Lynette Hoffman
The Australian
February 03, 2007

New figures show dementia is a fast-growing problem, but there are ways you can lower your risk, writes Lynnette Hoffman

IT takes a fair bit to shock Pamela Hore. A former aged-care worker who helped care for her mother who had Alzheimer's disease, and then later her father who also developed dementia, she's more accustomed to the gritty realities of dementia than most.

But one experience remains embedded in Hore's memory.

She arrived to find him layered in heavy jumpers on a sweltering hot day. Worried he might forget to drink and become dehydrated, she tried to help him out of the layers into a cooler shirt.

That's when he began to touch her "suggestively", first on her arm, then elsewhere. "I could teach you a few tricks . . . I was a bit of a lad in my day," he told his stunned daughter.

"He was flirting with me