Dr. Melissa MacVenn of WellcomeMD: New research shows the brains of active older adults are less susceptible to Alzheimer’s
Published in Naples Daily News – January 10, 2022
[Excerpt]
Part of my role as a Naples primary care physician is to alert my patients to lurking health trouble. A far happier task is to bring positive news, and here’s some: new research indicates strongly that we can improve our odds of warding off Alzheimer’s disease, with its memory loss and other cognitive storms.
I’ve been a physician in Naples for the past four years, with predominantly mature patients. How I wish I could prescribe a miracle pill for this brain disease. More than one in ten Americans over 65 suffer from it. The newest drug for Alzheimer’s has troubling side effects and costs about $56,000 a year. Its effectiveness is so open to question that five members of the FDA’s advisory committee resigned to protest its approval. Not, perhaps, a miracle pill.
Many are so desperate about Alzheimer’s that they fall victim to online scams. The FDA recently issued warnings to firms illegally selling 58 ineffective, unsafe and unproven products that claim to help with Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
But there is hope, as a new article in the Journal of Neuroscience illustrates. For this study, scientists at several medical research institutions used data from hundreds of people — mostly in their 80s — who took cognition tests and wore activity monitors.
Some participants were much more physically active, and this research is an unmistakable endorsement that confirms prior studies : those who moved more, developed Alzheimer’s less.