Can Alzheimer's Disease be Prevented?
Introduction
These days, it seems that newspapers, magazines, and TV are full of stories about ways to stay healthy, eat right, and keep fit. Lots of people are concerned about staying healthy as they get older. They wonder whether they can do anything to prevent diseases that happen more often with age, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). AD has no known cure, and the secrets to preventing it are not yet known. But research supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and other public and private agencies offers tantalizing clues about the origins and development of AD. These findings are raising hopes that someday it might be possible to delay the onset of AD, slow its progress, or even prevent it altogether. Delaying by even 5 years the time when AD symptoms begin could greatly reduce the number of people who have the disease.
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The National Institute on Aging, part of the Federal Government’s National Institutes of Health, has primary responsibility for research on AD and age-related decline in cognitive abilities (such as thinking, decision-making, and language skills). This responsibility is part of a larger mission to understand the nature of aging and find ways to help people stay physically, emotionally, and cognitively healthy for as long as possible.
Several years ago, NIA, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke launched The Cognitive and Emotional Health Project, which has begun to identify and describe the diverse lifestyle factors that possibly affect the emotional health and cognitive abilities of older adults. Further research on the most promising factors will be necessary to determine whether any will result in strategies that can help people remain mentally and emotionally vibrant as they age. The hope is that successful strategies will also contribute to our knowledge of what goes wrong in the brain during the development of neurodegenerative diseases like AD. |
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