After isolating stress as a facilitator to the onset of Alzheimer's disease, researchers have determined that managing emotional strain can help delay or avert the degenerative disorder.
Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System concluded that stress promotes the development of mild cognitive impairment, which in turn increases the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in the ensuing months or years. Their findings were reported in the journal Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders on Friday, Dec. 11.
Richard Lipton, senior author and Einstein and Montefiore's vice chair of neurology, said their study is evidence of the role perceived stress plays in the development of amnesiac mild cognitive impairment (aMCI).
This type of stress accounts for everyday difficulties everyone experiences, along with how people cope with such hassles, stated Mindy Katz, first study author and senior associate in the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology at Einstein.
"Perceived stress can be altered by mindfulness-based stress reduction, cognitive-behavioral therapies and stress-reducing drugs," said Katz. "These interventions may postpone or even prevent an individual's cognitive decline."
Since 2005, the Einstein Aging Study has used the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) to gauge the level of stress among the senior citizens that participate in the community-based project. The people in the highest quintile of five PSS tiers were found to be two and a half times more likely to develop aMCI than those in the other four stress groups.
The study's findings emerged alongside some sobering figures from the National Center for Health Statistics, which found that deaths related to Alzheimer's disease has risen sharply over the last couple of years. The previous year saw nearly 10,000 more deaths linked to Alzheimer's than did 2013.
"Alzheimer's is having a rapidly growing impact on American society," said Matthew Baumgart, senior director of public policy at the Alzheimer's Association. "Alzheimer's death rates have been rising steadily over the past 15 years — increasing 40 percent since 2000, when the new data are included."
While the above may be sobering, there may be reason to have a drink or two. There's yet another recent report on Alzheimer's disease published on the journal BMJ Open, where the researchers concluded that moderate alcohol consumption can lower the risk of dying from the disorder.
After examining data from the Danish Alzheimer's Intervention Study (DAISY), researchers found that consuming about two to three alcoholic drinks each day lowered the risk of dying from Alzheimer's disease by about 77 percent over the course of the three-year-long study.
