Study ties moderately high cholesterol to increased risk of Alzheimer’s, dementia
A new study that looked at Kaiser Permanente’s northern California members over a four-decade period found that even borderline to moderately high cholesterol levels in your 40s can significantly raise the chances of developing dementia later in life.
The Kaiser research, considered the largest and most diverse long-term study to examine the link between cholesterol at midlife and the development of dementia later on, adds a growing body of evidence to link cholesterol and vascular health with the two most common forms of dementia.
Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder named for German physician Alois Alzheimer, who first described it in 1906. Scientists have learned a great deal about Alzheimer’s disease in the century since Alzheimer first drew attention to it. Alzheimer’s is a progressive and fatal brain disease. It destroys brain cells, causing problems with memory, thinking and behavior severe enough to affect work, lifelong hobbies or social life.
More than 5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.
The journal Dementia & Geriatrics Cognitive Disorders published the study Tuesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It determined that the risk for developing Alzheimer’s increased by as much as 66 percent among people with high cholesterol in midlife. A high level is 240 or more milligrams per deciliter.
Even for those with moderately high cholesterol — between 200 and 239 milligrams per deciliter — the risk of developing vascular dementia increased by 52 percent. It is the second-most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s.
Blood tests can easily identify cholesterol levels, and medications that will lower it are available.
“The thing that struck us as most surprising was that not only was high cholesterol associated with elevated risk of developing dementia later in life but also borderline levels of cholesterol,” said the study’s senior author, Rachel Whitmer, a Kaiser research scientist and epidemiologist. “This is a new piece of the puzzle, as we’re trying to understand risk factors for dementia.”
Other studies in recent years have also associated cardiovascular health and dementia, said Bill Fisher, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Association of Northern California and Northern Nevada.
“We never say to people, ‘You do this and you won’t develop Alzheimer’s’ because we can’t say that,” Fisher said, adding that genetic components to the disease, such as an inherited type of protein, can’t be changed with diet and exercise.
“But we do say, ‘What’s good for the heart is good for your brain.’ There’s a lot of data behind that.”
More than 5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, an incurable brain disorder that is the sixth-leading cause of death.
Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder named for German physician Alois Alzheimer, who first described it in 1906. Scientists have learned a great deal about Alzheimer’s disease in the century since Dr. Alzheimer first drew attention to it. Later research showed that Alzheimer’s s a progressive and fatal brain disease. Alzheimer’s destroys brain cells, causing problems with memory, thinking and behavior severe enough to affect work, lifelong hobbies or social life. Alzheimer’s gets worse over time, and it is fatal.
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This story was assembled from numerous sources by Robert Weller, who has reported extensively on psychiatric injuries in his 40-year career. Reach him at robert.weller@gmail.com
The Long Goodbye
By Bernard Howe
Deep within that hollow stare,
of our presence they’re unaware.
A life that is fading away,
in spite of things we try to convey.
Memories locked up in their mind,
and there they’re kept all confined.
Good times spent long ago,
and all their love they did bestow.
For these moments will live forever,
and our pride in them will endeavour.
Seeing them lying there we know why,
Alzheimer’s is called the long good-bye.
Oh, when will all this nonsense about cholesterol come to an end?
A relationship is not a cause, folks. There has always been a very slight relationship between high cholesterol and heart disease for middle aged men, but that doesn’t mean cholesterol is the cause! If this were true, we would suspect to see the risk even greater in men in their 50′s or 60′s with high cholesterol developing dimentia later in life, but the studies don’t show that. Obviously, cholseterol is sthe sign of something else at work, and even then, it’s only a very slight relationship. Most men with high cholesterol will not get either heart disease or dimentia later in life.
What the studies do show is that low cholesterol levels is related to higher mentality, but big pharma doesn’t wnat you to know that.
This type of research is exactly why clinical studies are so important.
It is important for patients and families affected by diseases such as Alzheimer’s to consider participating in clinical studies. One such study is the ICARA Study (www.icarastudy.com), whose goal is to explore if an investigational drug, called Bapineuzumab, can help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease. Clinical studies that test new treatments are the best chance we have for fighting this disease. Current therapies for Alzheimer’s treat the symptoms associated with it, not the disease itself.
Here is another way at looking at the pathway between emotions and cholesterol which can be the precursor of more serious conditions like Alzheimers.-
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the heart.
In TCM it is said the ‘heart houses the mind’. The heart is considered the main organ governing mental activities and its links to the brain. Put another way, there is a mutual effect and correlation between the heart dominating the vessels and the vessels supplying the mind.
To give an example of how emotional stress can have a physiological effect, here is an extract from an article published in the Daily Mail in March 2006 entitled ‘ Row with your loved one hurts the heart’ where it was reported that a three year study of older married couples found their arteries hardened and narrowed after they were involved in arguments, raising their risk of heart disease.
For women, this happened when the row took on a hostile nature. But for men it occurred only when either they or their wife acted in a dominating and controlling manner. American scientists asked 150 couples in their 60s and 70s to discuss a sore topic such as money or their in-laws for six minutes. Each conversation was observed by psychologists who gave a point score for friendly, hostile or dominant behaviour. Two days later the couples were given CAT scans to show the extent of atherosclerosis. The results revealed that the couples who had the most stormy rows showed the most signs of having narrowed arteries.
Tim Smith, Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah, said, ‘Disagreements are an unavoidable fact of relationships, but the way we talk during disagreements gives us an opportunity to do something healthy. If you were concerned about men’s heart health, you would ask couples to find ways to talk about disagreements without trying to control each other. If you were concerned about women’s heart health, you would encourage couples to find ways to have disagreements that were not hostile.’
OMG so much for science.