Alzheimer Disease, role of the perception of lonelisness among elders, from Karmayog India.

Alzheimer's disease is an incurable one that slowly destroys memory and cognitive abilities. The progressive brain disorder that gradually destroys a person's memory and ability to reason and/or make judgements.
Two things that go towards being responsible and contributory for Alzheimer's disease are: loneliness and high-collesterol diet. Loneliness is unavoidable for the 'older elderly' these days. Added to that is the ever increasing gap between them and the third generation.

Part I
First let's see how loneliness impacts Alzheimer's disease.
Though not much is being undertaken in India, studies are almost continuous elsewhere in foreign Universities. Researchers under Prof Robert Wilson of Rush University Medical Centre studied more than 800 elders who were followed over a period of four years. It has been found that apart from emotional impact, loneliness has a physical impact too. Also people who are lonely are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

It must be that loneliness affects brain systems dealing with cognition and memory. This makes lonly people more vulnerable to effects of age-related decline in natural pathways.

Rebecca Wood, Chief Executive of Alzheimer's Research Trust accepts it is an impressive study. Has come up with startling findings that back up earlier studies examining social interactions and Alzheimer's risk. What she finds particularly interesting of this study is that it is an individual's perception of being lonely rather than their actual degree of social isolation that seems to correlate most closely with their Alzheimer's risk.

Social isolation has already been established to be linked to dementia. But this is the first time researchers have looked at how lonely people actually felt.

Part II
Now let's consider the effects of high cholesterol diet on Alzheimer's disease.
An unhealthy diet filled with high cholesterol foods can increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease, says study of scientists

It has been discovered that eating lots of food containing saturated fats, such as butter and red meat, can boost levels of proteins in the brain linked to dementia.
It is doubted that such diets might affect cholestrol-clearing substances in the brain. It is earnestly hoped that this discovery could lead to new drugs which lead to the clogging fats to be cleared more effectively. This would help slow down the progression of the debilitating brain condition.

One key characteristic of people with this condition is the formation of clumps, or 'plaques' of beta amyloid proteins which are believed to destroy brain cells. Scientists increasingly believe diet and life-style may affect the build up of these damaging proteins.
There is growing evidence that taking cholestrol lowering statins makes people less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. Drugs that increase expression of these proteins might slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Similar drugs are already in use for research into heart disease.

University of Virginia scientists have identified one of the major missing link in the process that destroys nerve cells in in Alzheimer's disease. This discovery might actually lead a pathway to the development of some essential new drugs that target and disrupt specific proteins that conspire in the brain to cause Alzheimer's disease.

In Alzheimer's disease, two kinds of abnormal structures accumulate in the brain - amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles - contain fibrills made from protein fragments called beta-amyloid peptides and another different substance called 'tau' respectively. During their study the researchers found a deadly connection between beta amyloid and tau proteins, one that occurs before they form plaques and tangles.

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