by Sane News

Women struggling with depression are at higher risk of stroke, according to a study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

For the study, researchers looked at 80,574 women from the 2000 to 2006 Nurses’ Health Study. At the time, study participants, ages 54 to 79, had no history of stroke, and 22 percent had been diagnosed with depression, which is a common mental health disorder. Most were white registered nurses.

by Gary Joseph LeBlanc for Fisher Center For Alzheimer’s Research Foundation

Commencing from my dad’s earliest onset of Alzheimer’s, it became obvious that answering the telephone was going to become an issue.

Back then, my father was still sitting behind the front counter of our bookstore. If he managed to grab the phone before I got to it, I would witness a blank stare evolve across his face. Sometimes he stayed completely voiceless as he held the receiver to his ear, then slowly he placed it back on its base. When I asked him who had just called, he would just nonchalantly respond, “Heck if I know.” I realized we wouldn’t be in business for very long if this continued.

Just a teaspoon a day ‘dulls the mind’ and increases your risk of Alzheimer’s disease  
by Daniel Bates & Fiona MacRae for The Daily Mail

Too much salt could be bad for your brain as well as your heart, doctors have warned. Elderly people who have salt-rich diets and do little exercise suffer a quicker mental decline than those who are more prudent with their intake, a study has found.

Worryingly, just over a teaspoon of salt a day could dull the mind and raise the risk of Alzheimer’s, the study suggests. Salt’s danger to the heart is well known but the latest study is the first to link it to deterioration of brain health in the elderly.

The Canadian team tracked the salt consumption and levels of physical activity of 1,262 healthy men and women aged between 67 and 84 over a three-year period. They also assessed the mental health of the participants at the start of the study and once a year for the duration, using a battery of tests more commonly used to diagnose Alzheimer’s.

‘The results of our study showed that a diet high in sodium, combined with little exercise, was especially detrimental to the cognitive performance of older adults,’ said Dr Alexandra Fiocco from the University of Toronto.

Alzheimer’s still has no cure, but two different types of drugs can help manage symptoms of the disease.
by Mayo Clinic

Alzheimer’s disease is a daunting diagnosis. But working closely with your health care team to find the best strategies to manage your symptoms can help you cope and make life better.

Alzheimer’s drugs offer one strategy to help manage memory loss, thinking and reasoning problems, and day-to-day function. Unfortunately, Alzheimer’s drugs don’t work for everyone, and they can’t cure the disease or stop its progression. Over time, their effects wear off.

Research into more-effective Alzheimer’s drugs is ongoing. But even if researchers discover better drugs, it will always be important to build a health care team that helps you explore all your treatment options. That may involve taking medication, tapping into your support network, and accessing community resources and services.

Role of current Alzheimer’s drugs

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two drugs specifically to treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

• Cholinesterase inhibitors
• Memantine

by Press TV

A study of over 80,000 women, aged 54 to 79 found those with a history of depression had a 29 percent higher risk of stroke than non-depressed counterparts.

A six-year follow-up also showed that women who took antidepressants, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs (such as Prozac or Zoloft), were 39 percent more likely to experience a stroke, says the report published in the journal Stroke.

“Although we found women who took antidepressants were at higher risk, I don’t have anything to indicate it’s because of the medications,” noted co-author Kathryn Rexrod who suggests that women on medication treatment might suffer from more severe symptoms than those who don’t opt for the pills.

“I don’t think the medications themselves are the primary cause of the risk. This study does not suggest that people should stop their medications to reduce the risk of stroke,” she further emphasized.

by Alzheimer’s Weekly

Elderly women who suffer from sleep apnea — characterized by disrupted breathing and sleep and a reduction in the intake of oxygen — are about twice as likely to develop dementia in the next five years as those without the condition, according to a multi-center study led by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.

The findings, published in the August 10, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed for the first time what sleep specialists have long suspected but hadn’t proved: that sleep apnea, also known as sleep-disordered breathing, can deprive the brain and other organs of the oxygen they need and, may, over time, trigger declines in cognitive ability.

Study leader Dr. Kristine Yaffe is a professor of psychiatry, neurology and epidemiology at UCSF and chief of geriatric psychiatry at SFVAMC. She said, “This is the first study to show that sleep apnea may lead to cognitive impairment. It suggests that there is a biological connection between sleep and cognition and also suggests that treatment of sleep apnea might help prevent or delay the onset of dementia in older adults.”

Worried about dementia? There may be other explanations.
by Paula Spencer Scott for caring.com

It’s hard not to think of Alzheimer’s disease when memory loss or a memory lapse darkens your day. After all, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are constantly in the headlines — and of the more than five million affected Americans, 200,000 are under age 65. But many other situations can also produce this worrisome symptom.

Memory loss is just one Alzheimer’s warning sign. Others, for example, include personality changes and problems managing money.

Your safest bet: “If you’re concerned about memory issues, see a specialist,” says psychiatrist Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging and author of several books about memory and cognition, including The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head. An evaluation will examine the type of memory loss, its timing, environmental factors (such as injuries or drug use), and other symptoms.

The eight following conditions are among the non-Alzheimer’s causes of memory loss to consider:

by Paula Spencer Scott for caring.com

Memory loss is the symptom everybody worried about Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia seems to focus on. After all, it’s distressing — and increasingly obvious. Yet there are other common symptoms of Alzheimer’s or dementia that can turn up even earlier, researchers say.

Sometimes, according to memory experts, even doctors miss early dementia signs because they’re focused on memory loss to the exclusion of other symptoms.

In fact, in 2011 Spanish researchers found that more than a third of adults who go on to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s (the kind that appears before age 65) have the following symptoms early in the disease, even before memory loss is apparent. These symptoms can also be the first to appear among adults who develop Alzheimer’s after age 65.

Of course, if you notice any of these symptoms, it’s important to have them checked out by a doctor, psychologist, or other expert in cognition and the brain.