Word: dementias
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what it was, but you manage information and parse meanings that were entirely beyond you when you were younger. What's more, your temperament changes to suit those new skills, growing more comfortable with ambiguity and less susceptible to frustration or irritation. Although inflexibility, confusion and even later-life dementia are very real problems, for many people the aging process not only does not batter the brain, it actually makes it better...
...year survey of 469 elderly people living in the Bronx, N.Y., tried to get to the bottom of this chicken-or-egg question by following subjects who had no signs of dementia in the first seven years of the study. The results, which were published in 2003, showed that reading and playing board games or a musical instrument was associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. Intriguingly, those with the strongest habits demonstrated the greatest benefits. Participants who solved crossword puzzles four days a week, for instance, had a 47% lower risk...
...same token, several studies have suggested that older folks who are socially active?who, for example, do volunteer work or attend religious services?have a reduced risk of dementia. There are, of course, plenty of caveats that go along with those observations, including the same old chicken-or-egg problem that haunts all observational studies: In this case, is withdrawal from society a cause or result of Alzheimer's disease...
...Alzheimer's Association. "Let's say you're dialed in to get Alzheimer's disease at 82. You may be able to push that back until maybe you're 92." Depending on where their personal thermostat is set, some people will do everything right and still develop dementia in their 50s. Others will do everything wrong and be perfectly lucid at 101. Most of the rest of us will fall somewhere between those two extremes. For now, at least, preventing dementia is still a numbers game, but one in which we're starting to grasp the variables...
...judgment, promote learning and concentration, boost mood, speed reaction time and sharpen problem solving and accuracy. According to Sonia Ancoli-Israel, a psychologist at the University of California at San Diego who has done extensive studies in the aging population, lack of sleep may even mimic the symptoms of dementia. In recent preliminary findings, she was able to improve cognitive function in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's simply by treating their underlying sleep disorder. "The need for sleep does not change a lot with age," says Ancoli-Israel, but often because of disruptive illnesses and the medications used...