Cancer and Alzheimer’s appear to be inversely related. That is, people who have had cancer have a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer’s, and vice versa.

The purpose of the study, which appears in Neurology, was to discover whether or not cancer was linked with Alzheimer’s and types of vascular dementia, such as Parkinson’s disease. There was no significant relationship between Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, but they were able to link cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers made adjustments for factors such as smoking, obesity, and physical activity. They also adjusted for hypertension, diabetes, and coronary heart disease. Researchers monitored 3,020 people, age 65 or older, for dementia and cancer, for roughly five and eight years respectively.

“Prevalent cancer was associated with reduced risk of any Alzheimer's disease and pure Alzheimer's disease among white subjects after adjustment for demographics,” authors wrote. “The opposite association was found among minorities, but the sample size was too small to provide stable estimates.”

White participants who’d had cancer before or at the beginning of the study were 43 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. In turn, those with Alzheimer’s had a 69 percent decreased risk of developing cancer.

Despite not finding a direct link between Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, the study does provide implications on its relationship to cancer.

“Together with other work showing associations between cancer and Parkinson disease, these findings suggest the possibility that cancer is linked to neurodegeneration,” authors concluded.

View the study’s abstract in the online version of Neurology.

A visual recording tool, the SenseCam, offers great promise as a memory aid for patients with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

SenseCam automatically snaps pictures every 30 seconds to create and archive image sequences. Its fish-eye lens creates images similar to the wearer’s natural perspective. It is also capable of recording short videos. About the size of a deck of cards, SenseCam weighs just 3.2 ounces and stores up to 30,000 pictures.

“The small size of the recall device makes it possible to integrate it into common portable consumer products, such as MP3 players, purses, clothing, hats, backpacks, necklaces, collars, and other human-wearable products,” developers wrote in the patent.

The images primarily trigger episodic recall, memory of events and experiences. This is the most common form of memory loss for Alzheimer's patients.

Lyndsay Williams invented SenseCam for Microsoft Cambridge in 1999. The device has since been used to monitor diet, anxiety triggers and disaster response volunteers. Gordon Bell, 75, one of Microsoft’s lead researchers, has been using the SenseCam to record every detail of his daily life every day for the last ten years. “I capture everything that I can that is of value,” he says. “I think of my e-memory and bio-memory as one.”

SenseCam features a 24-hour battery life, and according to Bell it’s also extremely durable. His first SenseCam lasted 4 years. That’s over 420,480 pictures! Because so much information is recorded, Bell stresses the importance of a good filing system.

“We have a collections mechanism that gives as a by-product a more general file system beyond (an organizational) tree,  ability to collect stuff together and name it, keywords, taxonomies,” he says. “My favorite organizing principle is facets.”

Apart from day-to-day activity, Bell says it’s come in handy when meeting new people at tradeshows and conferences. He’s come to depend on and respect the system a great deal, too. “All of your life’s images have a strong impact on being able to refresh your life,” he says.

SenseCam shows great potential, but further research is needed to determine its full effect on memory recall. In the meantime, you can read more about Bell's experience in his book, Total Recall, or follow MyLifeBits until the official release date is set.

Visit Healia's Alzheimer's Community.

There may be added benefits to that diet you’re on—following a Mediterranean-style diet may put you at a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers from the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center found that individuals who adhered to a Mediterranean-type diet in addition to exercise were 60% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible degenerative disease affecting the brain, often causing severe memory loss (a result of damage to the hippocampus) and destroyed cognitive ability. Alzheimer’s, which typically begins around age 60, is the leading cause of dementia among the elderly.

Damage to the brain may begin as early as 20 years before any complications are detected. Alzheimer’s begins when neural tangles form in the entorhinal cortex. This causes the neurons to function less efficiently, and the neurons eventually die, causing these areas of the brain to shrink.

“We know that some part of Alzheimer’s is related to genetic changes and as time goes on we discover more and more of these changes,” explains lead author Nikos Scarmeas, M.D., and associate professor of clinical neurology at Columbia. “But it is also possible that non-genetic changes, including lifestyle and behavior, may also be affecting our brain health and our risk of developing brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.”

The study examined 1,880 multi-ethnic individuals, average age 77, from Northern Manhattan in New York City. The group was divided into two smaller groups, for which information on both physical activity and mental status was available. Participants did not show signs of dementia at the beginning of the study, and were followed from 1996 to 2006, measured every 18 months for neurological changes.

Participants were measured for physical activity level (no physical activity, light activity such as golfing, moderate activity like biking, or vigorous activity such as jogging) and how well they stuck to the diet (on a scale of 0-9). Diet scores were higher for individuals who consumed more fruits, vegetables, legumes and fish, and less meat, dairy and saturated fats.

“Often times people who exercise also follow a healthy diet and vice versa,” Scarmeas says. “We wanted to tease out which of these two behaviors may be associated with lower risk for AD, or if the combination of the two is associated with decreased risk even further.”

Individuals who had low physical activity had a 29-41% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who  were physically inactive, while individuals with “much” physical activity further decreased their risk by 37-50%. Strongly following a Mediterranean diet was associated with a 40% risk reduction for Alzheimr’s. Individuals with high diet adherence and high activity individuals showed a much lower absolute risk than those with low diet adherence and activity status, reduced from 21% to 9%.

According to Scarmeas, this study emphasizes the importance of a healthy lifestyle. "We need to understand and learn more about the exact biological mechanisms that may connect physical activity and diet with the biological changes of Alzheimer's disease," he says. "This study is important because it shows that people may be able to alter their risk of developing Alzheimer's by modifying their lifestyles through diet and exercise."

Learn more about Alzheimer's disease by visiting Healia's Alzheimer's Community.

Many studies have suggested that people with Type 2 diabetes may be at higher risk for developing dementia. But a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that extreme drops in blood sugar, known as hypoglycemia, might be the factor that increases the incidence of dementia in aging patients.

The study, which surveyed more than 15,000 patients with Type 2 diabetes over a 27 year period, reported that even one severe episode of hypoglycemia puts patients at an increased risk for developing dementia. The risk of dementia continued to increase with each subsequent hypoglycemic episode.

The results showed that patients who required hospitalization for a single episode of hypoglycemia had a 26 percent higher risk for dementia than patients who never had hypoglycemia. Patients who required hospitalization for two hypoglycemic episodes had an increased risk of 80 percent, while those who required hospitalization three or more times had a 94 percent increased risk, roughly twice that of patients with no history of hypoglycemia.

No research was conducted on the relationship between minor hypoglycemic episodes and dementia.

Read more about dementia on Healia’s Dementia Health Guide. Discuss your experiences with the neurological disorder on the Healia Dementia Community and Support Group, or share your diabetes stories on the Diabetes Type 2 Community and Support Group.


_{Photo: hweiling, Flickr, Creative Commons}

The Alzheimer’s Association released a report Tuesday stating that Alzheimer’s disease is now the seventh deadliest disease in the nation and that women are at greater risk of the disease than men. The report also predicts that an estimated 10 million American baby boomers (1 out of every 8) will develop Alzheimer's disease in their lifetime.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive and fatal brain disease, and the most common form of dementia. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer's destroys brain cells, causing problems with memory, thinking, and behavior severe enough to affect work, life-long hobbies, or social life. Alzheimer’s gets worse over time, has no current cure, and is fatal.

This projected rise will make a huge impact on baby boomers' lives, their families, and the nation's health-care system. Most people with Alzheimer's are eligible for Medicare, so a high number of Alzheimer's patients will put a major strain on the federal health insurance program. The increase in Alzheimer's cases will also burden the long-term care system.

Researchers have found a connection between Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease. Diet, exercise, and blood-pressure control may help fight cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. To find out more information about Alzheimer’s disease, visit healia.com.

Alzheimer’s disease baby boomers dementia