Not only do life’s horrible moments cause additional stress, but a new study has found that one of those events could even increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
Scientists found that if someone had had a traumatic experience, such as a divorce or a death, at a young age they were more likely to have symptoms of illness than those who had emerged unscathed.
By taking samples of the participants’ cerebrospinal fluid, they found that people with more stress had more types of proteins floating around in their bodies that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease than those without it.
An investigator pointed out that This is only true if these stressful events occurred in your childhood or middle age.
The new paper found that stress from early to midlife was linked to a higher chance of developing dementia.
Despite decades of dedicated research and the fact that nearly seven million Americans Currently living with Alzheimer’s, scientists have not established a cause for the disease.
There is some evidence that it could be caused by genes and some evidence that it could be related to the environment.
But researchers do know that when someone develops Alzheimer’s, their body begins to produce much more of two types of proteins that are natural to the body: called amyloid and tau.
Since the brain is connected to the spinal cord, it can take fluid from the spinal cavity to determine if your brain is making more of these proteins.
This may be an accurate way to detect Alzheimer’s disease, according to a 2018 study of 1,016 patients by Columbia University concluded.
That is the proof that the Spanish researchers did in his new article, which was published in the Annals of Neurology of the American Neurological Association.
By analyzing the cerebrospinal fluid of the 1,290 participants, the researchers found that people who had experienced a stressful event in their early or middle life had higher amounts of amyloid and tau.
Carol Opdebeeck, a senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom, wrote in The Conversation that There is evidence that “stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one or divorce, put a person at greater risk of developing dementia in the future.”
Markers such as amyloid and tau accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. This can be measured by taking samples of cerebrospinal fluid.
The researchers provide a number of explanations for their findings.
First, they said, anxiety in response to stressful events is common. Scientists know that anxiety and stress are bad for the body.
When you’re stressed, your immune system reacts as if you’ve been hurt and you have inflammation throughout your body, which can accelerate aging, said Dr. Susan Albers, a psychologist at The Cleveland Clinic said.
Second, stressful events can cause the body to release a certain type of steroid, called glucocorticoids, which in large quantities have been shown to damage brain cells.
Finally, when animals are in stressful environments, they find it more difficult to digest amyloid and tau, the researchers wrote.
Whatever the cause of their findings, the researchers wrote that more work still needs to be done to understand whether it is applicable across the board.
For her part, Professor Opdebeeck wrote that the study could help us better understand how dementia develops and, in turn, “will help find effective ways to intervene early and possibly even reduce the number of people who develop dementia.”
