Do you "live in dread of" Alzheimer's disease?

I'm reading this Guardian article, "Stop drinking, keep reading, look after your hearing: a neurologist’s tips for fighting memory loss and Alzheimer’s/When does forgetfulness become something more serious? And how can we delay or even prevent that change? We talk to brain expert Richard Restak."

Neuroscientist Dr Richard Restak... in The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind, homes in on the great unspoken fear that every time you can’t remember where you put your reading glasses, it’s a sign of impending doom. “In America today,” he writes “anyone over 50 lives in dread of the big A.” Memory lapses are, he writes, the single most common complaint over-55s raise with their doctors, even though much of what they describe turns out to be nothing to worry about.

Anyone over 50 lives in dread of the big A?!  Maybe he meant that as hilarious hyperbole. Maybe some people dread the big, famous diseases, and surely some of us fixate on Alzheimer's in particular, but we're not all disease-phobic. What's the point of wanting to stay alive and grow old if you're angst-ridden about what could go wrong when obviously something will go wrong?

Anyway, I like this about reading fiction:

[M]any patients in the early stages of dementia stop reading fiction, because it’s too difficult to remember what the character said or did a few chapters earlier – which is unfortunate, he says, because reading complex novels can be a valuable mental workout in itself. Restak and his wife are currently on Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, which has a complex sprawling cast: “It’s an exercise in being able to keep track of characters without going backwards from one page to another.” 

If that’s already difficult for you, he says, it’s fine to underline the first mention of a new character and then flip back to remind yourself later if necessary. “Do whatever you have to, to keep yourself reading.” Like following a recipe, keeping track of fictional plots is an exercise of working memory – as distinct from short-term memory (temporarily storing something like a phone number that you can safely forget the minute you’ve dialed it) or episodic memory, which covers things like recollections of childhood. 

Working memory is what we use to “work with the information we have”, says Restak, and it’s the one we should all prioritise. Left to its own devices, he points out, memory naturally starts to decline from your 30s onwards, which is why he advocates practising it daily....