Alzheimer's research

People genetically prone to Alzheimer’s who went to college, worked in complex fields and stayed engaged intellectually held off the disease almost a decade longer than others, a study found.

Lifelong intellectual activities such as playing music or reading kept the mind fit as people aged and also delayed Alzheimer’s by years for those at risk of the disease who weren’t college educated or worked at challenging jobs, the researchers said in the study published today in JAMA Neurology.

Summary
JAMA Neurology
Among those with an average education and job complexity, brain stimulating pastimes can delay onset of dementia by about 7.3 years compared with people with low levels of mental stimulation in aging. For those who carry the ApoE4 gene, a risk factor for Alzheimer’s found in about 25 percent of the U.S. population, brain stimulating pastimes can delay the onset of the disease by about 3.5 years.

Each generation loses some skills

“Young people in Britain have become a lost generation who can no longer mend gadgets and appliances because they have grown up in a disposable world, the professor giving this year’s Royal Institution Christmas lectures has warned. “

It happens. I didn't know the simplest skills like plucking a chicken or cleaning the wick on a kerosene lamp or putting the bit in the draft horse's mouth that my blind grandmother could do with ease.  There was a time (in my teen years) when I knew how to change a flat tire.  I used to know how to thread a 55 year old sewing machine. And in my 50s, I could code html for a web page. I hope I don't lose my ability to make an apple sour cream pie--I've never written down the instructions. A German immigrant housekeeper who worked for my grandparents would make that for an after school snack for the children (my mom and her sibs) after the long cold walk from the country school, Pineview,  uphill both ways, carrying a cello (or so the story went).

 

My mom, second from left, front row, and her brother Clare, second from right, back row.