Better Education reduces the risk of Memory Loss

Better education can significantly lower the risk of memory loss and dementia; suggests a recent study co-authored by a Group Health Researcher. Besides education, wealth and improved health care has helped take down the rate of memory-loss.

An online report in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia, revealed that in recent times, 8.7 percent of participants of age 70 and older suffered impairment in thought process that ranged from significant memory loss to full-blown Alzheimer's disease — compared to 12.2 percent in 1993.

The study involved some 7,400 people who took memory tests in 1993 and About 7,100 others who took the same tests in 2002.

"What we found is that the risk for someone who was 70 and older in 1993 of having impaired cognition was higher than the risk for someone in that same age group in 2002," said Kenneth Langa, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor VA Health System.

This new research brings out the best data on whether the rate of dementia is waning over time as Americans have become healthier, said co-author Dr. Eric Larson, executive director of the Group Health Center for Health Studies.

According to the theories put forward by Langa and his team, the decrease in the risk of people becoming significantly impaired or suffering dementia is because of a few things, which include “the significant increase in education level between the two cohorts and also likely a better job of treating cardiovascular risks like hypertension and high cholesterol.”

As more baby boomers enter old age, dementia is being dreaded as a looming public-health crisis and the study offers some hope in the area.

"This says to me that we shouldn't just be focused on finding a cure for persons who already have dementia," Larson said. "Rather this suggests that prevention and delay of onset actually can occur."

Alzheimer's in America has diseased some 5 million citizens. It is the most common form of dementia, a progressive disease that proves to be ultimately fatal by damaging and killing areas of the brain.