|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
Weight Loss Precedes Dementia in Women
Loss of weight can
begin up to 10 years before memory loss
July 16, 2006 - Mayo Clinic researchers have found
that women who develop dementia experience a decline in weight as many
as 10 years prior to the onset of memory loss, compared to peers who do
not develop dementia.
| |
Related Stories |
|
| |
First Signs of Alzheimer's May Be Trouble with
Balance, Walking
Senior citizens who stayed active less likely
to develop dementia
May 22, 2006 - The first signs of dementia -
including Alzheimer's disease may not be a faulty memory but problems
with balance and walking, according to a new study that found senior
citizens who participated were three times less likely to develop
dementia if they maintained their physical function at high levels.
Read more...
Social Contact Protects Senior Citizens from
Alzheimer's Damaging Effects
Social network
offers protection despite the tangles and plaques of Alzheimer's
April 21, 2006 - Having close friends and staying
in contact with family members offers a protective effect against the
damaging effects of Alzheimers disease according to research by
physicians at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. The study,
which is currently posted online in The Lancet Neurology, will be
published in the May print edition of the journal.
Read
more...
Nine Easy Steps to Fight Age-Related Memory Loss
By Tucker Sutherland, editor
April 27, 2006 If there is a universal concern
among senior citizens, it has to be the fear of mental decline.
Alzheimer's disease, of course, being the ultimate. The May issue of the
Harvard Men's Health Watch offers nine steps senior citizens and baby
boomers well, any
adult, actually - can take to keep their minds healthy. Every senior
should post this list where it will remind them often of these easy
steps we can all take to fight off age-related memory loss.
Read more...
Read more
on
Alzheimer's & Dementia |
|
Findings were presented today at the Alzheimer's
Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related
Disorders in Madrid, Spain.
"We discovered that the weight of those women who
developed dementia was drifting downward many years before the onset of
symptoms," says David Knopman, M.D., Mayo Clinic neurologist and lead
study researcher.
"This illustrates changes that occur before the
memory loss and mental decline in dementia. We believe that the brain
disease began to interfere somehow with maintenance of body weight, long
before it affected memory and thinking."
Dr. Knopman and colleagues conducted this
retrospective study, analyzing the medical records of people seen by a
medical provider in Olmsted County, home of Mayo Clinic, who were
diagnosed with the onset of dementia between 1990 and 1994.
They identified 560 patients and, for comparison,
also identified a group of those similar in age and gender who did not
develop dementia. For each patient, weight was identified for the year
of dementia diagnosis and then for the 20 to 30 years preceding. The
weights of those patients who didn't develop dementia were tracked over
the same period.
"In those women who did not go on to develop
dementia, 30 years before the year of their peers' onset of dementia,
their average weight was 140 pounds," says Dr. Knopman.
"At the year of their peers' dementia onset, they
weighed 142 pounds. The women who later developed dementia started off
at the same weight as those who didn't develop dementia, but then their
weight drifted downward to 136 pounds 10 years before symptom onset and
128 pounds at symptom onset."
The cause of the weight loss in those women who
later developed dementia is unclear, according to Dr. Knopman, but the
investigators have some theories.
"The weight loss findings raise scientific
questions about the cause or causes of the weight loss," says Dr.
Knopman. "This points to changes in the brain that develop years before
the actual memory loss. We think that there are several possible
explanations.
The women might have less initiative and lose
interest in eating, they might develop a duller sense of taste and
smell, or they might experience an earlier sense of satiety (feeling
full). Also, because we didn't observe the anticipatory weight loss in
men, the weight loss could have something specific to do with
postmenopausal hormonal changes."
Dr. Knopman explains that he does not consider the
weight loss finding to be useful for diagnosis of dementia, and he does
not envision that physicians who discover weight loss in their female
patients later in life would immediately send the patient for memory
testing.
He hopes, however, that dementia researchers can
pinpoint the brain mechanisms influencing the weight loss in women who
develop dementia in order to better understand how it develops.
Dementia is a neurological disorder affecting a
person's ability to think, speak, reason, remember and move. The most
common forms of dementia are Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia and
Lewy body dementia.
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
