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CBS News corespondent Natalie Morales maintains a very active lifestyle, which is beneficial for brain health. (Photo: Courtesy of Natalie Morales)<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Natalie Morales<\/p>\n
If you do a Google, Bing, Duck-Duck-Go or Perplexity search for \u201c53 years of age,\u201d you\u2019ll find lots of stuff on the Internet about how great it is to be that age and how happy 53-year-olds tend to be. For CBS News Correspondent Natalie Morales, though, being 53 years of age does bring something else to mind\u2014namely the importance of brain health. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother-in-law\u2019s name was Kay Rhodes, and she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer\u2019s disease right around my age,” Morales recently told me. \u201cWhen you\u2019re dealt that blow, whether as the patient, as a caregiver or as part of the family, it\u2019s a blow that affects the entire family. And it certainly did with our families.\u201d Rhodes went on to pass away in March 2014 at the age of 72. \u201cShe lived with the disease for 17 years because her body was still young,\u201d Morales explained. \u201cBut at that point, her brain and her mind were far gone.\u201d And Morales, who also used to anchor the Today show on the West Coast and host the CBS series \u201cThe Talk,\u201d talked to me about what happened and why she\u2019s now talking about brain health. <\/p>\n
What Is Early Onset Alzheimer\u2019s Disease <\/p>\n
Morales used the term early-onset because that\u2019s what you would call any appearance of Alzheimer\u2019s disease before the age of 65. And early-onset or younger-onset does account for about five to 10 percent of all Alzheimer\u2019s cases. If you somehow think that Alzheimer\u2019s disease is exclusively for older adults, you\u2019d be wrong as a bathroom gong. Early-onset can be as early as one\u2019s 40s.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother-in-law was diagnosed in early 2000 but really started showing symptoms two years prior,\u201d Morales recalled. \u201cShe took cognitive assessments, and the findings were somewhat inconclusive when she took them. It wasn\u2019t until two years later, when she was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic, and at that point, we saw that it had already progressed dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written about Alzheimer\u2019s disease before for Forbes back in 2022<\/a> and again in 2025<\/a>. It is the most common cause of dementia\u2014accounting for about 60 to 70 percent of cases. A characteristic of the disease is the progressive build-up of proteins in the brain that eventually manifest as what\u2019s called amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Such stuff can then impinge on normal brain tissue, which may result in more and more brain cells dying over time. This, in turn, over time leads the brain to shrink and the associated symptoms and decline.<\/p>\n What Are The Symptoms Of Early Onset of Alzheimer\u2019s Disease<\/p>\n The symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s disease are pretty much the same as Alzheimer\u2019s disease in general. They just start earlier\u2014at a younger age. And in the same way, the memory loss, cognitive decline and disorientation get progressively worse over time. <\/p>\n \u201cWe saw the symptoms back when I first met her,\u201d Morales recalled. \u201cIt was the mid 1990s, and she would repeat herself in conversations. She would have memory or thinking issues that were sort of typical.\u201d Diagnosing Rhodes wasn\u2019t super straightforward, though. \u201cShe was also a menopausal woman, as am I perimenopausal,\u201d Morales added. \u201cSo, there\u2019s always that question of, could this be something brain fog? They were also at the time when she and my father-in-law were going through a pretty dramatic move and changes in their lives. So, there were a lot of things that we were thinking could have contributed, but at the same time, we didn\u2019t understand until we started to see real repetition of behavior.\u201d <\/p>\n As time went on, the symptoms became more prominent. \u201cShe started to have anxiety and a little bit of sundowning later in the evenings and would go to bed really early and was really afraid to go places by herself,\u201d Morales described. \u201cShe would get lost and she had difficulty completing pretty familiar tasks. So those memory and thinking issues really started to present within those two years.\u201d <\/p>\n Morales brought up a particular instance when \u201cit really came to light. [My husband and I] were getting married. This was August 1998. We sent our wedding bands to their house in Colorado, where the wedding ceremony was gonna take place. She signed for them, hid them, because of that paranoia that she was starting to exhibit, and hid them so well that she forgot where she put them, so we had to get new wedding bands. It wasn\u2019t until after she died, when my father-in-law was cleaning through one of her drawers that he found those wedding bands in there.\u201d <\/p>\n When I asked whether her mother-in-law was aware of her symptoms, Morales replied, \u201cYeah, she was aware and afraid what was happening to her. She would get lost. walking in the neighborhood, which was a very familiar neighborhood and people knew her. She would have to have ask her neighbors to help her get back to her house.\u201d Morales continued by saying, \u201cShe did not want to talk about it, I think there was a little bit of shame, and she withdrew within herself as so many people who are diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s tend to do. Their world becomes a little bit smaller.\u201d <\/p>\n Early Diagnosis Of Early Onset Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Is Important<\/p>\n Natalie Morales (R) hosted the CBS series THE TALK and is seen here with (L to R) Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Sheryl Underwood and Jerry O’Connell. (Photo by Terence Patrick\/CBS via Getty Images)<\/p>\n CBS via Getty Images<\/p>\n It was a different time, too. \u201cBack then, there weren\u2019t any disease modifying treatments or therapies,\u201d Morales lamented. Since then, though, the longtime NBC and CBS reporter in Morales continued to ask questions. And, importantly, seek answers to those questions. <\/p>\n