Horrible moments in life not only add stress, but a new study has found that such an event can even increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists found that if someone had a traumatic experience, such as divorce or death, they were more likely to develop symptoms of illness at a young age than those who skated through it unscathed.
By taking samples of participants’ spinal fluid, they found that people with more stress had more of the types of proteins floating through their bodies associated with Alzheimer’s disease than people without stress.
A researcher noticed this this only applies if these stressful events occurred in childhood or middle age,
The new paper found that stress in midlife was linked to a greater chance of developing dementia.
Despite decades of dedicated research, and the fact that nearly seven million Americans Currently living with Alzheimer’s disease, scientists have not yet found a solution to the cause of the disease.
There is some evidence that it may be caused by genes and some evidence that it may be related to the environment.
But researchers do know that when someone develops Alzheimer’s disease, their body begins to produce much more of two types of proteins that are natural to the body: amyloid and tau.
Because the brain is connected to the spinal cord, you can take fluid from the spinal column to find out if your brain produces more of these proteins.
This could be an accurate way to detect Alzheimer’s disease, according to a 2018 study of 1,016 patients. Columbia University concluded.
That is the test that the Spanish researchers are conducting did in their new article, which was published in the American Neurological Association Annals of Neurology.
By testing the spinal fluid of the 1,290 participants, the researchers found that people who had experienced a stressful event in their early or mid-life had higher amounts of amyloid and tau.
Carol Opdebeeck, senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in Great Britain, wrote in The Conversation 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 later in life’.
Markers such as amyloid and tau accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. This can be measured by taking samples of the spinal fluid.
The researchers provide a number of explanations for their findings.
First, they said that anxiety in response to stressful events is common. Scientists know that anxiety and stress are bad for your body.
When you’re stressed, your immune system reacts as if you’ve been injured and you develop inflammation all over your body, which can speed up aging, says Dr. Susan Albers, a psychologist at said Cleveland Clinic.
Second, stressful events can cause your body to release a certain type of steroid called glucocorticoids, which in large amounts has been shown to damage brain cells.
Finally, when animals are placed in stressful environments, they have a harder time digesting amyloid and tau, the researchers wrote.
Whatever the cause of their findings, the researchers wrote that more work 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 potentially even reduce the number of people who develop dementia.”