Faith To Action For Dementia Caregivers - Dr. Fayron Epps New Book and More

Summit Day Two Kickoff

SPEAKER_04 0:00

What's up fam, it's your girl J Smiles and I'm at the Altar Summit 2026 Day 2. I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing Dr. Fayrod Epic, the founder and the hero of millions of us across the United States, the emerging dementia education and awareness with spiritual face paper. So you know what I mean? It helps you get the internal strength to do whatever it needs to do when you're caring for somebody that you love. Or if you care for somebody that you don't actually love or like, but for whatever reason, you've decided to be responsible. But yeah, like I said, this is day two. Get ready for some quick snippets of day two. No video, no talking, no still time. We know how we do it. Parenting up, caregiving advantage with comedian day

The Real Life Caregiving Grind

SPEAKER_04 0:56

two. It's the intense journey of unexpected things, being fully responsible for my mom. For over a decade, I've been chipping away at the unknown, advocating for her, and pushing Alzheimer's awareness on anyone and anything with a heart. Caregiver movies, OGs, and village members just willing to prop up a caregiver. You are in the right place. Hi, this is really.

Dr. Epps On Writing Her Book

SPEAKER_03 2:18

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

What's up, Dr. Epps?

SPEAKER_03 2:20

What's up? How are you? I am good. Honestly, I am good and I feel good.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

Okay, we are at the 2026 Alter Dementia Summit. Oh, we gotta do my global conference. Because I always like to add extra stuff. So, one thing that I gotta announce right off the rip is look, fam, Doc wrote a book. I did. Okay, from faith to action. Now, it's a lot of people that have faith. What did it say? Faith without works is dead. Yes. So I'm here to tell you that Dr. Epps is so alive because her faith has so much work in it, and then so much action. How did you find the time to write a book?

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Uh I I don't know how I found the time, but I made the time. Okay. I made the time because I wanted to share my journey, share my story. So that might have meant waking up early while everyone else was asleep or staying up late. But it wasn't a chore once I started doing it. It just brought me joy. And it also was therapy, because I was writing it down. A lot of things that I put in this book is things that I thought about, right? And I reflected them in my head, but I never wrote it down.

unknown 3:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

So it was actually therapeutic for me to even write it down. And then I did a book club on it, and then I actually had to tell the people what I wrote. Oh my goodness. I am healed.

SPEAKER_04 3:42

How much crying happened there, dog?

SPEAKER_03 3:44

A lot. A lot. A lot.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

What's something that came out of your head and heart that you put in a book that surprised you?

SPEAKER_03 3:53

Oh man. I whoa. You just coming after me. Oh man, what really what I put in a book that surprised me, I don't know if it really surprised me because it was it was my journey. Right? I think it's the response from people is what surprised me. I didn't know my journey was gonna be so inspirational for others.

SPEAKER_04 4:18

You still didn't know.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

I didn't know my journey was gonna be inspirational. I I really didn't know. And again, we are a black, as a black community, we keep things to ourselves, right? Kara, give it to you. Whatever we may be going through, we're keeping things to ourselves. So I didn't know so many other people had similar journeys until I wrote this. And I think this gave them permission to share. And it was that response that surprised me.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Okay. Where can people get the books?

SPEAKER_03 4:48

So you can get the book, you can go to my website, drfaaron.com, and you can purchase the book there. But it's also at Bourns and Nobles Books A Million. If you go on Amazon, they done hijacked the price, but if you want to pay that, you can.

SPEAKER_04 5:01

If you want to double triple minute today, I don't know who would want to do that. But anyway, you can.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

But it is available, and it's also on um e download ebook or something like that, that you can get as well.

The Four Part Brain Health Recipe

SPEAKER_04 5:13

So we know that you are constantly encouraging us to prioritize our brain health. If you could give us one takeaway to help with brain health as something we could start tomorrow, next week, what is it?

SPEAKER_03 5:30

Yeah, it's to follow the brain health recipe. Okay. When you do the brain health recipe, that has four components in it, right? And it's monitoring your own health, it is cognitive exercise, physical exercise, but also, oh, what's that last one? Uh it is eating right. Of course, uh, we're always gonna put eating right last. But if you just all of those four things, and the U.S. Point of Study Alzheimer's Association is calling that the brain health recipe. Okay. And that's what we need to start doing and alter my whole team. We're gonna start pushing that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_04 6:03

All right.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Let it cook, okay?

SPEAKER_04 6:06

And now, one last question, because I know you got to get out of here.

Seeing And Training Youth Caregivers

SPEAKER_04 6:11

You have a lot of uh encouragement for the youth to be trained, to be seen, to be supported as caregivers.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Why is that so important to you? Because I think I didn't realize until three years ago that I was a whole youth caregiver in these streets when I was in college and high school, and I didn't even know. And so it hit me how many other young folks are out there, and no one sees them, no one hears them, no one takes the time to educate them. And working with my team, I want to change that.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

I love you.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

I want us all to see them, right? And take our time to educate them. Too many times we're just saying, hey, go give grandma some some water. And grandma snatches that water away, and we don't know what that does to that youth, to have that elder who we've been told to respect, to do that to them. And so we want to make sure that we give them the education so they can fully understand and still be there to love on their elders or their family members. And then also making sure as adults, we know, take our time and explain to our youth. We, you know, it's a different generation now. And I just want to make sure we're all on the same page because we need all of us to change this narrative. So I need you.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

That's right, that's right. Look, my grandfather had Alzheimer's too, and I gotta tell you, the first time he ever cussed me out was because he was sick with that disease. Broke me. I was an adult, but not grandpa. I was like, I'm I'm baby girl. I'm your favorite. He never talked out of term for me. And had I would have, I would have been better off had I known as a youth that these kind of things can happen. All

Clinical Trials And Trust In Research

SPEAKER_04 7:50

right. Lastly, we're gonna pitch people getting into trials. Now I know people, especially in the black community, got the Tuskegee experiment, we got Henrietta Lax, we got all kinds of things where testing government or institutional university research sometimes came back to haunt us. But there, if we don't get in these trials, Doc, this is what I heard, the medicine can never be optimized for us if they didn't design it around us.

SPEAKER_03 8:23

Exactly. So, and that's another thing. We are pushing research. We had research posters. Our theme for next year is faithful in research, right? Because it is so important. And hey, I went to Tuskegee. So I I seen the result of the Tuskegee experiment or the syphilis like I seen that result. And so I want to make sure that I I change that, but I want to inform our community about research, and so we know how to ask the right questions, and then we can be involved and then have better treatments that's for us, for us, and that's what it's about. Absolutely. Is there somewhere people can go to do the research study? You can go anywhere, right? You can call me up, but no, clinicaltrials.gov and also trial match with Alzheimer's Association are two great places that they can go in and put their information and get studies that's available to them. And within each state, the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center also have a list serve of research studies.

SPEAKER_04 9:20

That's it, doc. Thank you. Thank you. All right, listen, I just want y'all to check the girl.

Spiritual Care When Dementia Progresses

SPEAKER_01 9:55

What is the role of organized religion? So do you belong to a faith community? What are some of the personal spiritual practices you may have, like praying, for example, is that something you do? Meditation, and how does that help your health? And then even more importantly, how would you be half of your care? So think about dementia care, for example. I spoke about my patients who are homebound, just as we were seated in the crowd a while ago and received a message on um epic. So epic is what we use for patients. This is regarding my patient who has dementia, and his wife is doing taking care of him. Unfortunately, they're beginning to ask me, Doctor, we're gonna have to shake his career because he can no longer come to you in the clinic. So we need to begin to give him care at home. So meaning that I don't want a wheelchair at home, we have to find a doctor who can now give him care of home. I also have to begin to think with my patient and his wife. You know, how are we gonna care for like our spiritual rules if we have spiritual needs? Of course, if he was going to church, and now that's my patient who loves to sing. So that's fine to dementia who loves to sing. So every time we come to single clinic, we get to sing Amazing Greeks. We sing it together and we spend time just holding each other and singing, and it's so beautiful because that's the only conversation he has with me.

Kids Books That Teach Dementia

SPEAKER_00 11:16

So my name is Boss Frog, and I am so excited because Dr. Pheron, she's my auntie. Yeah, um, but I'm also here with my auntie Z. Hi, uh Auntie Z, and basically, this is my nephew Boss Frog. We write children's books and we go into schools, we go into communities and secret facilities, and we teach about Alzheimer's and dementia and youth caregiving. I love that. Nice to meet you both. Oh, nice to meet you too. Thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

I'm so glad to see you in the flushing blood.

Pandemic Comedy Shows For Caregivers

SPEAKER_04 11:50

So, okay, parenting up community. The very first real support sponsor I got from a major national organization came from Alex and hilarity for charity. I mean, I don't even think I was. That's right. I don't even think the podcast was a year old. I might have had five or six episodes out. Yeah, it was really young. She believed in my storytelling and the transfer and the transformative experiences that I was hoping to give other family caregivers. Because it was the pandemic and nobody could go outside. This is when we were shut down. We even did virtual comedy shows. We did, we did, and had uh system crashes because Zoom wasn't prepared to do all of that, and then she texted me, hey Jay, are you still there? I was like, Yep, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh. We did it. We did it. We did it. We sent them mocktails? We did. Or snacks or something? We did, yeah, because we made a party. Yeah, so they got mocktails, snacks, we had a DJ. We had a DJ? That's right. We had a DJ. Yeah, so don't tell us what we can't do. Basically, if you want something done that you think no one will let you do, you should call Alex.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

No promises, but do the best I can.

SPEAKER_04 13:11

She's a good place to start.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Oh my god. Go mix! Go match!

Sleep As A Pillar Of Brain Health

SPEAKER_02 13:18

So I am Dr. Glenna Brewster. I'm an assistant professor at Emory University in the School of Nursing. I do research with caregivers and people living with dementia with the goal of understanding their sleep experiences and improving their sleep outcomes. And I'm here at Altar to meet people, to network, and to also share the work that I do with communities and churches which are involved in also doing and disseminating the work. So I think one of the biggest misnomas that we used to have is that we can sleep when we're dead. And we're now learning and understanding that sleep is a pillar of brain health and that our brains are so active when we're asleep. So one of the main things I think my mission is to tell people that it's important to sleep and it's important to prioritize sleep with the goal of getting between seven to nine hours of sleep nightly. So no matter what you feel the deadlines might be, do it tomorrow and get that good quality sleep tonight. I might just drop something hot in the middle of the night.