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April 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, April 4 (HealthDay News) — New research offers
insights into the mysterious phenomenon of rapid cognitive decline in the
two or three years before death, and confirms that intellectually
challenging activities can help keep your mind sharp.
“Part of what your brain is like in old age has to do with what you’re
asking it to do on a regular basis,” said Robert Wilson, professor of
neurological sciences and behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical
Center in Chicago and lead author of two new studies. “Engaging in
mentally stimulating activities is one course to improving the health of
your brain.”
One of the studies focused on the rapid decline in cognitive function
in the last few years of life. Not everyone suffers from this, but it’s a
common phenomenon, Wilson said.
Scientists aren’t quite sure why this happens. Is the decline caused by
aging? The dying process? Or perhaps by Alzheimer’s disease?
In the study, the researchers analyzed the lives of 174 members of
religious orders, including priests and nuns, who began taking part in a
medical research project in 1997. At an average of approximately
two-and-a-half years before death, the participants’ assorted memory and
thinking abilities declined at rates eight to 17 times faster than before
this end-of-life period.
The study suggests that while Alzheimer’s disease may nudge the mental
decline early on, other causes seem to be at play when the decline speeds
up in the years just before death, Wilson said. “We think the underlying
factors may shift as we move from mild changes to rapid changes,” he
said.
Because the changes before death affect several areas of the brain’s
functioning, beyond memory, this suggests that more than a single disease
is responsible, said Hiroko Dodge, an associate professor of neurology at
Oregon Health and Science University and co-author of a commentary
accompanying the study.
Can people do anything to prevent the mind from declining in old age? A
second study suggests that’s a possibility — through activities such as
reading, playing board games, and doing crossword puzzles.
The concept that mental activity affects mental acuity later in life
isn’t new. But the second study, which tracked almost 1,100 people —
average age, 80 — in the Chicago area, does seem to answer important
questions, Wilson said: Does being mentally active protect your mental and
thinking skills over time? Or is it the other way around, that your mental
and thinking skills affect your mental activity?
“We’re asking a chicken-and-egg question,” Wilson said. The answer
appears to be the first one and not the second one. Even if their mental
and thinking skills slipped, the study participants didn’t engage any less
in pursuits like reading. In other words, they stayed mentally active.
Also, being mentally active translated to better cognitive function,
possibly because the brains of mentally active people are better able to
handle damage over time, Wilson said.
The next step is to launch a study comparing people who engage in
brain-boosting activities to those who don’t, commentary co-author Dodge
said. Such a study could confirm whether activities such as reading,
socializing and playing bridge actually stave off mental decline.
But the logistics of such a study would be a challenge, she said, and
finding federal funding another hurdle.
The new studies were published online April 4 in the journal
Neurology, and were supported by the U.S. National Institute on
Aging and the Illinois Department of Health.
More information
For more about dementia,
visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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