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Think For The Memories

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By PHILIP MORGAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 8, 2007

I may need to change my long-term goal, which is to make it to retirement, at which time I'd planned to sleep late and loll around until 11, drinking coffee and reading the paper.

If I want to avoid Alzheimer's disease, however, I may want to aim higher. Maybe I should work the crossword puzzle, too, and take up a cause — napper's rights?

It seems that people with a sense of purpose stand a better chance of warding off the terminal brain disease. That's the conclusion of a study released this month by Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

People who wake up each morning with a sense of duty and dive into their day may increase the neural connections that protect them from the disease. Autopsies of some of the go-getters in the study revealed the same brain lesions that marked Alzheimer's sufferers, yet these people didn't show signs of dementia in life.

Researchers followed the lives of nearly 1,000 priests and nuns, starting when they were at an average age of 75 and continuing for 12 years. The volunteers were tested yearly for signs of dementia; those initially labeled "conscientious" had a near 90 percent lower risk of developing the disease.

It's hard to envision slacker priests and nuns. Do they run through half the Rosary and take a coffee break? Nevertheless, those who agreed with statements such as "I work hard to accomplish my goals" and "I strive for excellence in everything I do" had a lower risk of the disease.

The research dovetails with findings of past studies by this "great group of researchers," says psychiatrist Amanda Smith, assistant director of the Suncoast Alzheimer's and Gerontology Center at the University of South Florida. Those experiments found that social activity and mental exercise — reading, attending plays, working crossword puzzles — may protect the brain against the memory-robbing disease.

"If you think about it, people who feel more purposeful, who wake up in the morning and feel like they've got something to contribute, tend to be more active, more social, do more during the day," Smith says. "All of those things are protective against Alzheimer's."

Conversely, people who feel bad about themselves, who don't feel useful, tend to be burdened with chronic stress, she says. Studies have shown that people with chronic stress have a high level of the hormone cortisol in their systems. Cortisol has been shown to shrink the hippocampus, the part of the brain that facilitates memory.

Past Rush University studies found that a diet low in saturated fats and high in Vitamin E — leafy vegetables, seeds, nuts, olive oils and whole grain – may help prevent Alzheimer's.

Other Alzheimer's researchers concluded that physical exercise also protects against the disease.

Guess I'm going to be pretty busy in retirement — after 11.

Reporter Philip Morgan can be reached at (813) 259-7609 or pmorgan@tampatrib.com.

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