Just over a week ago, about 10,000 researchers attended the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference to share the latest findings in research, prevention and treatment of dementia.
Katherine Lambert, the regional leader for the Alzheimer’s Association of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia said, for the first time ever, county-level Alzheimer’s rates were shared – and eastern North Carolina’s numbers were among the highest.
“There are a number of counties that are, you know, 13% and higher and many of those are on the eastern part of the state,” she explained.
Bertie County was at 16.6 percent; Lenoir County at 14 percent, and Duplin at 13.4 percent. Lambert said that’s due to several factors.
“Sometimes in many of these counties that are more rural, there is less access to healthcare. There are more barriers to access for that, which can cause other comorbidities, which can impact this,” she said, and added, “Those populations also tend to have higher percentages of older, black and Hispanic residents, all groups that are at higher risk for the disease, which may explain some of that elevated prevalence in those areas.”
Researchers have also linked hearing loss to dementia, and said hearing aids can slow cognitive decline in older adults with mild and moderate hearing loss by 48%.
And how often you poop matters.
“When I saw the headline come out as ‘there's a new scoop on poop’ I thought, well, that is not something I ever thought we'd be talking about.” Lambert said, “But it makes great sense. Our body is so interconnected and so when things are not going the way they should in other systems, it's not a big leap to think, ‘oh, there's a connection as well.’”
A researcher from University of Massachusetts, Amherst found that people with chronic constipation – with three or more days between bowel movements -- had significantly worse cognition, equivalent to three years more of aging than those with healthy bowel movement patterns.
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