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<\/p>\nAlzheimer\u2019s disease (AD) \u2013 the most common type of dementia \u2013 was first discovered by clinical psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer who described a 50-year-old woman, Auguste Deter, in a Frankfurt psychiatric hospital in 1901.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the Western society, it affects 1 in 14 people over the age of 65, one in every six people over the age of 80, and one in three in people aged 85 and older.<\/p>\n
But did AD always affect the population? The Bible<\/em> \u2013 which doesn\u2019t hide illnesses \u2013 has no mention of it; some of our forefathers and foremothers suffered from vision problems, weakness, and other physical problems at the end of their lives, but nothing about dementia.<\/p>\n Medical texts from 2,500 years ago rarely mention severe memory loss, suggesting today\u2019s widespread dementia stems from modern environments and lifestyles, according to a new study at the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n A new analysis of classical Greek and Roman medical texts suggests that severe memory loss \u2013 occurring at epidemic levels today \u2013 was extremely rare 2,000 to 2,500 years ago, in the time of Aristotle, Galen, and Pliny the Elder.<\/p>\n The research, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease<\/em> under the title Dementia in the Ancient Greco-Roman World Was Minimally Mentioned<\/em>, bolsters the idea that Alzheimer\u2019s disease and related dementias are diseases of modern environments and lifestyles, with sedentary behavior and exposure to air pollution largely to blame.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ancient Greeks had very, very few \u2013 but we found them \u2013 mentions of something that would be like mild cognitive impairment<\/em>,\u201d said first author and gerontologist Prof. Caleb Finch. \u201cWhen we got to the Romans, and we uncovered at least four statements that suggest rare cases of advanced dementia; we can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s. So, there was a progression going from the ancient Greeks to the Romans<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Historical mentions of memory loss<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAncient Greeks recognized that aging commonly brought memory issues we would recognize as mild cognitive impairment) but nothing approaching a major loss of memory, speech, and reasoning as caused by Alzheimer\u2019s and other types of dementia<\/em>\u201d, he continued.<\/p>\n Finch and co-author Stanley Burstein, a historian at California State University in Los Angeles, pored over a major body of ancient medical writing by Hippocrates and his followers. The text catalogs ailments of the elderly, such as deafness, dizziness, and digestive disorders, but makes no mention of memory loss.<\/p>\n Centuries later, in ancient Rome, a few mentions crop up. Galen remarks that at the age of 80, some elderly begin to have difficulty learning new elements. Pliny the Elder notes that the senator and famous orator Valerius Messalla Corvinus forgot his own name. Cicero prudently observed that \u201celderly silliness is characteristic of irresponsible old men, but not of all old men<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n The Greeks and Romans were mainly concerned with the physical frailties of older ages. Finch speculates that as Roman cities grew denser, pollution increased, driving up cases of cognitive decline. In addition, Roman aristocrats used lead cooking vessels, lead water pipes and even added lead acetate into their wine to sweeten it \u2013 unwittingly poisoning themselves with the powerful neurotoxin.<\/p>\n A few ancient writers recognized the toxicity of lead-containing material, but little progress was made in dealing with the problem until well into the 20th century. Some scholars blame lead poisoning for the fall of the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n For this paper, Finch didn\u2019t just think about the Roman Empire or the Greeks. In the absence of demographic data from these ancient cultures, Finch turned to a surprising model for ancient aging \u2013 today\u2019s Tsimane Amerindians, an indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon.<\/p>\n The Tsimane \u2013 like the ancient Greeks and Romans \u2013 have a preindustrial lifestyle that is very physically active, and they have extremely low rates of dementia. An international team of cognitive researchers led by psychology and gerontology Prof. Margaret Gatz made research among older Tsimane people.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Tsimane data, which is serious, is very valuable<\/em>,\u201d Finch said. \u201cThis is the best-documented large population of older people that have minimal dementia, all of which indicates that the environment is a huge determinant on dementia risk. They give us a template for asking these questions.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n yogaesoteric <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alzheimer\u2019s disease (AD) \u2013 the most common type of dementia \u2013 was first discovered by clinical psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer who described a 50-year-old woman, Auguste Deter, in a Frankfurt psychiatric hospital in 1901. In the Western society, it affects 1 in 14 people over the age of 65, one in every six people over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1372],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studies-4260-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147460,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147456\/revisions\/147460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFebruary 11, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n