By Emily Retter, The Telegraph | Ask Helen Khan if she used to be the kind of person who’d join a club, and she’s categoric in her response. “No, no,” she laughs. “I’m social, I love people, but I’d always say I didn’t have a hobby. I have two children, a really busy job.”
That changed two years ago, in early 2023, when the 45-year-old decided a hobby wouldn’t just be nice, it was essential – and then she chose the most unlikely. Helen, who hadn’t sung since secondary school, and would even swerve karaoke, decided to join her local community choir.
Her motivation was very specific: to avoid developing Alzheimer’s Disease, the condition which was then stealing her father from her, and would finally end what little life he had left in November that year. A disease from which his older sister, her aunt, had also died from earlier in 2023, and which Helen now feared she might develop too, because of her genetic make up.
As anxiety mixed with grief, she started reading up on the condition. “I wanted to see what I could do for myself, if there were any preventative steps I could take,” she explains. “I wanted to put some things in place.”
Helen was right to research precautionary measures. While to those suffering this devastating disease, and those watching their decline, Alzheimer’s can feel beyond all control, encouraging studies state that isn’t the whole picture.
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Alzheimer’s Research UK is one of four charities supported by this year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal. The others are Humanity & Inclusion, Teenage Cancer Trust and Army Benevolent Fund.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/i-sing-to-keep-alzheimer-s-at-bay/
10 Choruses Fostering Community Around Denver
https://www.denvercenter.org/news-center/10-choruses-fostering-community-around-denver/
Photo: Denver’s Choir League