The study that was done was done out of England and what they did is they actually had a longitudinal
cohort study, where they follow people over a long period of time, looking at many things,
one of which was memory and thinking.
It actually measured that in public servants, so they agreed to be part of the study and
come in for measurements in the beginning of the '80s and '90s and now in 2000s.
The reason it's big news is because up until this study came out, people really felt that
until the ages of 55, 60, or even 70, there really was no significant cognitive decline.
In fact, there was a summary of all the data that was available that came out in the mid
'90s, and it -- the conclusion was there really was no significant decline that occurred prior
to the age of 60 or so.
In terms of what this means for people as they age, I think it's hard to say and the
reason is, the reason comes back to the study that was done, the study was that done looked
at people at year one and measured their memory and then again at year ten, but then it grouped
everybody together.
And the question that remains is maybe some group of those people were in the prodromal
stages of Alzheimers disease or another brain disease and they could have had quite a bit
of decline.
And another group of people may have had no decline, but once you group them together,
overall the average decline shows up.
And we don't know that answer now with this study that was done.
There is some good evidence that up to 12 to 15 years prior to the onset of Alzheimers
disease, people will have measurable cognitive decline and so maybe some of the people in
those groups that were studied in England as part of the study were actually part of
the prodromal, in the prodromal phase and some were not.
I think the take home message is that this is one piece of the puzzle, this is one study
that is different from any prior studies, so it needs to be replicated.
We need to have another study that confirms this is the case and I think we need to do
further studies to determine if any average person or any individual will have the same
amount of decline that the study showed.
And I think it's a bit too soon to become very concerned about our cognitive or memory
decline in our 40s and 50s.
In terms of what people can do to prevent memory loss, I can't tell you things that
I guarantee will work.
There's a number of associations that I'm going to mention and things that might be
helpful, but there's nothing proven that I can give someone to prevent memory loss.
We know there's another -- a number of medical problems and illnesses that are associated
with memory loss and dementia, which is progressive memory loss in late life.
One is midlife hypertension, so high blood pressure in your 30s, 40s and 50s.
Another one is diabetes.
Another one is high cholesterol.
There are also a number of lifestyles that are associated with either increased or decreased
risk of memory loss or dementia as we age.
One is smoking, it's never too late to stop smoking, even somebody who's in late life
who stops smoking will have a reduced risk of memory loss throughout the rest of their
life.
Another one is being overweight, but that mainly increases someone's risk in midlife,
so for overweight in late life, it's actually probably to their advantage, so being underweight
or thing when you're very old is a bad sign.
Being overweight in midlife is bad for your health and it increases the risk of memory
loss, especially if it's around the middle.
We think that being overweight in the trunk or the belly increases the risk of memory
loss and dementia even more.
Of those lifestyles that I mentioned, I can say there's a number of studies that suggest
a association between changing those and having a lower risk of memory loss or dementia.
We here at Penn State Hershey are also involved in this type of research.
We have an ongoing study very similar to the one that's being -- that was done in England
where we study people over a period of time and we're, we're most interested in whether
nutritional affects, things in our diets, such as heavy metals, affect our risk of memory
loss and dementia and can we fix those by changing our diets or changing our activity
or our mental activity and we're finding many of the same things that were found in England.