Stress in middle age could trigger memory loss as women get older

WOMEN who go through stressful experiences in middle age can suffer memory loss later in life.

Divorce, job losses and children leaving home can all cause enough anxiety to trigger the issues, a study suggests.

The research found that those who were badly affected by the midlife stress were worse at remembering lists of words a decade later.

But it was not the case for men, with researchers suggesting stress hormones may have a stronger effect on women’s brains.

More than 900 men and women were asked if they had suffered a stressful life experience such as a divorce, death of a loved one, illness or retirement in the previous year.

They were then tested around ten years later, being read a list of 20 words and asked to recall as many as they could immediately and again 20 minutes later. Among the group who had gone through a stressful event, women recalled one word fewer than men on average. By comparison the difference between the sexes in the group of men and women who had suffered no stress was only half a word in favour of the men.

The researchers also asked those taking part in the study whether they had suffered a traumatic event such as a physical attack.

They found that these did not affect a person’s memory – suggesting it is long-term stress rather than a single event which causes the loss.

The study’s lead author Dr Cynthia Munro, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said: ‘A normal stress response causes a temporary increase in stress hormones like cortisol and, when it’s over, levels return to baseline and you recover.

‘But with repeated stress, or with enhanced sensitivity to stress, your body mounts an increased and sustained hormone response that takes longer to recover.

‘We know if stress hormone levels increase and remain high, this isn’t good for the brain’s hippocampus – the seat of memory.’

The study, published in the international Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, found no link between stress in earlier life and memory in either women or men – only if they had reported the stress in the past year.

Dr Munro added: ‘We can’t get rid of stressors, but we might adjust the way we respond to stress, and have a real effect on brain function as we age.’

The study’s authors stressed that further research would be needed to prove a link between stress and memory problems later in life

Previous studies have linked stress in middle age to the development of dementia later in life.

Researchers at Gothenburg University in Sweden found in 2010 that the risk of dementia more than doubled in middle-aged women who had suffered decades of stress from work, health, family or other problems.

‘Bad for brain’s seat of memory’