Category: Dementia

Half of Americans use a drink linked to dementia on any given day.

Both sugary and artificially sweetened ‘diet’ drinks are linked to dementia by two studies.

People who drink sugary beverages tend to have poorer memories, smaller brains and a smaller hippocampus (an area vital for learning and memory).

Diet sodas, though, don’t seem much safer.

A follow-up study found that people who drink diet sodas are three times more likely to develop dementia and stroke, compared to those who drink none.

Both studies show associations, so it doesn’t prove cause and effect.

Professor Sudha Seshadri, who led the research, said:

“These studies are not the be-all and end-all, but it’s strong data and a very strong suggestion.

It looks like there is not very much of an upside to having sugary drinks, and substituting the sugar with artificial sweeteners doesn’t seem to help.

Maybe good old-fashioned water is something we need to get used to.”

Excess sugar intake has long been linked to obesity, diabetes  and heart disease.

Its effect on the brain is more of an unknown (although what are the chances it’s going to be good for us?!)

More surprising is the link between diet sodas and dementia.

The researchers suggest it could be down to the artificial sweeteners used.

Sugar is toxic to the brain

This is certainly not the first study to link sugar intake with dementia.

Another study linked excess sugar intake with Alzheimer’s disease.

It suggested that too much glucose (sugar) in the diet damages a vital enzyme which helps fight the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

High blood sugar levels have also been linked to memory problems.

The researchers in this study think that sugar could have a ‘toxic’ effect on the brain.

The studies were published in the journals Stroke and Alzheimer’s & Dementia (Pase et al., 2017; Pase et al., 2017).

The exact reason for the connection is not known, but researchers hypothesise that some diseases may accelerate dementia.

People who get at least one flu shot have a 40 percent reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, a study finds.

The more flu shots a person has, the greater the protective effect against the neurodegenerative disease.

The exact reason for the connection is not known, but researchers hypothesise that some diseases may accelerate dementia.

The conclusions come from a nationwide sample of almost 2 million U.S. adults aged over 60.

It compared the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in those with and without flu vaccination.

Dr Avram S. Bukhbinder, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“We found that flu vaccination in older adults reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease for several years.

The strength of this protective effect increased with the number of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine — in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimer’s was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year.

Future research should assess whether flu vaccination is also associated with the rate of symptom progression in patients who already have Alzheimer’s dementia.”

The research found that over four years of follow-ups, 5.1 percent of flu vaccinated patients developed Alzheimer’s.

The same figure for those without flu vaccinations was 8.5 percent.

The mechanism for this protective effect is not clear said Professor Paul. E. Schulz, study co-author:

“Since there is evidence that several vaccines may protect from Alzheimer’s disease, we are thinking that it isn’t a specific effect of the flu vaccine.

Instead, we believe that the immune system is complex, and some alterations, such as pneumonia, may activate it in a way that makes Alzheimer’s disease worse.

But other things that activate the immune system may do so in a different way — one that protects from Alzheimer’s disease.

Clearly, we have more to learn about how the immune system worsens or improves outcomes in this disease.”

Other studies have found that the tetanus, polio, and herpes vaccines, among others, all reduce dementia risk.

It may be that the COVID-19 vaccine that many people have had will also provide a protective effect, although the research on this question is yet to be done.

The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Bukhbinder, 2022).

Improved working memory, vocabulary, and episodic memory.

Older adults who have a busy lifestyle also have better cognitive function, research reports.

The results come from one of the most comprehensive studies of how the brain changes with age: The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study.

Dr Sara Festini, the study’s first author, said:

“We show that people who report greater levels of daily busyness tend to have better cognition, especially with regard to memory for recently learned information.

Living a busy lifestyle appears beneficial for mental function, although additional experimental work is needed to determine if manipulations of busyness have the same effect.”

The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study included 330 people aged between 50 and 89.

Their daily routines were recorded along with their cognitive performance.

The results showed that whatever age they were, the brains of people who were busier worked better.

Busier people had better:

• working memory,
• reasoning,
• vocabulary,
• and episodic memory (the ability to remember specific events in the past).

It’s not yet clear exactly what causes what.

For example, people with more active brains may tend to be busier people.

The researchers, though, think that being busy gives people more opportunities to learn and puts them in more new situations.

Being busy also tends to bring people into contact with others more.

Both factors may help to stimulate the brain.

Professor Denise Park, a study co-author, said:

“We were surprised at how little research there was on busyness, given that being too busy seems to be a fact of modern life for so many.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (Festini et al., 2016).

Current tests cannot spot the disease until it is too late.

Alzheimer’s can be diagnosed early with a non-invasive eye test, research finds.

The new way of imaging the retina (called optical coherence tomography angiography) allows scientists to spot tell-tale changes to blood vessels in the back of the eye.

The test can spot patients with a family history of Alzheimer’s but who are not yet experiencing any symptoms, according to the latest research.

It is also capable of telling apart those with mild cognitive impairment from those with Alzheimer’s.

Early diagnosis is critical to the treatment of Alzheimer’s.

Current tests cannot spot the disease until it is too late.

Dr Ygal Rotenstreich, the lead researcher, said:

“A brain scan can detect Alzheimer’s when the disease is well beyond a treatable phase.

We need treatment intervention sooner.

These patients are at such high-risk.”

The test works because the brain is connected to the eye by the optic nerve.

Changes in the retina and the blood vessels reflect changes in the brain.

Professor Sharon Fekrat, study co-author, said:

“This project meets a huge unmet need.

It’s not possible for current techniques like a brain scan or lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to screen the number of patients with this disease.

Almost everyone has a family member or extended family affected by Alzheimer’s.

We need to detect the disease earlier and introduce treatments earlier.”

The study was published in the journal Ophthalmology Retina (Yoon et al., 2019).

These activities can help to delay the onset of dementia by as much as 5 years.

Simulating mental activities like card games, writing letters, doing puzzles and reading can help delay the onset of dementia by 5 years, a study finds.

People in the study who took part in these types of activities a few times a week did not develop dementia until 94-years-old.

However, those who only did these activities a few times a year developed dementia, on average, at 89-years-old.

The research underlines the importance of keeping the brain active with age.

Other ways to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s include:

1. Eating a high quality diet, such as the MIND diet.
2. Giving up smoking — even after 60 — benefits physical and cognitive health.
3. Exercise: 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise is a good weekly target.
4. Limit alcohol to light or moderate intake. In the US, moderate drinking is no more than 2 standard drinks per day for men and 1 for women (i.e. 2 glasses of wine for men and 1 for women).

Dr Robert S. Wilson, the study’s first author, said:

“The good news is that it’s never too late to start doing the kinds of inexpensive, accessible activities we looked at in our study.

Our findings suggest it may be beneficial to start doing these things, even in your 80s, to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s dementia.”

For the study, almost 2,000 people, average age 80, were tracked over 7 years.

None had dementia at the start of the study and they were given examinations every year.

They all rated how much they participated in mentally stimulating activities, including answering questions such as:

• “During the past year, how often did you read books?”
• “During the past year, how often did you play games like checkers, board games, cards or puzzles?”

Dr Wilson explained the results:

“Our study shows that people who engage in more cognitively stimulating activities may be delaying the age at which they develop dementia.

It is important to note, after we accounted for late life level of cognitive activity, neither education nor early life cognitive activity were associated with the age at which a person developed Alzheimer’s dementia.

Our research suggests that the link between cognitive activity and the age at which a person developed dementia is mainly driven by the activities you do later in life.”

Ruling out reverse causation

The researchers tested an alternative hypothesis that low cognitive activity may be a sign of dementia rather than the cause.

They looked at the brains of 695 people who died during the study.

However, there was no link between how cognitively active people were and markers of Alzheimer’s in their brains.

This suggests that cognitive activity is driving a lower Alzheimer’s risk, rather than the other way around.

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Wilson et al., 2021).