Monday, September 12, 2011
"Lessons about Alzheimer's disease"
Some studies. like history, are worthy of consideration.
If nothing else, they serve to counter the over prevalent hype of the news media and sales oriented medical world...
If nothing else, they serve to counter the over prevalent hype of the news media and sales oriented medical world...
At Nature.com, Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib recently interviewed Psychologist Margaret Gatz:
"What does your research show?
Somewhere in the ballpark of 70% of risk for Alzheimer's disease across a population is due to heredity. In each individual, there's some combination of genes and environment. But on average, genes have a greater influence than environment in explaining the disease.
What will be the main message from your talk at the conference?
People need to be careful not to overstate what we know about preventing Alzheimer's disease. A lot of popular press says that there are things you can do to protect yourself — in particular, cognitive-enrichment activities, social activities and physical exercise. There's an upbeat message about what you can do to make sure you have a healthy brain. I'm concerned that it tends to slide into suggesting that you can prevent Alzheimer's disease.
Is there anything people can do to lower their risk?
Physical exercise and reducing cardiovascular risk factors have the strongest evidence. We find in our Swedish twin data that midlife diabetes and obesity are significant risk factors for Alzheimer's disease1,2, so reducing those may help."
