A Beacon of Hope for Cognitive Health featuring the Stronger Memory Program

Watching a loved one's memory fade isn't just heartbreaking; it's a call to action. That's precisely what propelled Rob Liebreich to initiate the Stronger Memory program, an approach that offers hope and tangible results for those grappling with cognitive decline.  Rob is the compassionate CEO of Goodwin Living, who walked us through the program's inception — a personal mission kindled by his mother's memory loss. Through a blend of reading, handwriting, and math exercises, the Stronger Memory program has shown remarkable improvements in cognitive function, a testament to the simple yet powerful impact of these activities.

Our conversation took an uplifting turn as we shared the story of this extraordinary woman's cognitive journey. Diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, she refused to let her diagnosis define her. Now, she teaches bridge, learns Mahjong, and advocates fervently for brain health. The centerpiece of her and over 10,000 others' success? A 177-page workbook, a gift to those facing memory challenges, supported by George Mason University's encouraging research and free of any pharmaceutical intervention. This story serves as a beacon of hope, highlighting the unheralded potential of cognitive maintenance tools and the importance of keeping our minds agile, irrespective of age.

We wrapped up our episode by focusing on the broader community's role in dementia care. Goodwin House's pilot program, a beacon of innovation, has integrated a social component that's strengthening cognitive resilience in senior centers across Maryland. The enthusiastic feedback is a clear indicator that accountability paired with cognitive exercises can make a profound difference. With a mission to touch 100,000 lives and resources like the facilitator's guide from strongermemory.com, this program isn't just a beacon of hope—it's a catalyst for change. Join us in this movement to empower minds and combat cognitive decline—one workbook, one community at a time.

Learn more here:
Stronger Memory Program  https://goodwinliving.org/stronger-memory/
Learn more from videos about the program:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCavNYuTN_xph8ZrasOVQyWQ/featured

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Well welcome, rob Lee Brick. It's so nice to have you here on the Pivotal People podcast. I would like to introduce Rob. He is the CEO of Goodwin Living, which is a group of services for seniors, both residential services and in-home services, as well as, I believe, hospice services.

Speaker 1: 0:47

So you have quite a bit of experience with this age group, and the reason Rob agreed to be on our podcast is because I learned about this really amazing program he's involved in called Stronger Memory. It's a program that helps improve the memory of those of us who are aging, and he's going to tell us far more about it, but as I read about it, it really interested me, because we're all aging, it's a big group and this seems to be an issue that all of us are dealing with at some level, whether it be people we know or peers or parents, and we would certainly like to have practical, easy ways to improve that. So, rob, I'm not going to butcher this. I want you to tell us all about, first of all, who you are and what you do, and then could you tell us a little bit about what the Stronger Memory program is, and then we'll dig in.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Absolutely, stephanie.

Speaker 2: 1:40

It's great to be with you and thanks for inviting me to this podcast, and I was thinking about what you do in sharing the stories of pivotal people and I just thought you know what a great uplift for folks and the mission of Good when Living is to support, honor and uplift the lives of older adults and the people who care for them, and so it fits really well what your work is and what we're trying to do as an organization.

Speaker 2: 2:09

So I'll give you a little bit of background, also just about Good when Living, a little bit more to start with, if you don't mind, and then go back in time to my journey and how I ended up where I am today. But Good when Living has been around for 55 years. We're a faith-based not-for-profit. We're mission-oriented and really serving about 2500 people in the Northern Virginia area, based in Alexandria, and then we started to figure out that we had a bigger calling, and so we're doing more and more work, but we do have housing options for people. We have services, like you referenced. That's hospice services, we have therapy services, so it's really comprehensive and touching a lot of lives. We have just about over a thousand team members that choose to come and provide their gifts with us every day, and so it makes it for an amazing organization to be a part of, and I've been serviced to that organization for three years, and we launched the Stronger Memory program back really in January of 2020.

Speaker 2: 3:10

So I'm sure nothing happened right after January of 2020. Everything was all easy.

Speaker 1: 3:17

We'd like to forget what happened.

Speaker 2: 3:19

Yeah, sure. And so just going backwards in time, that journey with Stronger Memory actually started with my own mom coming up on 11 years ago now, and so in her late 60s, my mom, I grew up in Oregon and so she's still living in Oregon with my dad and in her late 60s, about 11 years ago now, she started to forget things, she started to repeat things and she started to get lost in familiar places. That last one is really scary, as you can imagine stuff. And so here I was I've been in service to older adults for nine years at that time and I had absolutely no tools for her. I had absolutely no tools for her. It was really frustrating.

Speaker 2: 4:04

I knew that exercise was important and probably one of the most important things we can do is movement. If people are allergic to the word exercise, at least movement is critical. But my mom was already doing that. I knew that people who smoked had a higher prevalence of dementia, but she was not a smoker, people that drank too much. She was not a drinker. She's college educated, she's very social, very engaged with people which is a really important part of engaging the brain and her diet overall was really really healthy. So we started to roll out anything else that could be going on. Vitamin deficiencies, thyroid, lots of things can cause some of those kind of symptoms, and none of them made sense. And so we had her do a test and it was showing that she had this element of what's called mild cognitive impairment, which is oftentimes a precursor. Usually, maybe 40% of the time, it's a precursor within the next five years that you're going to have dementia full blown, and so that was really scary. So again I'm feeling like I'm really good at senior living, but there's no cure for dementia. There are no cures, and so it made it for a very tough reality for my mom.

Speaker 2: 5:19

So fast forward a year from that time and I went to a conference and it just happened to be a walking around, I was not scheduled to be anywhere, and this presentation caught my eye and it was about people who, in Japan, had figured out that if you do some basic things with nursing home residents, with people who are sort of the end of their life with dementia, that it could really be beneficial.

Speaker 2: 5:44

And the things were really simple, reading out loud, handwriting and numeracy or basic math, and I thought to myself that's fascinating If it works for folks at the end of life. I wonder what would happen if we introduced this earlier in the process. And I came back from that conference and said to my mom hey, mom, how would you like to start doing some really simple math, reading out loud and doing handwriting on a consistent basis, 20 minutes a day? 30 minutes a day. And she was game because she was super scared of what was going on with her brain and we changed nothing else. Stephanie in her life and within a month, within a month, her repetition went away, her forgetfulness started to dissipate and she wasn't getting lost in familiar places anymore.

Speaker 1: 6:30

And that is what hooked me. I mean, when you listen to that and just to clarify, because I've since been on your website, I've learned more about it you're talking about 20, 30 minutes a day, total. Total, that's like five or 10 minutes of reading out loud, reading from a page. That's like five or 10 minutes of writing, just handwriting, and then the simple math problems. I looked at the math problems. I mean we're talking about, you know, seven plus nine, 32 plus, but just the fact that you, so she did this for 30 minutes a day in total and actually I thought it looked kind of fun and in one month you noticed a difference.

Speaker 2: 7:15

Yeah, I noticed a difference. My mom noticed a difference. My dad, who's right there with her, really noticed the difference and I think that was amazing.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Today. Tell us where she is today. Tell us how she's doing today.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Yeah, fast forward 10 years. She is teaching bridge, she learned how to play Mahjong recently and she is on the speaking circuit if you will, it's our own little speaking circuit around her own brain health journey. She's going around advocating for people to pick up these tools and utilize them Because for her, she's gained 10 years of awesome memories, awesome time with her grandchildren. She can recall it, she can be engaged with it and we didn't have to have her in a communal setting being taken care of or have to pay for caregiving.

Speaker 1: 8:07

So just to clarify, she was diagnosed medically with mild cognitive impairment. Is that what you called it? Yeah, which?

Speaker 2: 8:16

is pre-dimension. Yes, she took a test and that was the outcome of that. And then we had the symptoms. We already knew the symptoms were going, so I was like, well, maybe we should take a test validate what's going on. And that was now 11 years ago. So for a year we had no tools and then, all of a sudden, we had tools.

Speaker 1: 8:36

Is she on any medication for this?

Speaker 2: 8:39

No.

Speaker 1: 8:39

No medication and I have to ask has she been retested or has there not been a need to retest her?

Speaker 2: 8:46

You know she hasn't had to go through another retest because those symptoms have dissipated and so pretty powerful. In that regard, we've done a lot of testing in the last couple of years since the programs rolled out nationally and trying to really promote it and allow people to use it for free. So we've done a lot more testing and we're working with George Mason University, for example, on research elements of it for the last two years and them really calling through pre-testing, post-testing, trying to validate, you know, is this additive to people's lives from a test standpoint Not just do you feel better, but is it really working from a cognitive test standpoint and the results are really positive. So we're really excited for that information that's going to be coming out in the future and also what's happening with my own mom. But now over 10,000 people in the country have taken up this curriculum and it's been real humbling and amazing to see the impact of it.

Speaker 1: 9:47

So what struck me, what I thought was so neat, was that and you briefly said this, but I want to emphasize you are making this program available free. So I actually went. It's a 177 page workbook which includes the reading, and so it's a workbook all in one place, easy to do. Here are the reading options, if there's a calendar, so each day you check off. Then there's the handwriting options and then there are pages and pages of math sheet. So you've made it so easy. You have put everything in one thing a 177 page PDF download which you'd have to print. You also give the option of ordering the hard copy book which, by the way, even with shipping, I think it's like 32 bucks. My gosh, anyone who has a loved one or anyone who's noticing this about themselves, thrilled 32 bucks and, by the way, $15 of that is shipping. So I mean, rob's not making any money on this. He is passionate about this. I'm sitting here thinking what can I mean?

Speaker 1: 10:49

I was going to ask you the question if any universities or research institutes were putting, you know, broader research behind this, even if the research didn't prove it on a large scale. Anecdotally, you've seen the results and, as you pointed out on your website. There is nothing to lose here. This is not a medication that you're trying to see if it worked. This is 30 minutes a day of kind of fun activities. This is like any habit, any discipline we do. And when you talked about I want to go back to your conference so people in Japan they were presenting a study that they had done in later life people so people who were further along the dementia curve Wonder where that went. You noticed it, but have you noticed any other groups from that conference who have picked up on this in their cities?

Speaker 2: 11:40

There's been a handful, for sure, but it's few and far between. The way that they had their program is not how we've done our program. We've really made it really simple and tried to simplify. Take the key elements as far as we knew. I've got the report out of the program but I've never seen that program in play. We just figured out okay, well, if these are the elements of it, let's apply the elements. And that's what's been amazing.

Speaker 2: 12:09

What happened right after that? My mom was doing great and I was working in Seattle for an organization called Agest Living. I had a friend there, a work colleague who is a dear friend now. Her name is Judy Wadsworth. She's an amazing woman and she said to me she met my mom and she said, rob, this is great. What you are going on, this journey is really important. What you've done for your mom is fantastic, but what are you going to do for others? How are you going to help other people? I said that's a great question. You're wired to do that, want to be helpful to other people.

Speaker 2: 12:45

We spent a year while I was in Seattle really working through building a curriculum initial curriculum called Agest Brain Level Engagement. We called it ABLE At that time I was charging people to use it, but it was very similar. It was figuring out how the math problems should be situated, what fonts to use and the writing prompts and what reading material. I was working in an assisted living memory care community. We had about 20 residents that were using the program, stephanie, and again we saw a lot of wonderful things occur. A gentleman who had completely forgotten his primary caregiver's name who happened to be a sister all of a sudden started to recall who that was. We had people sleeping better, eating better, and so all these alimony that were coming not because we were curing a disease because you don't have a cure for it, right but we were addressing symptomatically, seemingly, the symptoms around what the disease was coming about, and so that gave us additional confidence.

Speaker 2: 13:44

I had worked with a wonderful young lady and they were sort of thinking about the pivotal people that had been a part of this. Helen Halpern. She was a teacher, a former teacher, who was just about to become a doctor in therapy, in occupational therapy, and so I was like perfect, you're the right person to help me create the curriculum, and the founder of that organization, dwayne Clark, whose mom had died from complications with dementia, really was sympathetic to creating this material, so that's where it started and then moved back to the East Coast, was giving a talk with a group of residents at another community Asbury Methodist Village and a resident said well, this is great. This is really fascinating information about all this good things that can happen from really out loud and doing simple math and handwriting. Can you create a program for us here? His name is Bill Hicks, so he pushed me. He said let's do it again. And then I subsequently, again three years ago, made this transition over to this faith-based not-for-profit and said we can do a lot of good with this program here, but I don't want anyone to own it. I want to be able to have it go out for free because the problem is so massive.

Speaker 2: 14:58

We have about 10 million people estimated in the country that have mild cognitive impairment. Dementia is one of the fastest growing diseases, but it also has no cure. It's going to cost the country, both emotionally and financially, billions of dollars. It's going to be a real problem for us, as we're doubling the number of 75-year-olds. Dementia Alzheimer's in particular is an age-related disease. We're coming forward to a real problem that, if we don't have tools to address, we're all going to be suffering.

Speaker 2: 15:31

As you said, everyone knows someone. If you don't know someone today, you're definitely going to know someone in the next five, 10, 20 years you will. That's why we created the program to be complementary and started with the pilot program with our residents at Goodwin House, alexandria, and Goodwin House Baylor's Crossroads. What we found with them? We started with couples mostly because it was helpful to have a partner to keep you on task, because it's hard to do anything, it's hard to do exercise, it's hard to eat right, if you don't have someone keeping you accountable.

Speaker 2: 16:05

What we recognized there was we needed to bring in an element of meeting people once a week. If we could do that, bring a social component of accountability on top of the curriculum, that's where a lot of the magic happens. That's what we rolled out. We've rolled that out. Now the state of Maryland has a really progressive secretary of aging, rhona Kramer, and she said Rob, there's no downside to this. Just as you said, stephanie, let's do it. Let's roll this out in the whole state of Maryland and off it up to all the counties. We had seven counties pick it up. We have two more that just started. We have nine counties in total it rolled out to over 60 senior centers throughout the state of Maryland. The feedback has been tremendous in terms of its impact. The impact both on the cognitive sense like feeling stronger about that but also the social sense In today's world where isolation is so high and that is such a problem that having a group and having this curriculum to come around was really beneficial.

Speaker 1: 17:05

I'm super excited about it. I noticed also on your website you had a facilitator's guide. What's going through my mind is I identify with you so much because 22 years ago I had a dream about helping people save money on groceries with coupons actually helping them get free groceries with coupons. I felt like there was such a challenge in the country and I started in my own zip code and teaching people face to face and then did a website and was totally passionate about it because it worked. I'm looking at you and I'm like this works. Okay, there's no downside. You know, what happened for me was that a national television show decided to let me demonstrate it and then it exploded. Have you been on national TV yet?

Speaker 2: 17:53

Not with this program, not yet Okay.

Speaker 1: 17:55

So and it's not just television, these you know I did mine before Facebook or Instagram existed. There was no social media. So you know there are so many other ways to get a message out today. But one of the things that I noticed about your program which I loved was you have this facilitator's guide. So perhaps volunteers I know women who volunteer at nursing homes or senior living centers, people who work on staff you know people could hear this message, they could go to your website, they could get this thing absolutely free. I love it that you're not trying to make money on it, you're just trying to change the world and then they could bring it into their communities and it could, and I have.

Speaker 1: 18:35

I saw this happen with my program. It spread like wildfire. I went from before I went on national TV. My website had I believe it was 9,000 visits a month and that was after working at it really hard for three years and it peaked at 5 million and it did change lives and that was just saving money. It wasn't about saving 10 years at the end of your life and enjoying your grandkids. I mean, I'm not to downplay coupons, but I frankly think your program is a little more important. So I'm excited about it because I hope people hear this. I hope people take a look, tell us where can we find your materials?

Speaker 2: 19:12

Yeah, so our materials are at strongermemorycom Strongermemorycom. It's part of the Good One Living website in total, but that's where they can download both the guide. They can order a book, as you said, at cost, or they can download a facilitator's guide and really help others around them in their own communities, which is what we've been doing with a group called Village to Village Network, which is sort of a national movement and having it in California and Maine and North Carolina and all over the country Groups are really utilizing this program. So the more that we can spread it, the better. We feel like we've touched about 10,000 lives so far. If we could touch 100,000 lives by the end of 2023, that's our goal that would represent 1%, just 1% of all the people who are currently impacted with mild cognitive impairment. So that's our goal, and anything you can do or we can do together to help spread the word would be a real gift.

Speaker 1: 20:06

Well, we absolutely will. In the show notes of the podcast I'm going to have the link to your site as well as direct links to the download, and I think that it would be neat if we could reconnect in six months and we could see where this has gone, what the progress has been. One of the things and you didn't ask my advice, but I'm going to give it to you when you have something that you know helps other people, there are no apologies. In other words, you can contact anyone you want to contact to share this with them. You're not bothering anybody. And when you have that attitude, I called everyone and said everyone under the sun. I met with everyone under the sun and I guarantee you I bothered people, but I never thought I was bothering them because I knew this was going to help people and it did. You will never bother anyone.

Speaker 1: 20:57

You should be able to call up anybody and say I have something that I'm making available absolutely free that I believe will change people's lives, and you know what's exciting for anyone listening and what's exciting is to be a part of that. If you know somebody who has a loved one who's suffering with this, if you know somebody who volunteers in the setting where they interact with elderly people. If you can think of anyone who might be interested in this, I really believe that spreading the word of this, just being a spreader of this, is making a difference. We don't always have to be the ones with the great idea. We can hitch our wagon to someone else's great idea and help make a difference in the world, and I'm excited about it. So I'm already thinking of people I know who work in these settings who would probably be really excited to bring it to them. One last question I wanted to ask you do people with no symptoms at all do this from a preventive standpoint?

Speaker 2: 21:56

Yeah, it's a great question and thank you for your advice, stephanie. I feel absolutely the same way, because we're just doing this for pure good and trying to help people like my mom have a better life experience, earn back some of those years that so many people lose. We're not apologetic, but we certainly need to keep going with more and more platforms. So thank you for that guide. It's a nice that. That's really important. The preventative side is really intriguing. In fact, there's a group out of San Diego that's been using this for a couple of years now, one of the Village to Village network affiliates, and that's exactly the conversation we're going to have on Monday is, when you just are doing this as a preventative tool, how do you stay motivated? And I think the key part to that, stephanie, from my vantage point, is that you have to, as you alluded to early on, you have to start to integrate it into your daily rhythm and your daily life. If you are reading a newspaper or reading a book, or reading the Bible or the Quran or whatever that is, read it out loud. Have the chance to read that out loud. Reading out loud is probably the most important element of the work that we ask people to do, then if you're doing you know if you're going to be writing notes to people anyway in an email choose to do it in a letter, you know, hand write it.

Speaker 2: 23:13

So many people who haven't shown to have symptoms have felt like the questions and the prompts that are in the curriculum and in the book.

Speaker 2: 23:22

It's really powerful because they're able to start to get their own biography and really tell their life story, and the questions open up some really wonderful memories for people and so they really enjoy being able to answer those questions and go through it.

Speaker 2: 23:38

So it becomes a gift for future generations. So that's another way of considering it. But the way that the whole program the original professor who did this work described it was you have these wonderful highways in your brain and if you keep them clear of debris then cars can keep going down the highway easily. But if debris starts to come in then it's not so helpful, right? Then you have barriers. So doing it in a preventative measure 20 to 30 minutes a day, just like exercise, physical exercise is the preventative elixir to ensuring that you push off, hopefully, the symptoms of these things for years to come. So we absolutely have people who've been doing it for years from this particular program, and I think it's one of the hard things is to stay motivated to do things like this. So getting into a social group, having an accountable group, becomes really important.

Speaker 1: 24:28

Do you do it every day?

Speaker 2: 24:30

I do. Yeah, I'm fortunate I have. I also have a. We have an 11 year old son, so reading out loud is easier. The handwriting is something I'm consistent with the simple math. I'm not as consistent with that, Stephanie, Not yet, but I'll get there for sure.

Speaker 1: 24:45

Well, I saw the math and I thought, wow, this is so much easier than calculus. I can do this. It wasn't so great at calculus. Thank you so much for your time and, like I said, let's reconnect in six months or so and see where this is going to have a feeling it's really going to explode. I know I'm going to tell a lot of people and hopefully the folks listening to this will share it too, but thank you so much, it was great talking to you and we'll talk to you in a few months.

Speaker 2: 25:12

Sounds great, stephanie, thanks again.