Memory Archive

A negative attitude about aging appears to be associated with a higher likelihood of Alzheimer's disease.

A study in the journal Psychology and Aging examined healthy, dementia-free subjects from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, the nation's longest-running scientific study of aging.

Although the two conditions seem unrelated, Alzheimer’s and heart disease actually share a genetic link. People who have a certain gene variant have both a somewhat elevated heart disease risk and a significantly elevated Alzheimer’s risk. Fortunately, a recent study has suggested that when people know they have this variant, they’re more likely to make healthy lifestyle choices that benefit their heart — and what’s good for the heart is good for the brain.

Many older adults take PPIs to treat heartburn, GERD, or stomach ulcers. Recently, a new study identified a link between chronic PPI use and an increased risk for dementia. If you take a PPI, check in with your doctor — you may be able to take it only when you have symptoms, not continuously (and this kind of usage was not associated with a dramatically increased dementia risk in the study).

As you've gotten older, have you noticed that you often find yourself marching around the house in a huff, searching for misplaced car keys or eyeglasses, or you just cannot remember the name of that new neighbor you met when walking the dog? It's frustrating, to be sure, but not inevitable — and there are things you can do to help keep your memory sharp.

"Most people get a little more forgetful with aging, but there are some simple things you can do to prevent memory slips and help your brain to learn and remember better," says Dr. Anne Fabiny, chief of geriatrics at Cambridge Health Alliance and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Last year, the Alzheimer’s Association predicted that rates of dementia would continue to rise. However, a report recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that rates of dementia have actually dropped steadily over the past three decades. Whether the drop in rates applies to everyone, and whether it will continue, remain to be seen. But the evidence also confirms that there’s quite a lot you can do to lower your dementia risk.

Ask the doctors

Q: I went for my usual check-up, and in addition to taking my blood pressure, the medical assistant handed me a form to fill out with nine questions related to my mental health. I've never had this happen before. Is this new?

A: Yes, it is new for most people. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has just released an important depression screening recommendation. The USPSTF recommends regular depression screening for all adults, which is a modification from advice originally given in 2009, in which screening was recommended only for clinics or doctors who had adequate support systems to provide mental health care for those who were identified with depression. Since that time, multiple studies have found that mental health care from primary care clinicians works very well, and probably just as well as specialist care from psychiatrists. That isn't to say we don't need care from psychiatrists, but rather that not everyone needs a psychiatrist, especially those with mild to moderate depression.

Learning to deal with stress can lower your risk for anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular disease.

The more we learn about women's hearts, the more we realize that they are different from men's. One of the most dramatic differences is a rare heart condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or broken-heart syndrome, that is nine times more common in women than in men. It has been cited as evidence that sudden emotional stress can actually cause death in some women.

Like a heart attack, takotsubo cardiomyopathy strikes suddenly with symptoms such as chest pain and shortness of breath; however, it does not involve clogged arteries. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is brought on by a surge of stress hormones that literally bend the heart out of shape. As a result, when the main pumping chamber of the heart (the left ventricle) contracts, it balloons out, so it can't eject blood into the arteries effectively.

Music therapy can calm anxiety, ease pain, and provide a pleasant diversion during chemotherapy or a hospital stay.

It's almost impossible to find someone who doesn't feel a strong connection to music. Even if you can't carry a tune or play an instrument, you can probably reel off a list of songs that evoke happy memories and raise your spirits. Surgeons have long played their favorite music to relieve stress in the operating room, and extending music to patients has been linked to improved surgical outcomes. In the past few decades, music therapy has played an increasing role in all facets of healing.

What is music therapy?

Music therapy is a burgeoning field. People who become certified music therapists are usually accomplished musicians who have deep knowledge of how music can evoke emotional responses to relax or stimulate people or help them heal. They combine this knowledge with their familiarity with a wide variety of musical styles to find the specific kind that can get you through a challenging physical rehab session or guide you into meditation. And they can find that music in your favorite genre, be it electropop or grand opera.

Although poor health can lead to unhappiness and a shorter life, unhappiness alone is not associated with a shorter life span, according to a recent report from the Million Woman Study. That investigation has followed hundreds of thousands of women throughout the United Kingdom beginning in 1996 and has tracked deaths among the participants.

In the third year of the study, the women were asked to rate their health, happiness, stress, feelings of control, and whether they felt relaxed. When the researchers looked at data from 720,000 women with a median age of 59, they found that 83% reported being generally happy and 17% said they were unhappy. During 10 years of follow-up, 4% of participants died. When the researchers factored out poor health, which was strongly associated with unhappiness, they found that the risk of dying was essentially the same for happy and unhappy women. The study was published online Dec. 6, 2015, by The Lancet.

Light therapy, either alone or in combination with an antidepressant, can alleviate major depression.