December 15th, 2005
Women are more prone to Dementia
I have experienced this first hand. I mean I’m not the one with Dementia but I know of persons who can’t recognize their wife and children anymore. They don’t know where they live and often forget who they are. At first I didn’t know that this is Dementia. I thought this was just brought due to old age but I guess it’s not. Newsweek has a very article on Dementia and has some tips on how to fight it. Read on…
It’s tempting to believe that this is a worry we can perpetually put off till tomorrow. After all, dementia before age 70 is rare. The fact that there’s no cure probably encourages a lot of us not to think about it at all. But there is growing evidence that your health at midlife is more predictive of your future risk of dementia than your health during your senior years. That makes sense, since the first seeds of dementia begin to take root in your brain about 20 to 30 years before you show symptoms.
The good news? There are steps you can take in your 40s or 50s that may lower your risk of developing dementia in your 70s or 80s. New research has indicated that many of the habits that help keep your heart healthy are also good for your brain. That’s because a healthy vascular system seems to be a key component of both. Gerontologists like Dr. Laurel Coleman, a member of the Alzheimer’s Association national board, used to spend a lot of time trying to determine if their patients had Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia–but many no longer bother. They believe that most people who have dementia probably have some of both.
In practical terms, that means that if you work hard to keep your blood pressure in check and your cholesterol levels and weight under control, you’ll lower your risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia at the same time–a kind of a two-for-one special. Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, following 1,449 seniors over the course of 21 years, recently reported that those who had hypertension at midlife were twice as likely to develop dementia decades later as those who didn’t. Those who were obese (with a body mass index of 30 or higher) at midlife also had double the risk of those who weren’t. The same was true of those with high cholesterol counts. All these risks were cumulative–so people who had two of these three problems had four times the risk of those who had none. Those with all three had six times the risk.
Read more of this here.
