Modern Life Is Making Dementia in Your 40s More Probable

[marmar]

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/modern_life_is_making_dementia_in_your_40s_more_probable_20150814


via truthdig:



Bournemouth University health and social science professor Colin Pritchard urges governments to act on research showing more and more people are getting dementia in middle age.

Pritchard writes at The Guardian:

Our first study, focusing on the changing pattern of neurological deaths from 1979 up to 1997, found that dementias were starting 10 years earlier – affecting more people in their 40s and 50s – and that there was a noticeable increase in neurological deaths in people up to the age of 74. In a follow-up study, taking us to 2010 and across 21 western countries, these increases were confirmed. …

This latest neurological study, published in the USA, found that there are more people with neurological disease than ever before. Deaths of men over 75 have nearly trebled in 20 years and deaths of women have increased more than five-fold. For the first time since records began, more US women over 75 are dying of brain disease than cancer.

In the other 20 western countries, most have doubled their neurological deaths and seven countries trebled their neurological toll. It might be argued that, as people live longer, they develop diseases that they previously did not live long enough to develop. While there is some truth in this, the speed and size of the increases in just 20 years points to mainly environmental influences.

What might these environmental features be? In the past 20 years, we have quadrupled our road and air transport, with the inevitable increases in air pollution exposing us to a range of noxious substances; our background radiation has increased with the use of technological devices; there are organophosphates in our food chain. We need to recognise the interactive relationship between these minor irritants that collectively affect human health. We are beginning to acknowledge the human impact on the natural world, but forget that we are part of the natural world, too. The evidence for this lies in a number of clinical studies from across the developed world, showing associations with a range of petrochemical radiation, heavy metals and so on.

A solution to this problem lies in the kind of action governments took to curb road deaths, Pritchard says. “In 1970,” he writes, “there were 7,500 fatalities in the UK; by 2010, they were down to 2,220 because the governments recognised the problem and acted. We need to recognise that these results are not a statistical artefact, but a warning.”

Read more here.

[mainer]

1. Lack of sleep. Obesity. Both are increasing, both linked to dementia.

I'm not sure why we're focused on pollutants when we already know that obesity and diabetes are linked to Alzheimer's -- and obesity is more prevalent now than it was two decades ago.

Disrupted sleep is also linked to memory dysfunction, and in the modern world, with so many people on night shifts and reading their computer screens late into the night, peoples' sleep patterns are more disrupted than ever.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

2. Obesity, sleep deprivation, diabetes, chemotherapy, drugs

environmental factors...I think they all play a part.

Everyone I know who has experienced the "chemo fog" during chemotherapy says that it gets better with time, but I wonder what it does to the brain long term?

[Turbineguy]

3. That might also explain

the rise of RWNJ's in Europe and the U.S.

[AwakeAtLast]

4. We are working ourselves to death

I think that is a factor, coupled with the stress of making less money, combined with all of those listed above.

[madville]

5. I would throw in RF/WIFI everywhere as well

Cell towers, WIFI, devices all over and around our bodies all the time.

I would say an overall combination, obesity, crap food, air quality, radiation, etc, etc.