Doing Five Things Could Decrease Your Risk of Alzheimer's By 60% (sfgate.com) 132
"Light-to-moderate" alcohol consumption can help reduce your risk of Alzheimer's disease.
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: A study presented Sunday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Los Angeles found that combining five lifestyle habits -- including eating healthier, exercising regularly and refraining from smoking -- can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's by 60 percent. A separate study showed that lifestyle choices can lower risk even for those who are genetically prelifestyle disposed to the disease...
Over the last decade, studies have increasingly pointed to controllable lifestyle factors as critical compenents to reducing the risk of cognitive decline. Researchers say that, as with heart disease, combating dementia will probably require a "cocktail" approach combining drugs and lifestyle changes. And as recent efforts to develop a cure or more effective drug treatments for dementia have proven disappointing, the fact that people can exert some control in preventing the disease through their own choices is encouraging news, they say.
While the new study's authors expected to see that leading a healther life decreases the chance of dementia, they were floored by the "magnitude of the effect," said Klodian Dhana, a Rush University professor and co-author. "This demonstrates the potential of lifestyle behaviors to reduce risk as we age," said Heather Snyder, senior director of medical and scientific operations at the Alzheimer's Association. "The fact that four or five lifestyle habits put together can have that kind of benefit for your brain is incredibly powerful."
The fifth lifestyle habit is "engaging in mentally stimulating activities like reading the newspaper, visiting the library or playing games such as chess and checkers."
Time reports that even following just two or three of the healthy lifestyle factors reduced the risk of developing Alzheimer's dementia in the study by at least 39%.
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: A study presented Sunday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Los Angeles found that combining five lifestyle habits -- including eating healthier, exercising regularly and refraining from smoking -- can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's by 60 percent. A separate study showed that lifestyle choices can lower risk even for those who are genetically prelifestyle disposed to the disease...
Over the last decade, studies have increasingly pointed to controllable lifestyle factors as critical compenents to reducing the risk of cognitive decline. Researchers say that, as with heart disease, combating dementia will probably require a "cocktail" approach combining drugs and lifestyle changes. And as recent efforts to develop a cure or more effective drug treatments for dementia have proven disappointing, the fact that people can exert some control in preventing the disease through their own choices is encouraging news, they say.
While the new study's authors expected to see that leading a healther life decreases the chance of dementia, they were floored by the "magnitude of the effect," said Klodian Dhana, a Rush University professor and co-author. "This demonstrates the potential of lifestyle behaviors to reduce risk as we age," said Heather Snyder, senior director of medical and scientific operations at the Alzheimer's Association. "The fact that four or five lifestyle habits put together can have that kind of benefit for your brain is incredibly powerful."
The fifth lifestyle habit is "engaging in mentally stimulating activities like reading the newspaper, visiting the library or playing games such as chess and checkers."
Time reports that even following just two or three of the healthy lifestyle factors reduced the risk of developing Alzheimer's dementia in the study by at least 39%.
thank god pork is still allowed (Score:2, Funny)
the "other white meat"
also, submitter - why the hell wouldn't you put the actual list of five things in the freakin summary.
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> why the hell wouldn't you put the actual list of five things in the freakin summary.
They forgot. Slashdot editors are getting on in years, and don't live the healthiest lifestyle.
Or commit suicide (Score:1, Funny)
Re: Or commit suicide (Score:1, Insightful)
Please don't joke about suicide. It's just not funny. Suicide has taken a huge toll on the open source community.
Re: Or commit suicide (Score:1)
Our coping and defense mechanism is called "dark humor" and just like a child with cancer, it never gets old.
Re: Or commit suicide (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but no.
Suicide is sad, tragic in fact, but goddamn I'm sick of people putting ever narrower boundaries on what we are allowed to laugh at.
People laugh for many reasons, one of them is to disarm pain and relieve stress.
I get it that it may be a sore spot for you personally due to your particular circumstance. And I would never condone someone making a joke to someone they deliberately knew would hurt their feelings.
But there are upwards of 7 BILLION other people on this planet, and if they want to laugh about a joke that happens to have suicide as it's subject, then good on 'em.
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Well one thing is universal: Everyone laughs at anonymous pussies who like to toss insults like tough guys.
Do you really spend your days tiptoeing around the myriad potential sensitivities of the thousand and thousands of bent little snowflakes like yourself you interact with each day, who are all (apparently) just waiting to break into weeping because their precious feelingz have been hurted?
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Re:Or commit suicide (Score:4, Interesting)
It may be a troll but it raises an interesting question.
Alzheimer represents 3.6% of all deaths in the US, and it is expected to raise. One of the main reasons is that people live old enough to get Alzheimer.
Thing is, you will die from something. Most likely a heart disease or cancer, which, like Alzheimer, are a tied to old age. So by having healthy habits, you will most likely live longer, but in the end something will still kill you. It may be a weak heart, cancer or Alzheimer, anything age related. For example, if you smoke, you are may more likely to get cancer or COPD before Alzheimer, reducing your chances of dying from it.
A more useful stat would be the chances of getting Alzheimer before age 80, excluding those who died from other causes before that age. That stat makes the ridiculous "suicide" option ineffective, which is a good sign.
Helpful, but not definitive (Score:5, Insightful)
The lifestyle changes describe can improve health for any person, but the argument for specific effectiveness agaisnt Alzheimers reminds me too much of that generation-long sidetrack when the prognosis for stomach ulcer was a variety of instructions to "reduce stress." Then we discovered the helicobacter organism, and poof, problem gone.
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Plus there's also the note that this 39% drop is for the overall test group. When they looked at people who have a genetic predisposition, they state that they still saw a reduction... but they don't put a number on it, which leads me to believe that it's not a particularly impressive reduction.
Alzheimer's is a much scarier proposition for people who have a family history of the disease.
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Plus there's also the note that this 39% drop is for the overall test group. When they looked at people who have a genetic predisposition, they state that they still saw a reduction... but they don't put a number on it, which leads me to believe that it's not a particularly impressive reduction.
They did put a number on it. Dementia in high risk groups fell from 18 to 11 cases per 1000 people, according to BBC's article.
https://www.bbc.com/news/healt... [bbc.com]
Re:Helpful, but not definitive (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that BBC article is actually mis-stating the report. That article appears to be written as if the study was specifically looking at high-risk individuals, which is not the case.
Looking at the linked articles from sfgate.com and time.com, it looks like the 39% decrease (that "from 18 to 11 per 100000" statistic) is for the overall study. They do not provide a value for the high risk sub-population.
Unfortunately it does not appear the presentations themselves from the original papers have been posted to the conference website itself [alz.org] yet.
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Given that Americans don't eat right, or get enough rest, literally every problem is going to look like "eat healthier, exercise more", unless that problem is actually fully known and understood. The advice is sound regardless of the source of the problem, so it can't hurt, right? Similarly smoking we know to be bad period, so stop that.
Meanwhile they continue to study this and maybe they'll find out something that is *actually* effective at combatting alzheimers, and they'll have to compete less for fundin
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In 2016 I voted for Johnson/Weld.
WRONG (Score:2)
I had an stomach ulcer, but did not have the bacterium nor took antibiotics for it.
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But exactly none of them are caused by stress.
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And yet, WebMD [webmd.com] has this to say:
There is no clear evidence to suggest that the stress of modern life or a steady diet of fast food causes ulcers in the stomach and small intestine ...
They then go on to say that although stress may exacerbate ulcers, the primary cause is typically either bacterial or pharmacological (overuse of certain painkillers).
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Disclaimer: The more I learn about it, the more I realize they don't understand it all yet.
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The whole reason the mucosa is called "mucosa" is because it secretes mucus, precisely to protect it from damage by acid. In the absence of something else wrong, AFAIK, excess acid production should result in increased mucus production, which should prevent cellular damage. Ulcers are, as best I understand it, caused by something disrupting that process.
That said, IANAGE, so take that with a grain of salt.
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It is not impossible that reducing stress also reduces the chance of the helicobacter organism finding home in the person's stomach, whatever that process is. Unless of course there are a lot of very calm, stress-free people who still get stomach ulcers as much as the general population.
Sleep too (Score:4, Insightful)
Need to get around 8 hours and a good number of it needs to be quality sleep. I track mine with my apple watch. Means no staying up late to watch sports, some other TV, gaming or whatever most of the week.
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I am fortunate that I don't have a family history of Alzheimer's to worry about... but I seriously do wonder about the effect of my sleep patterns. For a lot of years I was lucky to get 5 hours a night. Even now, during the week, I struggle to get 6 (and unfortunately it's my own fault, I just simply stay up too late).
Correcting this simple little thing is incredibly difficult! At least for me...
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Drinking enough alcohol lowers risk by 100% (Score:1)
Other sure methods against Alzheimer's include "eating every mushroom you can find", "doing water-ballet with sea-wasps" and "jumping from high buildings".
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Other sure methods against Alzheimer's include "eating every mushroom you can find"
Mushroom foraging is one of my hobbies, and if you do this you're not likely to die fast. Instead, you'll be repeatedly getting severe gastrointestinal distress. There are only a few mushrooms which will kill you. Lots of idiots eat random mushrooms, for various reasons, and only a few die, and most of those live in certain regions that have a dangerous mushroom.
Like in the Pacific Northwest, there are lots of mushrooms all over the place, and only a few deadly ones. It would be much quicker to learn the de
Avoid sugar (Score:2, Insightful)
Avoiding sugar and processed carbs is probably the best thing you can do.
Re:Avoid sugar (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you have a peer-reviewed citation for that, or is that about on par with stuff you'd find in the medical equivalent of the weekly world news?
Avoiding sugar will prevent death by Alzheimer's by 60, just as will avoiding oxygen. (The body converts just about anything you eat to sugar, so without starvation, it's actually a little tough to avoid. Therein lies the joke, you see.)
So in reality, managing to arrange your life so as to avoid being alive by 60, such as by drinking whiskey routinely, chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes, sucking coffee like a baby sucks milktits, and having the classic American heart-attack breakfast 5 - 7 days a week, a
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Not seeing the tech link in this story (Score:5, Informative)
However, it certainly is an important topic. Doesn't look like any of the commenters so far have any direct experience. Like sitting in the hospice with a relative in the last stages. Like getting the final phone call from the hospice. The funeral stuff after that is relatively pleasant.
Life is an endurance test. To destruction. In every case. The trick is not living it that way.
So has anyone read The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker?
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I think it is covered by the "stuff that matters" part of the slogan, My Mom recently died from Alzheimer, took a long time, especially the part where she just seemed totally unaware and it was actually a relieve when she finally passed on.
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Added Becker to my reading list, thanks. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande is recommended as well.
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Thanks for the reference, checking the availability next. (I'm philosophically unable to buy from Amazon. (As near as I can tell, that means ever again.))
New Scientist would disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
The conclusion in that article is that no nutritional advice is worth a damn.
It looks to me like this study on Alzheimer's makes the same errors.
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Totally agree. Reminds me of The Colorado Experiment from 1973.
Subject #1 - Gained 63 pounds of muscle in 23 days.
Subject #2 - Gained 15 pounds of muscle in 22 days.
To this day these results have never been duplicated. But damn, every few years you see this study being talked about.
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Totally agree. Alarm bells were ringing when I read - 'engaging in mentally stimulating activities like reading the newspaper, visiting the library or playing games such as chess and checkers'. I can't believe that sentence, or anything close to it, would be used in any legitimate scientific study. You could write a better scientific study on all the reasons that sentence is awful in any scientific context.
To be honest, I'm beginning to mistrust almost anything I read now about 'science'. Unless its an act
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The engaging in mental activities nonsense is already recognized as nonsense. Prepared slides of Alzheimer's victim's brains are immediately recognizable by the gross physical damage. Doing puzzles does absolutely nothing. The puzzle nonsense is Lamarkian neck stretching type thinking and treats the human body like a magic black box. In fact we have observed the gross physical damage of Alzheimer's and there is no actual proper evidence nor reason to suggest that puzzles do anything. People with Alzheimer's
Washington Post? (Score:2)
Let me guess (Score:1)
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From what I gathered from the summary, the five things must be:
1) eating healthier
2) exercising regularly
3) refraining from smoking
4) take a cocktail of drugs (really???)
5) engage in mentally stimulating activities
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Here's a to-do list for preventing dementia, new research suggests:
do the Sunday crossword and
Now, I'm not up on my common core math, but doing it the old fashioned way, this appears to be 4 things.
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The list of favorable factors given was: "The Rush team assessed study participants' lifestyles on five metrics: their diet, their exercise regimen, whether or not they smoked, their alcohol consumption and their engagement in cognitive stimulation activities".
I am not sure who this "we" is you refer to, but I scored 5 out 5 on this list for healthy behaviors. And I enjoy all of them: I like sticking to the foods in their guidelines, moderate exercise (though I admit I am a bit short there on their recommen
Fuck it (Score:1)
My mom's parents both had Alzheimer's; she was diagnosed herself with it when she was 67 (she's now 71 and the decline has already been rather gut-wrenching, even though we were all prepared for it, given our experiences with my grandparents), and on my dad's side, 5 of his 8 brothers and sisters have it or have started showing signs of it.
My mom's never smoked or drank in her life, and she's been eating relatively well. Her own folks have worked hard, as farmers, all their lives, and ate what they produce
The ./ cure. (Score:1)
The fifth lifestyle habit is "engaging in mentally stimulating activities like reading the newspaper, visiting the library or playing games such as chess and checkers."
Arguing on Slashdot.
Nope (Score:3)
Not going to suddenly start drinking ethanol because of Alzheimers, but nice try.
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sounds like failing mental faculty talk
you want to wind up like Trump? he doesn't drink, and just look at his tweets and speeches!
[citation needed] (Score:2)
Simply stating "in a recent study" doesn't mean your article is instantly infallible. LINK THE FUCKING STUDY YOU WANNABE JOURNALISTS!
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Re: 5 things (Score:1)
6th. Dental hygiene. Brush the scum (prevent gingivitis) off your teeth so the plaque forming bacteria don't start making that shit in your arteries and brain.
surprising results (Score:2)
improve your lifestyle into, what is generally considered 'healthy', and reduce the chances of getting sick.
i would have never guessed.
"You can live to be a hundred... (Score:1)