Negative Beliefs About Aging Tied to Alzheimer’s

“The positive message here is that our thinking about aging is modifiable”, Levy said.

That’s the conclusion from a new study led by the Yale School of Public Health.

First, they filled in a survey created to assess their attitude to ageing.

Some of the negative thoughts considered by the researchers included notions like “old people are worthless”, “old people are absent-minded” and “old people are incapable of learning new things”.

Twenty years later, they started to have annual scans that measured the size of the hippocampus, brain’s memory hub.

“Maybe those with more-negative views don’t bother exercising”. Live long enough in the belief that older people are afflicted with physical, cognitive financial and even sexual woes, and the stress of believing you are marching toward the same end will takes its toll. Think carefully – the answer might help predict how much longer you’ll live.

Researchers of the studies examined dementia-free people from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging.

The researchers also looked at brain autopsies of subjects from the same group and among those with negative aging stereotypes they found significantly more of two markers associated with Alzheimer’s: amyloid plaques, which are protein clusters that build up between brain cells; and neurofibrillary tangles, protein strands that build up between brain cells.

“I think treating older individuals with respect could have a noticeable beneficial impact for society and for its older members”. Those with negative thoughts about aging had a far higher amount of plaques and tangles.

“We believe it is the stress generated by the negative beliefs about aging that individuals sometimes internalize from society that can result in pathological brain changes“, lead study author Becca Levy, associate professor of public health and of psychology at the Yale School of Public Health, said in a press release. And stress, in turn, drives up Alzheimer’s risk, she said.

“Diet has been posited as an explanation for why the rate of Alzheimer’s disease in the United States is five times that of India”.

Kelley said that while the findings of the study provide an interesting association between stress and Alzheimer’s, it is still hard to determine the exact cause of the disease because there are many other factors aside from stress that could be involved.

And the study only found a link between stereotypes about aging and later Alzheimer’s risk.

“As we age, our risk of developing health problems does increase and it’s no surprise that people will worry, but there are positive actions that people can take to limit this risk”.

If that’s the case, then you might want to check the findings of a new study, which claim people who harbor negative thoughts about the elderly are likely to manifest the same symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s disease.