Category: Senior Health News

MONDAY, Aug. 19, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Heat waves can pose a serious risk to people with Alzheimer’s disease, so their families should know how to keep them safe, advocates say.

Extreme heat is “dangerous for everyone, but especially for someone with Alzheimer’s disease, who may be unable to spot the warning signs of trouble or know how to get help,” said Charles Fuschillo Jr., president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA).

“Caregivers need to be proactive and prepared to protect their loved ones. Taking a few simple steps will go a long way,” he said in a foundation news release.

MONDAY, Aug. 12, 2019 (HealthDay News) — New research is untangling the complex relationship between symptoms of depression and losses in memory and thinking that often emerge together with Alzheimer’s disease.

In fact, the new data suggests that “depression symptoms themselves may be among the early changes in the preclinical stages of dementia syndromes,” explained study lead author Dr. Jennifer Gatchel. She works in the division of geriatric psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

MONDAY, Aug. 12, 2019 (HealthDay News) — If you often find yourself dosing off during the day, new research suggests it might be an early warning sign that you have Alzheimer’s disease.

Areas of the brain that keep you awake during the day are damaged in the early stages of the memory-robbing disease, which is why people with Alzheimer’s may nap excessively long before they start to struggle with forgetting things, the study authors said.

THURSDAY, Aug. 8, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Want to reduce your risk of dementia? Take care of your heart.

That’s the takeaway from a new study that suggests good heart health in middle age could lower your odds for problems with thinking and memory later in life.

The study included nearly 7,900 British adults who did not have heart disease or dementia at age 50. Over an average 25-year followup, 347 cases of dementia were diagnosed among participants. Average age at diagnosis: 75.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Aug. 5, 2019 (HealthDay News) — The evidence continues to mount that staying socially engaged as you age helps keep dementia at bay.

In a new study, British researchers found that being socially active in your 50s and 60s may reduce the risk of developing dementia.

The findings showed that people in their 60s who interacted with friends nearly every day had a 12% lower risk of developing dementia than people who saw a couple of friends every few months.

THURSDAY, Aug. 1, 2019 (HealthDay News) — A simple blood test helped pinpoint the early signs of Alzheimer’s in a new study.

Up to two decades before people develop Alzheimer’s symptoms such as memory loss and confusion, harmful clumps of amyloid beta protein begin to accumulate in their brain, researchers explained.

But it’s possible to measure levels of amyloid beta in the blood and use that information to determine whether the protein has accumulated in the brain, they added.

WEDNESDAY, July 31, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Even mild anemia — low levels of hemoglobin in the blood — may raise a person’s odds for Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, a new study finds.

The same Dutch research also found a correlation between heightened dementia risk and high blood levels of hemoglobin.

“With around 10% of people over age 65 having anemia in the Americas and Europe, and up to 45% in African and southeast Asian countries, these results could have important implications for the burden of dementia,” noted study lead author M. Arfan Ikram, of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

WEDNESDAY, July 17, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Rates of Alzheimer’s disease are higher in women than in men, and researchers now think they know why.

A team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville, Tenn., has identified gender differences in how the Alzheimer’s-related protein tau spreads in the brain.

Research suggests that tau spreads through the brain like an infection, moving from neuron to neuron and turning other proteins into abnormal tangles that result in the death of brain cells.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 17, 2019 (HealthDay News) — One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s is the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain, but what part those plaques play in the development of the disease isn’t clear.

Now researchers have taken the first steps to trace the progression of plaque buildup in living patients. This way of “staging” the disease has implications for research and one day may help doctors treat this debilitating, fatal disease.