Why Zinnia TV? with Allyson Schrier

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

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The following podcast is provided by an approved senior care provider on the answers for elders radio network. And Welcome back everyone to answers for elders radio is we are here with Alison Schryder, who’s an Alzheimer’s and dementia expert and founder of Zinnia TV and the Zi Nnia TV and I am so excited to get into this asked half of our hour because we’re really going to talk about this amazing innovation that you have created for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia. And it’s so interesting, Alison, because we all know. I remember, you know, five years ago, five, six years ago, everybody was telling us. Well, you realize that all TV is moving to on online platform? You know it’s eventually. You know cable is going to be, you know, the old thing. You know, and this is what’s happening out there. It’s really amazing how many networks are happening in technology is happening and information and now the world is just everywhere. And yet you don’t think about what technology could do for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia. And I know that, for example, we are, our listeners know Kelly smiths from care partners really well and you know, I shared your channel with her. You know she’s a vice president of care partners. She’s going this is amazing. This is awesome and of course, with all of their cottages, I have no doubt that they’re going to be watching your channel, and so I would love let’s just start off this half, you know, bottom half of the hour, tell us a little bit about what specifically a is Zenia TV. Sure. So I’m going to start by just telling you a little bit about why. Is Okay, if you don’t mind we start. So I as a family care partner, if actually was unable to care for my husband at home, and so at that point he went to live in a care community and I was just a ghast when I would show up and find the television that he and the other residents were watching, and I also found that many of the residents were asleep in front of the television and some of the other residents were getting agitated because they were confused by what they saw on the television. And well, you might say, well, but if they’re sleeping in front of the television, that’s okay because they’re at least they’re they’re comfortable. Yeah, but that means they’re not going to sleep at night. So we don’t want people falling asleep in front of a television and so I started doing research to just figure out, isn’t there something better than regular television programming for people living with dementia? Because what I already knew is that people with dementia are not able to track audio and video the same way that a person with a healthy brain can track those things, and they can’t necessarily tell fact from fiction. And so I thought, you know, like when my kids were little, I would never advocate having anybody sitting in front of a television all day long, but when my kids were a little and I had to get something done, I’d put on sesame streets because I thought at least it’s better than some of the other options for them and they’re getting something, they’re getting something really meaningful out of it. As I thought, why isn’t there something like that for people living with Dementistro or maybe there is and I just don’t know about it. There wasn’t anything like that. However, I did find a paper that was published titled Television Viewing and people with dementia living in long term care. That was the title of the paper and it talked about all of these things that I was seeing that people with dementia can’t track regular television shows. And so in this paper, what they talked about is that they had shown a group of people living with dementia a bunch of different TV programs and they assessed which of these was the most engaging. And it turns out that the thing that was most engaging was kind of like a slideshow of images with music, because it was moving slowly enough that people could track it visually. The music didn’t conflict with what they were seeing on the screen. Because if my processing speed is hammered by dementia, to have to both process audio input and visual input is really, really hard. It becomes chaotic and it can cause me anxiety. So this paper led me to a bunch of other research with led me to this idea of wow, what I want to be able to do is show my husband things like that. That particular show is about Venice, but I thought, what if I wanted him to watch a similar kind of video but that was about skiing or that was about dogs or that was about Paris? Where do I get that kind of thing? And what I thought is, okay, where I get it is I make it. I make it. You’re amazing. You’re amazing. It’s like you know I have a spiritual coach. I guess would say. I read a lot of Emma Curtis Hopkins, and I don’t know if you know who she is, but she don’t want I’m writing it down. Oh she’s amazing, but one of the things that she’s said in some of her teachings is if you see a job, it’s yours. Yeah, if you think about that, if you see a job, it’s yours. It’s like it’s the same thing. I had this a similar situations, like what is it out there that helps to educate families? And there wasn’t anything out there, and it’s like I kept seeing the same thing over and over again and I thought, okay, this is this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and you’re really following that that piece within yourself, you know, to be that you know, Pioneer, that visionary is so valuable and important. So congratulations. Well, thank you. Amazing thing that you’ve created. I am so I’m really, really impressed, and I don’t say that lightly. I am so. You know, I I went onto your channel, signed up about a week ago, I guess, and I started playing with some of the content. It’s like, of course I’m a dog person. I Have A, you know, golden dudle. Everybody knows about my doodle and and you know my you know my whole world. I’m watching these sweet puppies and these dogs and you know who came and watched it with me? My doodle. I dog because meant to think about it. I mean it’s probably was perfect for a dog and you know, you look at things like dog TV, it’s kind of similar, but it also shows a little bit more interaction and the music is so valuable that you put on every channel, and this is what I think is so powerful about what you do is it’s really thought through of you know everything that goes into it. I love that you do have a trivia channel. I love that you have a music channel where they can sing, and we know how often those tools, you know, can help the brain to from cognitive decline. So tell us a little bit about you know, I mean this is my experience. What am I missing and what do I mean to discover more of? Oh my goodness, well, thanks for asking. So, as you’ve pointed out, there are lots of channels on Zennya TV, lots of different categories of videos and so where that came from. Just to go back a little tiny bit to the to the origin story, I had my iphone and I saw that on my iphone I could create videos. Like I could say to my iphone it had this smart piece and this smart intellect where I could say, show me videos of every picture that are dogs on my phone, and my phone is capable of then piecing it together, figuring out which ones are dogs and showing me a little video of dogs. I don’t know if you’re aware that your iphone can do this. I didn’t know that. Yes, and so I thought this is what I want, but what I want is to have lots and lots of videos that can that are relevant to the person watching. And I don’t have all of those videos, I don’t have all of those images on my phone. So I started reaching out to people who I knew, who knew other people, and I came upon a guy named frankly who worked at apple and I said, Hey, I’m interested in finding out about this program, this thing that happens on the apple phone where it can piece together and create these videos. I want to be able to do that on a grander scale. And he was like, I designed that program Oh my God, God, Synchronici this. Yeah, so he became my first partner and then we added several other amazing people. We have a visual artist who’s just amazing and then we have our business guy who’s done a bunch of startups, and so what we recognized is that we wanted to create really, really high quality, engaging videos that, when they are interesting not just to the person living with dementia but also the care partner, because we do not advocate, even though you could sit for hours on end and watches any a TV, we don’t advocate that. What we advocate is sit with the person and it creates this amazing opportunity for conversations. You can we have the ability to slow down the videos so that if somebody is even more visually impaired or their processing speed is even more impaired, you can slow the videos way down and we have a lot of people who are using it this way where they let the video roll and then they just pause it and they can say wow, that dog looks a lot like Stevie or whatever. So they get the person involved in a conversation and we have videos that are about skiing, about tools, about classic automobiles, the s Paris, baking, sewing, knitting. We just have heaps of videos that will allow a person to tap into who a person was so that they can remember who they are, and that’s so valuable because I think one of the thing that goes the last is long term memory, you know, and of course my mom she would talk for hours about, you know, when I was a child, not that she remembered all the facts the same way I did, but that was okay, I learned that. But but the thing is is that when you have the ability to go back and like talk to you know, do a sewing channel when some if somebody was seemstress or they that was a hobby or they were crafty person or something like that, that’s really wonderful and I think that that gives people the ability to connect on their level and it certainly that and more. Yeah, absolutely, and I want to also just point out that, while these videos were originally created to provide engagement and connection for a person living with dementia, what caregivers are reporting is, yes, it allows me to engage on a deeper level with the person living with the mania, but also, Oh my God, I’m able to get my hair washed yeah, yeah, he is so engaged in this program that I can step away for a few minutes to do the thing that I need to do and then come back. Well, this is powerful and I want to talk a little bit about now, about what’s next for you guys, because I know you’re in the in the basics of the foundation, but I want to come back again in our final hour and talk a little bit about, you know, the next steps and where we are with cinning a TV and talk to our listeners a little bit more about signing up for free. So, anyway, everyone, allison will be right back right after this. We at answers for elders. Thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care? So visit our website and discover our decision guys. That will help you also navigate decision making. Find US and answers for elders. Docom