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May 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) — If you’re looking for a way to
keep dementia at bay, a new study suggests you can do so by developing a
firm purpose in life.
The findings don’t prove that having a purpose will make a difference,
and it’s possible that the researchers missed another important factor
that’s at play. Still, the study found that people who had more purpose —
as defined by the researchers — seemed to be less affected by the
brain-clogging gunk that’s considered to be a cause of Alzheimer’s
disease.
“Somehow, having a purpose allows people to cope with the physical
signs of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Patricia Boyle, an associate professor
at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the Rush University Medical
Center in Chicago.
Boyle and colleagues looked at tests given to 246 older people who
later died and underwent autopsies that explored the state of their
brains.
The researchers defined a purpose in life as “the tendency to find
meaning from life experience, to be intentional and focused,” Boyle said.
“It’s an indicator of well-being, that life is good and you are
contributing to your life, you’re making decisions.”
To determine purpose in life, the researchers analyzed answers from a
10-item psychological test.
Among those who had a lot of brain gunk — known as plaques and
tangles — the ones who had greater purpose in life appeared to be less
affected by a decline in their mental (or “cognitive”) powers. “The rate
of cognitive decline was about 30 percent slower for someone with greater
purpose in life, compared to someone with less purpose,” Boyle said.
The researchers found that they were able to link a higher sense of
purpose to better brain health even when they adjusted their statistics so
they wouldn’t be thrown off by high or low numbers of people with illness,
signs of depression and other factors.
It’s still not clear that purpose in life has anything to do with
mental powers in old age. But if there is a connection, it may have
something to do with the brain’s capacity, said Dr. James Burke, director
of the Memory Disorders Clinic at Duke University Medical Center.
Similarly, people who have more education seem to be better able to
tolerate brain-clogging plaques and tangles without having as many
cognitive problems, Burke said. “My own analogy is that if a city has more
roads, it can tolerate more blocked roads while still allowing you to get
to your destination. This is commonly used as the explanation, but
difficult to prove.”
The study is published in the May issue of the Archives of General
Psychiatry.
In other Alzheimer’s disease news, a small new study indicates that
deep brain stimulation — a treatment being tested to treat mental
problems — seems to help the brain work more efficiently in people who
appear to have a mild form of the disease. (The disease can’t be
conclusively diagnosed until after death.)
The researchers, Gwenn Smith of the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine and colleagues, examined four men and one woman who underwent the
treatment for a year.
In deep brain stimulation, the brain is zapped with an electronic pulse
that comes from a pacemaker-like device implanted in the chest.
The study, which was published online May 7 in the Archives of
Neurology, was very small and “a very early look” at a new kind of
treatment, noted Burke, who was not involved in the research. More
research is needed, he added.
More information
For more about Alzheimer’s disease, visit the U.S. National Library of
Medicine.
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