Category: Senior Health News

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 8, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Poor sleep has been linked to the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and now a new study suggests a possible reason why.

A small group of young, healthy men deprived of just one night of sleep had higher blood levels of tau protein than when they had a full and uninterrupted night of rest, researchers reported in a study published online Jan. 8 in Neurology.

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Jan. 2, 2020 (HealthDay News) — A new brain scanning technique is shaking up what researchers thought they knew about Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers now say they can predict with reasonable accuracy which brain regions will wither and atrophy in Alzheimer’s by identifying the places where tau protein “tangles” have built up.

By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 30, 2019 (HealthDay News) — For decades, scientists have known that Alzheimer’s disease is accompanied by the buildup of clumps of amyloid protein between brain cells. Could these plaques be causing the disease?

That’s been a prevailing theory driving Alzheimer’s research for years. But a new study suggests the strategy could be wrong.

Researchers reporting Dec. 30 in the journal Neurology have found that early declines in memory and thinking seen in Alzheimer’s patients tend to occur before amyloid plaques begin to appear in the brain, not after.

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Dec. 19, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Obesity in middle age is associated with an increased risk of dementia later in life, according to a study of more than 1 million women in the United Kingdom.

Those who were obese in their mid-50s had 21% greater risk of being diagnosed with dementia 15 or more years later, compared with women who had a healthy weight, a team of British and international researchers found.

Latest Alzheimer’s News

Latest Alzheimer’s News

THURSDAY, Dec. 5, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Imagine a blood test that could spot whether you are aging too quickly.

New research suggests it’s not the stuff of science fiction anymore.

The scientists analyzed plasma — the cell-free, fluid part of blood — from more than 4,200 people between the ages of 18 and 95, and found a link between 373 proteins and aging.

“We’ve known for a long time that measuring certain proteins in the blood can give you information about a person’s health status — lipoproteins for cardiovascular health, for example,” said study senior author Tony Wyss-Coray. He’s co-director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Stanford University in California.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 4, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Cross-country skiing may be good for your brain, a new study suggests.

Previous research found that participants of the Vasaloppet, a popular long-distance, cross-country skiing race in Sweden, have a lower risk of heart attack, but potential brain benefits have been unclear.

This new research compared the brain health of about 200,000 who took part in the Vasaloppet between 1989 and 2010 and a control group from the general population.

Compared with the control group, 50% fewer skiers developed vascular dementia over two decades, the study found. (Vascular dementia is caused by a series of small strokes.)

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 2, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Playing cards and board games like chess, bingo and Scrabble might be the mental workout you need to keep your wits as you age, Scottish researchers suggest.

People in their 70s who regularly play board games score higher on tests of memory and thinking skills than those who don’t. And 70-somethings who step up their game-playing are more likely to maintain thinking skills as they age, researchers say.

MONDAY, Nov. 25, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Air pollution may trigger Alzheimer’s-like brain changes and speed memory decline in older adults, a new study suggests.

Previous research has implied that exposure to fine particle air pollution increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, but it wasn’t clear how this type of pollution affects the brain and memory.

“This is the first study to really show, in a statistical model, that air pollution was associated with changes in people’s brains and that those changes were then connected with declines in memory performance,” said researcher Andrew Petkus. He’s an assistant professor of clinical neurology at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.