Affects a lot in our aging population and the problem is only going to get worse as my generation, the boomers, age. The Alzheimer's Association says as many as 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer's and projects that 16 million may have it by 2050. Generally speaking one can take US numbers and divide them by ten; those numbers are awesome and are going to take a toll on our already stretched medical systems.
For starters, I did know that genetics were and are strongly involved but I did not know that Blacks and other minorities have a higher risk than whites.
Doctors do not fully understand how the disease develops but it does develop.
So how to prevent it?
Reuters reports that "Fish oil, exercise and doing puzzles may all be good for the brain but there is no strong evidence that any of these can prevent Alzheimer's disease."
That is what an expert panel concluded last week.
They also concluded that supplements, drugs or social interaction, nothing really matters according to the independent panel meeting at the National Institutes of Health.
The group of experts looked at the dozens of studies that have suggested ways to prevent Alzheimer's and found none were strong enough to constitute proof.
"We wish we could tell people that taking a pill or doing a puzzle every day would prevent this terrible disease, but current evidence doesn't support this," said Dr. Martha Daviglus of Northwestern University in Chicago, who chaired the panel.
Oy vey for sure.
WFDS
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