by Traci Pedersen | Oct 21, 2019 | Aging, Assessment and Diagnosis, Brain and Behavior, Depression, General, Health-related, LifeHelper, Mental Health and Wellness, pain, Psychology, Psychology and Therapy News, Research, Social Psychology
When older adults become socially isolated, their health and well-being can suffer. Now a new study suggests a link between being socially isolated and osteoarthritis (arthritis), a condition that causes joint pain and can limit a person’s ability to get around.
The findings are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Arthritis patients often have other health issues which may increase their risk of becoming socially isolated. These include anxiety and depression, being afraid to move around (because arthritis makes moving painful), physical inactivity and being unable to take care of themselves.
About 30 percent of adults over 65 have arthritis to some degree, especially in their leg joints. Despite that, until now there has been little research on the link between arthritis and social isolation.
Researchers analyzed data from the European Project on OSteoArthritis (EPOSA) study. They wanted to examine any potential links between arthritis and social isolation, and to identify the disease’s contribution to social isolation.
EPOSA is a study of 2,942 adults between the ages of 65 to 85 years old who live in six European countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. In all, 1,967 people, around the age of 73, participated in the study. Half of the participants were women, and almost 30 percent had arthritis.
The researchers looked at whether the participants were socially isolated at the beginning of the study as well as 12 to 18 months later. The participants completed questionnaires that kept track of how often they connected socially with friends and family members and how often they volunteered or participated in social activities.
At the start of the study, almost 20 percent were socially isolated. Those who weren’t socially isolated tended to be younger, had higher incomes and more education. They were also more likely to be physically active, had less physical pain, had faster walking times and were in better all-around health.
Of the 1,585 participants who weren’t considered socially isolated at the beginning of the study, 13 percent had become socially isolated 12 to 18 months later. They reported that their health and osteoarthritis had worsened, they were in more pain, had become less physically active, had slower walking times, and had depression and problems with thinking and making decisions.
The researchers say the findings suggest that osteoarthritis can increase the risk of social isolation. In particular, having problems with thinking and making decisions, as well as having slower walking times, is associated with an increased risk of becoming socially isolated.
Since social isolation can lead to poorer health, the researchers suggest that older adults with arthritis may benefit from engaging in physical activity and social activities. Specifically, they suggest that health care providers might refer people to senior centers where activities are specially designed for people with arthritis.
Source: American Geriatrics Society
by Janice Wood | Oct 20, 2019 | Aging, Alzheimer's, Bipolar, Brain and Behavior, Dementia, Health-related, Meditation & Yoga, Mental Health and Wellness, Neuropsychology and Neurology, Psychology and Therapy News, Research
Video: New research links excess neural activity — the flickering light seen in this image — to reduced longevity. Credit: Yankner lab, Harvard Medical School.
The brain’s neural activity — long implicated in disorders ranging from dementia to epilepsy — also plays a role in how long we live.
The study, led by scientists in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and based on findings from human brains, mice, and worms, suggests that excessive activity in the brain is linked to shorter life spans, while suppressing overactivity can extend life.
Neural activity refers to the constant flicker of electrical currents and transmissions in the brain. Excessive activity, or excitation, could manifest in numerous ways, from a muscle twitch to a change in mood or thought, according to the researchers.
“An intriguing aspect of our findings is that something as transient as the activity state of neural circuits could have such far-ranging consequences for physiology and life span,” said study senior author Dr. Bruce Yankner, a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging.
Neural excitation appears to act along a chain of molecular events famously known to influence longevity — the insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling pathway, the researchers explain.
The key in this signaling cascade appears to be a protein called REST, previously shown by researchers in the Yankner Lab to protect aging brains from dementia and other stresses.
Study results could lead to the design of new therapies for conditions that involve neural overactivity, such as Alzheimer’s disease and bipolar disorder, the researchers said.
The findings also raise the possibility that certain medicines, such as drugs that target REST, or certain behaviors, such as meditation, could extend life span by modulating neural activity, they said.
Human variation in neural activity might have both genetic and environmental causes, which would open future avenues for therapeutic intervention, Yankner added.
The researchers began their investigation by analyzing gene expression patterns — the extent to which various genes are turned on and off — in donated brain tissue from hundreds of people who died at ages ranging from 60 to over 100.
The information was collected through three separate research studies of older adults. Those analyzed in the current study were cognitively intact, meaning they had no dementia, the researchers noted.
The researchers immediately noticed a striking difference between the older and younger study participants, Yankner said. The longest-lived people — those over 85 — had lower expression of genes related to neural excitation than those who died between the ages of 60 and 80.
Next came the question that all scientists confront: Correlation or causation? Was this disparity in neural excitation merely occurring alongside more important factors determining life span or were excitation levels directly affecting longevity? If so, how?
To answer these questions, the researchers conducted a barrage of experiments, including genetic, cell, and molecular biology tests in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, analyses of genetically altered mice, and additional brain tissue analyses of people who lived for more than a century.
These experiments revealed that altering neural excitation does indeed affect life span and illuminated what might be happening on a molecular level, the researchers said, noting all signs pointed to the protein REST.
REST, which is known to regulate genes, also suppresses neural excitation, the researchers found.
Blocking REST or its equivalent in the animals led to higher neural activity and earlier deaths, while boosting REST did the opposite.
The researchers also discovered that people who lived to 100 and beyond had significantly more REST in the nuclei of their brain cells than people who died in their 70s or 80s.
“It was extremely exciting to see how all these different lines of evidence converged,” said study co-author Dr. Monica Colaiácovo, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, whose lab collaborated on the C. elegans work.
The researchers found that from worms to mammals, REST suppresses the expression of genes that are centrally involved in neural excitation, such as ion channels, neurotransmitter receptors, and structural components of synapses.
Lower excitation activates a family of proteins known as forkhead transcription factors. These proteins have been shown to mediate a “longevity pathway” via insulin/IGF signaling in many animals. It’s the same pathway that scientists believe can be activated by caloric restriction, according to the researchers.
In addition to its emerging role in staving off neurodegeneration, discovery of REST’s role in longevity provides additional motivation to develop drugs that target the protein, the researchers said.
Although it will take time and many tests to determine whether such treatments reduce neural excitation, promote healthy aging, or extend life span, the concept has captivated some researchers.
“The possibility that being able to activate REST would reduce excitatory neural activity and slow aging in humans is extremely exciting,” said Colaiácovo.
The study was published in Nature.
Source: Harvard Medical School
by Rick Nauert PhD | Oct 18, 2019 | Aging, Alzheimer's, Brain and Behavior, Cognition, Environment, ERT, Gender, General, LifeHelper, Medications, Memory and Perception, Menopause, Mental Health and Wellness, Professional, Psychology and Therapy News, Research
Emerging research suggests a longer period of estrogen replacement therapy provides a prolonged cognitive benefit. However, investigators acknowledge that the risk-to-benefit balance of hormone therapy use is complicated and must be individualized.
Research has determined that estrogen has a significant role in overall brain health and cognitive function. This knowledge has fostered various studies on the prevention of cognitive decline as related to reduced estrogen levels during the menopause transition.
The new study suggests a cognitive benefit from a longer reproductive window complemented with hormone therapy. The study, “Lifetime estrogen exposure and cognition in late life: The Cache County Study,” appears online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).
Because women comprise two-thirds of the 5.5 million cases of Alzheimer disease in the United States, researchers have long suspected that sex-specific factors such as estrogen may contribute to women’s increased risk for the disease. Moreover, multiple studies have suggested a role for estrogen in promoting memory and learning.
In this newest study involving more than 2,000 postmenopausal women, researchers followed participants over a 12-year period to examine the association between estrogen and cognitive decline.
More specifically, they focused on the duration of a woman’s exposure to estrogen, taking into account such factors as time of menarche to menopause, number of pregnancies, duration of breastfeeding, and use of hormone therapy.
Investigators concluded that a longer duration of estrogen exposure is associated with better cognitive status in older adult women. Furthermore, they documented that these beneficial effects are extended with the use of hormone therapy, especially in the oldest women in the sample.
Women who initiated hormone therapy earlier showed higher cognitive test scores than those who started taking hormones later, providing some support for the critical window hypothesis of hormone therapy.
“Although the assessment of the risk-to-benefit balance of hormone therapy use is complicated and must be individualized, this study provides additional evidence for beneficial cognitive effects of hormone therapy, particularly when initiated early after menopause.
This study also underscores the potential adverse effects of early estrogen deprivation on cognitive health in the setting of premature or early menopause without adequate estrogen replacement,” says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.
Source: The North American Menopause Society (NAMS)
by Janice Wood | Oct 18, 2019 | Aging, Assessment and Diagnosis, Brain and Behavior, Cognition, Gait, Health-related, Mental Health and Wellness, Middle Age, Neuropsychology and Neurology, Psychology, Psychology and Therapy News, Research
A new study shows that people with a lower walking speed at the age of 45 have accelerated aging of both their bodies and their brains.
Using a 19-measure scale, researchers at Duke University found that in slower walkers, their lungs, teeth and immune systems tended to be in worse shape than the people who walked faster. MRI exams showed several indications that their brains were also older.
“The thing that’s really striking is that this is in 45-year-old people, not the geriatric patients who are usually assessed with such measures,” said lead researcher Line J.H. Rasmussen, a post-doctoral researcher in the Duke University Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.
“Doctors know that slow walkers in their seventies and eighties tend to die sooner than fast walkers their same age,” said senior author Terrie E. Moffitt, the Nannerl O. Keohane University Professor of Psychology at Duke University, and Professor of Social Development at King’s College London. “But this study covered the period from the preschool years to midlife and found that a slow walk is a problem sign decades before old age.”
The data come from a long-term study of nearly 1,000 people who were born during a single year in Dunedin, New Zealand. The 904 research participants in the current study have been tested, quizzed, and measured their entire lives, mostly recently from April 2017 to April 2019 at age 45.
Researchers note that neurocognitive testing that these individuals took as children predicted who would become slower walkers. At age 3, their scores on IQ, understanding language, frustration tolerance, motor skills, and emotional control predicted their walking speed at age 45, according to the researchers.
MRI exams during their last assessment showed the slower walkers tended to have lower total brain volume, lower mean cortical thickness, less brain surface area and higher incidence of white matter “hyperintensities,” small lesions associated with small vessel disease of the brain. In short, their brains appeared somewhat older, they said.
Adding insult to injury, the slower walkers also looked older to a panel of eight screeners who assessed each participant’s “facial age” from a photograph, the researchers reported.
Walking speed has long been used as a measure of health and aging in geriatric patients, but what’s new in this study is the relative youth of these study subjects and the ability to see how walking speed matches up with health measures the study has collected during their lives, the researchers explained.
“It’s a shame we don’t have gait speed and brain imaging for them as children,” Rasmussen said. (The MRI was invented when they were five, but was not given to children for many years after.)
Some of the differences in health and cognition may be tied to lifestyle choices these individuals have made, the researchers noted.
But the study also suggests that there are already signs in early life of who would become the slowest walkers, Rasmussen said.
“We may have a chance here to see who’s going to do better health-wise in later life.”
The study was published in JAMA Network Open.
Source: Duke University
Photo: A long-term study has found that signs of aging may be detected by a simple walking test at age 45, and that the brains of slower walkers were different at age 3. Credit: Duke University Communications.
by Janice Wood | Oct 11, 2019 | Aging, Assessment and Diagnosis, Cognitive Impairment, Dementia, Exercise/Fitness, Health-related, LifeHelper, Meditation, Meditation & Yoga, Mental Health and Wellness, mind-body connection, Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychology and Therapy News, Quality Of Life, Research, yoga
Chair yoga may help improve quality of life in older adults with moderate-to-severe dementia, according to a new study by Florida Atlantic University (FAU).
Chair yoga provides a safe environment for stretching, strengthening and flexibility while decreasing the risk of falls by using a chair. It also provides important breathing and relaxation techniques through stationary poses and guided relaxation of various muscle groups.
“We think that the physical poses we used in the chair yoga and chair-based exercise groups were an important factor in improving quality of life for the participants in our study,” said Juyoung Park, Ph.D., lead author and an associate professor in the Phyllis and Harvey Sandler School of Social Work within FAU’s College for Design and Social Inquiry.
“It is fascinating that, although some participants showed mild levels of agitation or wandering in the intervention room prior to the yoga session, they became calm and attentive when the yoga interventionist started demonstrating yoga poses.”
“Although they did not understand the interventionist’s verbal instructions due to their cognitive impairment associated with advanced dementia, they followed the instructor’s poses.”
For the study, published in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Other Dementias, researchers from FAU compared chair yoga with two other types of non-pharmacological interventions: chair-based exercise and music intervention.
The study involved older adults (mean average age was 84 years old) with moderate-to-severe dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (the largest diagnostic group), Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson disease dementia. The patients were unable to participate in regular exercise or standing yoga due to cognitive impairment, problems with balance, or fear of falling.
Participants in each of the three groups attended 45-minute sessions twice a week for 12 weeks. Researchers collected data at baseline, after six weeks and after completing the 12-week intervention.
Results showed that participants with moderate-to-severe dementia could safely adhere to non-pharmacological interventions, and more than 97% of the participants fully engaged in each session.
The findings show that those in the chair yoga group improved significantly in quality-of-life scores compared to the music intervention group. Both the chair yoga and chair-exercise groups showed improvement over time, while the music intervention group declined.
In addition, both the chair yoga and chair-based exercise groups showed lower depression across all three time points when compared to the music intervention group.
The team did not find any differences in the three intervention groups on physical function, with the exception of handgrip strength, which was higher in the chair yoga group compared to the music intervention group. None of the three groups declined significantly in any of the investigated physical functional measures.
Researchers also did not find any significant between-group differences in anxiety at any time point. There were no significant between-group differences in change in depression and anxiety. The researchers also did not find significant differences among the three intervention groups for sleep quality at any of the three time points.
“We did see an increase in agitation in the chair yoga group even though this group reported a higher quality of life score, including physical condition, mood, functional abilities, interpersonal relationships, ability to participate in meaningful activities, and final situations,” said Park.
“It’s important to note that quality of life is a more comprehensive approach to biopsychosocial and behavioral function than a mere measure of agitation. Meditation and the mind-body connection component of the chair yoga program may have increased quality of life for participants in this study. This finding is consistent with our earlier studies that showed a targeted approach was successful in increasing quality of life in patients with dementia.”
Source: Florida Atlantic University
by Janice Wood | Oct 9, 2019 | Advocacy and Policy, Aggression and Violence, Aging, Assessment and Diagnosis, Brain and Behavior, Emotion, Ethnicity, General, Health-related, LifeHelper, Mental Health and Wellness, Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychology and Therapy News, PTSD, Research, Social Psychology, Stress
Exposure to community and police violence can negatively impact a person’s physical and psychosocial health, according to new research published in the journal Health Affairs.
The research involved two studies based on in-person surveys of more than 500 adults living in Chicago neighborhoods with high rates of violent crime, and mostly comprising racial and ethnic minority groups. Of the study participants, 77% were age 50 and up.
Elizabeth L. Tung, M.D., a social epidemiologist from the University of Chicago Medicine and coauthor of both studies, was inspired to conduct this research after she noticed that more of her patients from violent neighborhoods were struggling to follow their prescribed health regimens.
“They would be hesitant to join walking groups because they were afraid to walk in their neighborhoods. Or I’d ask, ‘Why didn’t you get your medications on time?’ And they’d say, ‘Well, I could only get a ride at night, and I don’t want to leave the house at night.’ That kind of thing was coming up a lot more,” Tung said.
In the first report, researchers found that social isolation and loneliness were linked to limited physical activity, not taking medication properly, poor nutrition, binge drinking and smoking.
The results reveal that the more violence people experienced in their own community, the lonelier they were likely to be. The greatest risk for loneliness was found among those who were exposed to community violence and screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The findings are particularly troublesome for older adults who live in violent neighborhoods, who are more prone to loneliness and might already have chronic health issues like diabetes, obesity or heart disease. Loneliness is a growing health concern, and a key predictor of mortality in the U.S.
“The association between violence exposure and loneliness is a really interesting one, because there’s such a strong link,” said Tung. “The pervasiveness of violence seems to be more evident now than ever. What does that sense of violence in our culture do more broadly to loneliness?”
Social withdrawal might be a survival strategy in violent neighborhoods, but it’s not a good long-term option, said study coauthor Monica E. Peek, M.D., an associate professor at the University of Chicago and the associate director of the Chicago Center of Diabetes Translation Research.
“Someone who is socially isolated and lonely has a higher risk for cardiovascular disease, just like someone who has a history of smoking. Loneliness is a public health issue with real health implications,” Peek said.
“Violence impacts more than just the victims, but the whole community. Everyone’s health is potentially affected.”
The new findings tie into a bigger conversation happening nationwide about how issues like loneliness, food insecurity and housing impact a person’s physical and psychological health, Peek added.
“Our health care system is changing and evolving, and we’re starting to think not just about medical care but the social needs of our patients, and trying to use the medical system as a way to integrate those needs. Having a more holistic approach will better help our health outcomes,” she said.
The second report, led by Nichole A. Smith, a medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, quantified a connection between exposure to community and police violence and hypervigilance.
Hypervigilance — defined as a heightened emotional state of always feeling “on guard” — can prevent people from making healthy lifestyle choices. Chronic hypervigilance can lead to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, memory impairment, anxiety disorders and difficulty regulating emotions.
“It’s a very well-studied phenomenon, mostly in veterans. But it’s so poorly studied in community-based settings where you have this chronic exposure to violence,” Tung said.
The study found a surprisingly strong link between hypervigilance and exposure to police violence more than community violence.
Exposure to community violence was linked to a 5.5% increase in the hypervigilance score, while exposure to police violence was associated with a 9.8% increase. Respondents who experienced a traumatic event during a police stop had a 20% increase in hypervigilance scores.
The findings suggest a complex association between police violence and the mental and physical health of community members. It raises the question of whether hypervigilance, both among residents and police officers, could possibly lead to harmful escalations during police stops.
The study suggests that more trauma-informed policing and opportunities for community-building activities between police and community members, such as the CAPS police baseball league with community members, could help reduce hypervigilance on both sides and prevent situations from escalating into harmful ones.
Source: University of Chicago Medical Center
