As if people with anxiety don’t have enough to worry about, a new study is adding to that list — suggesting the disorder may nearly triple the risk of developing dementia years later.
The research, to the authors’ knowledge, is the first to look into the association between different severities of anxiety and dementia risk over time, and the effect of the timing of anxiety on this risk, according to the study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society(opens in a new tab).
“Anxiety can now be considered a non-traditional risk factor for dementia,” said Dr. Kay Khaing, lead study author and a specialist geriatrician at Hunter New England Health in Newcastle, Australia, via email.
More than 55 million people worldwide have dementia, a number expected to increase to 139 million by 2050. With the condition also being a leading cause of death, researchers and health professionals have directed their focus toward prevention, particularly by addressing risk factors such as anxiety or lifestyle habits.
Please do not send this to that relative with anxiety issues thinking that this will help them. It will absolutely not help them.
Right? It didn’t help me! Growing old, then having dementia or alzheimer’s but still alive and thinking I’m thinking, has already been a fear of mine. Especially always knowing I would never have kids, thus no chance of anyone to be around to help, besides strangers. And, probably at whatever gov. med. level of care, as I cannot ever seem to make any real progress in bettering our financial situation. But, I’d rather be aware of it than ignorant to it.
You shouldn’t rely on your adult kids to help you either. If they can, it’s great. But they have their own lives and jobs and possibly kids themselves. I don’t think you should expect them to help you. It’s nice if they can, but I will tell my daughter if I need someone to care for me that I do not want her to feel any obligation to do it herself. If I have to end up in a state nursing home, so be it. Life can suck.
Oh absolutely! That thought tag may be a hangover from everyone giving me reasons I “must” have kids, or I “will change my mind” about having kids “wait till you find the right guy”. It seemed to break people’s minds that a midwest small-town girl wouldn’t want kids (same good christian folks who were also terrified I might have sex and get knocked up). It always appalled me when the conversation would take that “who’s gonna take care of you when your old” turn. I have a good relationship with my folks now, I hope I can care for them to the best of my ability as they are getting up there. May not have always felt about them that way though, took some work. I can’t hardly tale care of myself still though, and it worries me how much I Will be able to do, financially, time, etc. So yeah, came to terms with the idea of me being in a state home in general. But, having dementia or alzheimer’s in that situation, to me, is terrifying. Being 100% at the whim of a stranger and unable to express any real needs or thoughts. I love to read, puzzle, learn and play games, learn new shit in general, recognize actors by voice in under a 30 secs… y’know brain stuff, lol. Just knowing it would be gone is sad and scary.
I’m not going into a home. I’d rather my kids give me a handgun for Christmas if they are convinced I can’t care for myself any more.
That seems a bit rash. Do you believe in an afterlife? I don’t.
Nope. But I’ve seen my great grandparents and grandparents go through it. Just fucking laying around watching price is right between naps and pills. Fuck all that. It’s not living.
I’m not afraid of death. I am afraid to live like that.
I guess we have different outlooks here. I have an extremely shitty life in terms of my health. I haven’t eaten solid food in almost a year and I have something colloquially known as the suicide disease.
I’d still rather exist than not exist.
Pimp my Brain: I hear you like anxiety, so put some anxiety in your anxiety.
Well this is fucking swell.
Well good morning to me. So to go along with the PTSD, the depression, anxiety, spinal fuck ups and, as of yesterday, the chance I may have cancer, I got this going for me. It’s only Wednesday right? Right? Got to keep pushing on. It’s Hell sometimes but I continue to push on.
I ain’t gonna let it get that far. My wife worked in a nursing home with a lot of dementia patients. I’d rather be dead. I’m gonna shuffle off this mortal coil before it gets too late.
you need to figure out how to make it look like an accident if you want them to get the life insurance though
Divorce, give them everything in the ‘settlement’, die.
Most life insurance I’ve seen will pay out on suicide as long as you’ve had the policy for a year.
This is a bit of a silver lining, though:
Anxiety that resolved within the first five years was so unassociated with greater risk that the odds were similar to those without anxiety — a finding that Dr. Glen R. Finney, an American Academy of Neurology fellow, called “a welcome addition to our knowledge about anxiety and dementia.” Finney, director of the Geisinger Memory and Cognition Program in Pennsylvania, wasn’t involved in the study. The results were also largely driven by participants under 70. ”We have known for a long time that stress increases risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who wasn’t involved in the study, via email. “This study agrees with earlier studies that therapy aimed at alleviating anxiety can help reduce risk for (Alzheimer’s disease). But, it’s the size of this study that is particularly compelling.”
that’s interesting, they’ve been linking dementia to anxiety medication for a long time. how did they control for that?
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