Word: snowdons
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...also one of the first to suggest a way to stave off Alzheimer's symptoms. "If your brain is already progressing toward Alzheimer's," says Snowdon, "strokes or head trauma [which can produce similar kinds of brain damage] can put you over the edge." His advice: wear a helmet while biking, motorcycling or playing contact sports; buckle your seat belt; and drive a car with air bags. Meanwhile, keep strokes at bay by keeping your cardiovascular system in shape: avoid tobacco, get regular exercise and eat a balanced, healthy diet...
...victims have low concentrations in their blood of the nutrient folate, also called folic acid. That's an intriguing result, especially in light of other studies showing that folic acid deficiency plays a role in some forms of mental retardation in children and in cognitive problems in adults. So Snowdon began looking at levels of folic acid, along with 18 other micronutrients (including beta carotene, magnesium, zinc and cholesterol) in blood samples of 30 sisters who had died since the study began...
...another hunch turned out to be far more productive. When Snowdon and Kemper first read the sisters' autobiographies in the early 1990s, they noted that the writings differed not just in the density of ideas they contained but also in their emotional content. "At the time," he says, "we saw that idea density was much more related to later cognitive ability. But we also knew that there was something interesting going on with emotions." Studies by other scientists had shown that anger and depression can play a role in heart disease, so the team decided to take another look...
This time they searched for words suggesting positive emotions (such as happiness, love, hope, gratitude and contentment), as well as negative ones (sadness, fear, confusion and shame). Snowdon found that the sisters expressing negative emotions did not live as long as the sisters conveying more positive ones. He has already begun another analysis, comparing the emotional content of the nuns' early autobiographies with the ones they penned in late life, as part of the Nun Study. As mental abilities decline, his preliminary review has found, the expression of positive emotions also drops. While he suspects the whittling away of positive...
...years after he first climbed Good Counsel Hill, Snowdon has identified half a dozen factors that may predict or contribute to Alzheimer's disease. He could sit each sister down right now and tell her what her chances are. But should he? As he has all along, Snowdon will put his dilemma to the sisters themselves: next month he will meet with the Notre Dame leadership to discuss whether to break the news to the high-risk nuns--and how to answer the inevitable questions about what they might do to prevent or slow down the disease...