By Anna Skinner
In 2014 Ashley Bryan and Jamy Brase of Carmel established Life in the Moment, a comprehensive technology tool focused on providing nutritional, family, communication, legal and financial advice to families living with dementia.
“It includes content about the latest research (on dementia), and we are developing a mentoring program,” Bryan said. “Caregivers have been through a lot dealing with dementia and have got a lot of tips on how to handle certain behaviors. We are trying to connect people to start learning from each other.”
MemoryMeals, the nutritional component of the Life in the Moment, was launched at the end of last month. The software platform is available for senior living facilities.
Bryan and Brase, who created recipes including ingredients proven to reduce dementia and Alzheimer’s by 53 percent, created MemoryMeals. The recipes follow the MIND diet – Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay, which has been proven by researchers to reduce risks of dementia and memory loss that comes with aging.
“It’s a very significant prevention tool,” Bryan said. “It can also slow cognitive decline associated with typical aging by up to six-and-a-half years.”
The MIND diet includes foods that also have been proven to aid in heart health, arthritis, depression and diabetes.
“We’ve developed recipes on nutritional development of brain health, and there’s an algorithm that scores each weekly plan,” Brase said, explaining that if a resident doesn’t like salmon, the algorithm will substitute an additional food that provides similar nutritional value.
“The great thing about what we’re doing is we don’t only give them all the nutritious facts … but we also in these meal plans enable (senior living facilities) to print out why its brain healthy so they can let residents know why it’s healthy,” Bryan said.
At the end of this year, Bryan and Brase will release a MemoryMeal consumer component available for families to purchase to use as a preventative tool.
For more, visit memorymeals.com.
