Recreated Cold War Apartments Can Cure Alzheimer's?

One nursing home in Dresden, Germany, takes its residents back in time. Brown and yellow designs line the walls, as the scent of Spee and Fewa laundry detergent spreads throughout the room. Yellow magazines that haven’t been read in decades find a new home, joined by the plastic salt-and-pepper shakers that were owned throughout the former East Germany, which included Dresden. And an ”Intershop” sign hovers above a string of walkers and paraphernalia of the past, a constant reminder of the Communist era of yesteryear.

Alexa Seniors’ Residence has created “memory rooms,” that recreate the ambience of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), right down to the era’s meals, décor, and music. No detail was spared in the building of the rooms, from vintage wallpaper featured in German homes of the 1960s to the ditties spinning on record players. The goal is to encourage brain stimulation and reanimate memories of the past for the nursing home’s residents who suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia and general memory loss.

The idea for the “memory room” first arose during a movie night dedicated to films from the GDR, when the nursing home’s director, Gunter Wolfram, decided to add another element to the viewing. He brought in a “Troll” motor scooter from that era that he found on eBay.

Just seeing the scooter encouraged the residents to reminisce about everything from scooter functionality to first dates. Inspired by the reaction, Wolfram scavenged the internet and flea markets, and in January 2016 introduced a room dedicated to Cold War-era memorabilia. He accented their Ostalgie – nostalgia for culture in East Germany – with a framed photograph of Erich Honecker, East Germany’s longtime head of state.

Recreated Cold War Apartments Help Seniors Battle Alzheimer’s | History.com

I thought this was a joke but it's for real. Why not find the root cause of Alzheimer's, instead of addressing the symptoms, which I think has to do with health, specifically nutrition and exercise. Instead we get laughable treatments like this for Alzheimer's or the pharmaceutical and westernized medicine route. Also this comes off like it's from the movie Austin Powers, where he has to relive what happened in the 1960s after being cryogenically frozen. Seriously this is absurd.