike Landess: … or, Jeopardy.
Allison Hennigan: … or Jeopardy, whatever. Usually. One of the things that I encourage people to do if they are in that early stage is to learn new things. And so learning new things can help be and can be protective for the brain.
Mike Landess: You, talked about the Alzheimer’s Alliance of Smith County. It is part of a number of organizations that can help. In what ways do they provide services and help to people in East Texas?
Allison Hennigan: So one of the things that they do is memory screenings. Another thing that they do is caregiver support. So they have counselors on staff and they also provide community education. And so they provide education both for caregivers as professionally and personally. So there is a caregiving class that they have through UT Tyler that has been really helpful for teaching people, “No, this is what dementia is. This is what dementia’s about. This is how you can interact with people,” because it’s very easy to mishandle a situation when you’re working with somebody who has memory problems. They also have, “Terrific Tuesdays,” which is a four-hour program of physical, mental, social, spiritual activity for people who have memory problems. They have a one-to-one client to volunteer ratio. And so they’re able to help support the community with that program and then also give caregivers a little bit time to themselves to do things like go grocery shopping or take care of themselves because caregiver stress is a huge, huge public health issue as well.
Mike Landess: Any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Allison Hennigan: I am so thrilled that we’re all paying more attention to cognitive disorders as a real health risk for the community and as a whole. And I think that we have the potential to make a really big difference, especially in a community like Tyler.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been UT Health Neurologist, Dr. Allison Hennigan. For more information on this topic, we have a link on our website, kvut.org. Here you’ll also find this interview to hear again or to share. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio 99.7 KVUT.
