BBC Claims Singles Are at Risk for Alzheimer's; I Think the BBC is Losing Its Mind

Story is here.

I posted this in three parts due to HuffPo limits on the number of words you are allowed to use.


Given that you aren't a neurologist and neither am I, and that Alzheimer's would seem to be a non-behavior based malady, your only resort is to attack the methodology rather than the content in order to assure singles that they aren't headed for senility since the study as you understand it doesn't seem to offer the mechanics of how Alzheimer's would impact singles more than married folks.

Well, the study could be right, but its conclusions are perhaps too narrow and, in the name of playing devil's advocate here, I am going to offer a possible reason singles could be harder hit by that malady.

It was either on one of the PBS stasions or the Science Channel that I saw a program about a hopeful therapy for Alzheimer's. Basically, it goes like this: put an Alzheimer's sufferer in a high stimulus environment and the brain seems to start rewiring itself with the effect that not only do memories recover at least somewhat, but the pace of the disease slows enough so that more cognitive thinking is also recovered.

Now here is why it could impact singles: people who are unattached and who spend a lot of time alone at home doing little more than watching tv are not getting much stimulus. They are in a stimulus dead environment. If there is a tendency toward Alzheimer's, then there is not enough stimulus to slow its effects.

Whereas, marrieds are at least getting social and perhaps even intellectual stimulus everyday from their partners and this is ramped up if they carry on busy social lives. They go out, they participate in the community, etc, and that could (this is all just bigtime conjecture on my part) by so doing impeding the expression of Alzheimer's.

However, there are obviously marrieds who suffer form Alzheimer's and here is perhaps why: if the marriage is a content dead relationship in a stimulus poor environment then, again, there is nothing to halt the progress of the disease once it begins expressing itself.

I also offer a couple fo examples in my own family: I had an aunt who suffered Alzheimer's beginning in her 80's. But it was only after her husband of several decades had passed away and she lived largely alone and had a sedentary lifestyle with no intellectual interests.

My grandmother on my mom's side also contracted Alzheimer's a few years after her last husband died and she had also not been nearly as socially or intellectually active as she had been in the past. This was exacerbated by a heart bypass surgery.

In contrast is another aunt who is now 90, the sister of my late grandmother. After her husband died in her 70's, she continued to be socially active even if she doesn't really have any intellectual pursuits. And, aside from a physical ailment that is dogging her right now, she is still pretty sharp mentally and bubbly personalitywise. And I think that not socially retreating as a lot of old folks do has helped retard any Alzheimer's in my aunt. Or I hope, anyway.

This is all, obviously speculative, but maybe a very interesting window on to how Alzheimer's perhaps works, that there indeed could be behavioral and environmental links to how and when it expresses itself.

FWIW.

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