People who get more upset by disturbing events are more likely to suffer the declines in memory and mental ability found in Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published recently. The study tracked a group of priests, nuns and monks as part of a long-term examination of the aging process.
According to Dr Robert S. Wilson of the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago (the study’s lead author), earlier research had shown that chronic stress undermined the func-tioning of the part of the brain governing memory. He and his colleagues wondered if a lifetime of stress could make people more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s. They tested the idea on members of the Religious Orders Study, whose life experiences were more similar than the general population’s.
There were 800 members, with an average age of 75, who completed surveys in an effort to gauge what researchers called ‘distress proneness’, that is how likely reactions to stress would result in gloom or anxiety, a trait also known as neuroticism. Various memory and other mental tasks were also measured. The subjects were re-examined five years later. In the meantime, Alzheimer’s had been diagnosed in 140 of them.
People who had scored the highest on the neuroticism test were twice as likely to have developed the condition as those who scored the lowest. Dr Rush describes the low scorers as ‘secure, hardy and generally relaxed,’ even when factors like depression were accounted for. Even among those who had not developed Alzheimer’s, higher scores on the test were associated with faster rates of decline, particularly in memory.