NO EASY ANSWERS IN DEMENTIA CASES

But diagnosis begs questions

My husband’s diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease started me on an all encompassing quest to search out any answers to the perennial questions of “why him/why now?”

What I discovered during the course of the years I devoted to uncovering any cause for my husband’s diagnosis was that there were no answers to be found.

And now, after devoting all those years to looking, I have come to picture the possible risk factors for developing Alzheimers as numerals on a clock face.

The big, bold numerals are the risks we have never had control over or are now well past the point where something done could have made a difference — risks such as genetic predisposition and/or family history, current age, level of education, a past history of severe or repeated head injury.

The next risks I see on this clock face are not quite so bold. Factors such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity and inactivity, hearing loss, smoking and alcohol use/ abuse, depression, social isolation, and, believe it or not, living near a busy road, or what is termed vehicle pollution. Many of these risks are lifestyle oriented, part of our everyday lives and the patterns we established over the years.

Finally I see on this clock face possible risk factors that are the equivalent of the fine print — offbeat or bizarre information or discoveries that researchers have recently uncovered. Risk factors that would never have been even considered as risks to avoid they are so unconventional.

Risks such as connections made between artificial sweeteners and dementia; gum disease and dementia; writing abilities and dementia; verbal language and dementia. And over the upcoming years I suspect more and more risk factors will come to light that will continue to throw us off base with what has been uncovered.

Five years ago it was the research relating to writing patterns and dementia that led me to abandon any quest I may still have had for answers. Specifically the research uncovered by what is commonly referred to as “The Nun Study” and what is considered, among all its findings, it’s most startling and shocking discovery.

This most startling discovery was that, with accuracy, researchers could predict which nuns in the study would end up demented in their later years. The study was able to do this by analyzing a one page autobiographical essay written by each nun when they left their convent to begin their teaching careers, at around age twenty. Certain specific autobiographical details were to be included in each essay written.

Using a measuring protocol, called idea density, when analyzing essays, from the hundreds the researchers had at their disposal, revealed this shocking conclusion.

That an essay written by a nun around age 20 would lead researchers to predict, with accuracy, which nuns would succumb to dementia five, six or seven decades later completely blew my mind, and still does. And it was low idea density scores that the researchers found were the markers in determining who would later go on to develop Alzheimer’s.

Then last October another connection between language usage and Alzheimer’s was validated with the results of a study conducted by IBM that used Artificial Intelligence to analyze the linguistic patterns in word usage of the participants in this study. Again it was found that it is possible to predict with over 70% accuracy who would go on, later in life, to develop Alzheimer’s by analyzing, with AI, the linguistic patterns of the perfectly normal people enrolled in this study.

Which brings me back to my clock face analogy. The risks around that clock face that are bold are pretty much instantly recognizable. Then there are the risks that warrant a slightly less bold presence on that clock face.

Finally there are what I consider those fine print risk factors. The ones that have the ability to catch you so off guard that you realize no amount of research on your part will ever provide you with the answers you seek. Factors you would have never dreamed in a million years could have been the ones to have put your spouse/parent at risk.

So my view on what may cause Alzheimer’s Disease goes like this. Take every single risk factor on that clock face — bold, less bold and fine print — and for every single case of Alzheimer’s there will be a different combination of those risk factors coming together that will apply to one person and one person only.

Or another way to look at it is to throw every one of those risk factors at a wall and see what sticks.