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Okay.  So if you read my blog yesterday, you learned that stress erodes our memories. So now a new study is saying, using a computer and social activity helps our memory.  Huh? Keeping the brain active with social activities and using a computer may help older adults reduce their risk of developing memory and thinking problems, newswise.com reports.  Now we've known this for some time.  That's why you see people in nursing homes doing puzzles and crossword puzzles (and grabbing the nurse's skirt, do they wear skirts anymore? -- but that's for another time). The bottom line is, these kinds of activities keep the mind healthier, longer. For the study, researchers followed 1,929 people, age 70 and older, who were part of the larger Mayo Clinic Study of Aging in Rochester, Minn. The participants had normal memory and thinking abilities at recruitment to the study. They were then followed for an average of four years until they developed mild cognitive impai...

First I didn't have to worry about it.  Now it seems I do. If you keep forgetting where your keys and glasses are, you just might, after all, have the beginnings of Alzheimer's . At least, that's what a new study is saying. According to newswise.com, new research by scientists at the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging suggests that people who notice their memory is slipping may be on to something.  The study appears to confirm that self-reported memory complaints are strong predictors of clinical memory impairment later in life. Researchers asked 531 people with an average age of 73 and free of dementia if they had noticed any changes in their memory in the prior year. The participants were also given annual memory and thinking tests for an average of 10 years. After death, participants' brains were examined for evidence of Alzheimer's disease. During the study, 56 percent of the participants reported changes in their memor...

Could we be diagnosed with Alzehimer's in time to stave it off?  Well, not yet, but scientists say b rain imaging using radioactive dye can detect early evidence of Alzheimer's disease that may predict future cognitive decline among adults with mild or no cognitive impairment. As newswise.com reports, a Duke University study confirms earlier work that  identified "silent beta-amyloid plaque build-up in the brain (that) could help guide care and treatment decisions for patients at risk for Alzheimer's." “Our research found that healthy adults and those with mild memory loss who have a positive scan for these plaques have a much faster rate of decline on memory, language and reasoning over three years,” the Web site quotes lead author P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the neurocognitive disorders program at Duke. The disease currently affects an astounding 5 million people in the U.S. today and was recently moved to the head ...