Author: Katherine Hignett / Source: Good News Network
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Thinking positively about aging might significantly reduce a person’s risk of dementia, a new study has found—even for people with one of the strongest genetic risk factors.
Researchers from Yale University and the National Institute on Aging studied nearly 5,000 people aged 60 and older, over a period of four years, and discovered those who held negative beliefs about aging were far more likely to develop dementia.
The team assessed their test subjects’ perceptions about various aspects of old age by asking how strongly they agreed or disagreed with statements like “The older I get, the more useless I feel.”
The results were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.
According to the study, one of the strongest dementia risk factors is the ε4 variant of the APOE gene. One quarter of the U.S. population carries this variant, but only 47 percent of carriers develop a related brain disease. The new study is the first to analyze how cultural beliefs…
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