Lifestyle medicine is making news in the financial industry, as the yearly dementia-attributable societal cost per person is high. Ways to prevent dementia are on the radar of not only those in the health industry but now also in financial sectors. Please see the article below published in MarketWatch on 5 ways to reduce dementia risk. Most of them are common sense but some of the drugs are surprising and also surprising is the increased risk with artificially sweetened beverages:
The risk of dementia was 32% lower in people with a high genetic risk if they had followed a healthy lifestyle, compared to those with an unhealthy lifestyle.
Drinking at least one artificially sweetened beverage daily was associated with almost three times the risk of developing stroke or dementia.
Separate research published last month analyzed data from 284,343 patients in England aged 55 and up. They found “nearly a 50% increased odds of dementia” linked with exposure to more than 1,095 daily doses of anticholinergics over 10 years, “equivalent to three years’ daily use of a single strong anticholinergic medication at the minimum effective dose recommended for older people.”
Brain imaging and spinal fluid analysis could help to guide the use of future preventive treatments for Alzheimer’s
— by Johns Hopkins University
In a records review of 290 people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, scientists at Johns Hopkins say they have identified an average level of biological and anatomical brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease that occur three to 10 years — some even more than 30 years — before the disease’s first recognizable symptoms appear.
“Our study suggests it may be possible to use brain imaging and spinal fluid analysis to assess risk of Alzheimer’s disease at least 10 years or more before the most common symptoms, such as mild cognitive impairment, occur,” says Laurent Younes, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at The Johns Hopkins University. A report of their findings was published online April 2 in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.
https://blog.frontiersin.org/
It is often said that an intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way, and an artist says a hard thing in a simple way….
Sitting in a lecture listening to our President, Dr. Stuart Richer, speak on AMD five years ago at a conference, I was impressed by a phrase that he repeated throughout his lecture, “Repair the roof before it starts raining”. In life, sometimes, it’s the simplest of phrases or quotes that can carry the most meaning. Dr. Richer’s lecture was excellent and I have learned more about AMD from him than any other colleague, but it’s the simple phrase he used that I carry with me. “Repair the roof before it starts raining”….Billions of dollars have been invested in developing drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and thus far not one has shown any real promise of prevention or a cure or even real hope of slowing down the rate of cognitive decline. What researchers are now learning is that the real answer lies not in the treatment but rather in the prevention. The financial industry is taking notice, and lifestyle medicine will continue it’s propulsion into the frontal lobes of industry leaders…billions of dollars spent on drugs that have no real hope…and now we know that the real answer lies in the simplest of phrases “Repair the roof before it starts raining”.
I am proud to be a member of OWNS and I look forward to growing our society and expanding our scope of practice by collaborating with our members, leaders, and industry sponsors.