From: unk...@googlegroups.com   
      
   How Moodiness and Jealousy May Lead to Alzheimer's   
   Alice Park @aliceparkny  Oct. 1, 2014     
         
   Researchers say certain personality traits, like jealousy, worry, anxiety and   
   anger, can double a woman's chances of developing Alzheimer's   
      
   We're familiar with many of the brain-related factors that can contribute to   
   Alzheimer's disease--letting thinking networks go inactive, putting off   
   exercise and healthy eating, having few social connections, enduring head   
   injuries and genetic factors.    
   But what about personality? Can the way you look at the world affect your risk   
   of developing the neurodegenerative disorder?   
      
      
   Dr. Ingmar Skoog, professor of psychiatry and director of the research center   
   on health and aging at the University of Gothenburg believes the answer is   
   yes. In a paper published in the journal Neurology, he and his colleagues show   
   that women with    
   certain personality characteristics in middle age were twice as likely to have   
   Alzheimer's nearly 40 years later.   
      
   MORE: New Research on Understanding Alzheimer's   
      
   "Getting Alzheimer's disease is some sort of sum of a lot of different damages   
   to the brain, and different things happening to the brain," he says.   
   "[Personality] is one of them."   
      
   Specifically, a suite of features linked to what mental health experts call   
   neuroticism showed the strongest connection to Alzheimer's. Skoog and his   
   colleagues tapped into a database of health information involving 800 women   
   who were 38 years to 54    
   years old in 1968, when they filled in personality questionnaires and agreed   
   to come in periodically to evaluate their cognitive functions. The personality   
   evaluation placed women on a spectrum of neuroticism and extraversion; those   
   showing more    
   neuroticism included women who reacted more emotionally to events and   
   experiences, worried more, showed lower self esteem and were more likely to   
   express jealousy, guilt and anger. Those who were more extroverted showed high   
   levels of trust,    
   gregariousness and fewer emotional peaks and valleys.   
      
   MORE: New Insight On Alzheimer's: What Increases Your Risk   
      
   At each of the four follow ups over the next 38 years, the women reported   
   their stress levels--and women with higher neuroticism scores consistently   
   showed higher levels of stress than those with lower scores.   
      
   Skoog believes that stress is the linchpin between the personality traits and   
   Alzheimer's dementia; previous studies have connected stress to dementia, and   
   he says that the neuroticism characteristics are highly correlated to stress.   
   "It seems like the    
   personality factor makes people more easily stressed, and if people are more   
   easily stressed, then they have an increased risk of dementia," he says.   
      
   What's more, when he controlled for the effect of stress, the association   
   between neuroticism and Alzheimer's disappeared, strengthening the idea that   
   personality may lay a foundation for being more vulnerable to the effects of   
   stress. Higher stress,    
   particularly if it's persistent as it is with certain personalities, can bathe   
   the brain in hormones like cortisol. Those can damage blood vessels and cells   
   in the brain that can then make Alzheimer's more likely.   
      
   MORE: Scientists Are Getting Closer to a Blood Test for Alzheimer's   
      
   The results hint that people can lower their risk of Alzheimer's not just by   
   keeping the brain active and improving social connections, as earlier work   
   suggests, but by addressing stress-related personality factors as well. That,   
   however, may require    
   being aware of your later Alzheimer's risk as early as during childhood, when   
   personalities are forming. "Personality is something that occurs early in   
   life, but you may be able to do something about it," says Skoog. Especially   
   when it comes to stress    
   and how people respond to stress, interventions such as psychotherapy, for   
   example, can help people to cope in healthier and less harmful ways.   
      
   He doesn't believe that addressing stress and traits like jealousy and worry   
   alone will protect a person from developing Alzheimer's, but, he says, "it's   
   important to try to find as many factors as you can that contribute to common   
   disorders. The more    
   factors we can do something about, the more we can reduce risk quite   
   substantially."   
      
      
   http://time.com/3452627/jealousy-anxiety-alzheimers/   
      
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