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Bad news for Boomers — 26 Comments

  1. Perhaps we Baby Boomers are the first generation in this age category steeped in the internet, which does not foster thought, careful reading and retention of memory skills.

  2. So many of us are overweight or obese. Blood sugar appears to have a strong correlation to Alzheimer’s. This can affect even those who are slim but have a sugar addiction, like a dear friend of mine now in the latter stages of dementia.

  3. Can’t imagine weed in middle and late adolescence DIDN’T have an effect. I mean, smoke this stuff to mess with your brain and. nothing long term will happen?
    That said, it doesn’t take a whole lot of people to pull down mean and median if they have a substantially bigger deficit than earlier cohorts showed.
    So perhaps heavy weed users are paying their dues.

  4. OR, someone is playing with the statistics, perhaps to establish the myth that we have all gone goofy and can’t trust our reasoning. Think how many of the young a–holes accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being senile. Of course I trust “science”. However, I do not trust everyone who calls him/herself a scientist.

  5. I’m too smart to have cognitive decline. And too handsome. And too charming. And I’m gonna lose some weight this time, for sure.

  6. I second Richard Aubrey’s comment. That was the first thought that came to me when I read that. I knew several people way back in my college years that were showing decline from excess marijuana.

  7. Wha … huh … Joe Biden is brilliant and will be one of our greatest Presidents …

    Now what makes you think my conginitivity is declining?

  8. “I knew several people way back in my college years that were showing decline from excess marijuana.”

    I can’t possibly be the only Boomer who never touched weed. I think that reading Aldous Huxley in high school (The Doors of Perception as well as Brave New World) inoculated me against experimenting with drugs. My chosen high was classical music, which doesn’t seem likely to cause cognitive decline in anyone.

  9. I have a feeling hearing loss from blasting music plays a role. Hearing keeps your mind active. When you can’t hear well, you back away from social interactions, which also keep your mind active….And the weed, of course.

  10. ” I think earlier generations were tougher, and the weak were winnowed out earlier.” – Neo

    That’s what I would theorize. How many of the war-dead, or victims of polio & flu etc., would have developed dementia in their old age?
    Also, in general, people (as a statistical whole) live longer, giving Alzheimer’s a larger cohort to show up in.
    The marijuana and acid didn’t help, though.

    My mother (who did not go into mental decline before succumbing to pneumonia incident to cancer) had two jokes on the subject.
    The first was that she didn’t have Alzheimer’s yet, but she definitely had Half-heimer’s.

    The second was about her greatest fear in growing old. Our family GP was a long-time friend who had gone to school with both my parents. She told me that some day she expected Dr. Joe to turn to Dad and ask what he wanted to do with “Alice” and Dad would say, “Alice who?”

    (Alice is not her real name, which is somewhat rare.)

  11. My guess is that it’s simply a poorly designed study, much like the studies “proving” that hydroxychloroquine is useless and dangerous. Read the first comment on the article by a neuroscientist. These studies need to be replicated before they can be taken seriously.

  12. Hui Zheng, a PhD. sociologist, is the sole author of the paper cited by Neo.
    perhaps I should say “a mere sociologist” since I view the discipline, such as it is, with distaste.
    I remember my long-ago college days, when I asked a classmate why he was going to be the sole major in “Soc”; he answered, “Because it is the only major with which I can get the grades to graduate.”

    I wonder in my Chinaphobia whether Zheng is even a US citizen.

  13. To the degree that it’s true, I wonder how much can be attributed to our reliance on technology to “remember” for us? At 50, I have only three phone numbers memorized: my cell, my mother’s cell and my husband’s cell (and his only because the numbers are sequential and easy to remember). I have to stop and think to remember my home landline. My phone is my “brain”. It keeps track of all my contacts, my appointments, my conversations. It makes phone calls for me and automatically logs me into my accounts. All of the interesting knowledge I used to keep in my head is now at my fingertips on Google. In recent years I have begun to realize that I am asking less and less of my own faculties. I make almost no effort to memorize things; I simply note them in my phone. I also notice that while I have no difficulty focusing for long periods when I am reading a (physical) book, working on a craft or having an in-person conversation, I have the attention span of a fruitfly when reading online. It’s too easy to click the next link when I lose interest. Having discussed it with others, I know that I am not the only one to note this. Like anything else, if you don’t exercise your brain, it deteriorates. I am concerned that if I don’t start making some radical changes in my use of technology, I am going to experience a serious mental decline in the no longer distant future.

  14. I cannot help but turn to Kate’s comment: “So many of us are overweight or obese. Blood sugar appears to have a strong correlation to Alzheimer’s. This can affect even those who are slim but have a sugar addiction, like a dear friend of mine now in the latter stages of dementia.”

    An elevated blood sugar, aka uncontrolled type II diabetes, does not cause Alzheimer’s, any more than hair turning grey does. Alzheimers and type II diabetes increase with age, but that is all, no causation of one by the other. Now, serious, repetitive and sustained low blood sugars can knock off neurons, but that is precisely contrary to your claim.
    And enjoying sugar is not an addiction, merely because you disapprove of your friend’s enjoyment!
    A “sugar addiction” is not a physiologic addiction. Your slim demented friend became demented for reasons that have nothing to do with her fondness for sweets. How is her family history re dementia?

  15. “I can’t possibly be the only Boomer who never touched weed.” — PA Cat

    Well, here’s two for sure (me and AesopSpouse), plus our combined 6 siblings that I’m quite sure about.
    I could add in some cousins (well, except for one) and friends from college that I’m also confident of, and some other friends made later in life ditto.
    Pretty sure my cohort is not unique.

    Maybe that’s enough “righteous people in Sodom” to forestall total destruction.

  16. Jennifer R on August 5, 2020 at 9:22 pm said:
    To the degree that it’s true, I wonder how much can be attributed to our reliance on technology to “remember” for us?
    * * *
    It’s an old debate.
    https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept13/2013/09/29/socrates-writing-vs-memory/

    ocrates: Writing vs. Memory
    Posted on September 29, 2013 by Janet AuCoin LeBlanc
    In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates calls into question the propriety and impropriety of writing. Throughout his discussion with a colleague, Socrates insists that writing destroys memory and weakens the mind (Ong, 2002). To support his theory, Socrates recounts a story in which two Egyptian gods, Theuth and Thamus, debate the merit of introducing ‘letters’, or writing, to the people. Theuth argues that the ‘letters’ “…will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is specific both for the memory and for the wit.”(Plato, n.d.). In response, Thamus states that ‘letters’ “… will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls…” (Plato, n.d.). Thamus believed that the people would become dependent on the written word and cease to use their own memories. He also believed the written word would lead people to become “hearers of many things”, appear as though they were all-knowing, but to actually be learners of nothing. With the extension of the written word into both mass-produced print and digital formats, and observation of our tech-reliant society, it appears that Thamus’ beliefs may have had an element of truth.

    And on that other topic about memory, whatever it was, I forget…
    https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/the-effects-of-marijuana-on-your-memory

    Cannabis contains varying amounts of the potentially therapeutic compound cannabidiol (CBD), which may help quell anxiety. However, there’s no question that marijuana (the dried flowers and leaves of the cannabis plant) can produce short-term problems with thinking, working memory, executive function, and psychomotor function (physical actions that require conscious thought, such as driving a car or playing a musical instrument). This is because marijuana’s main psychoactive chemical, THC, causes its effect by attaching to receptors in brain regions that are vital for memory formation, including the hippocampus, amygdala, and cerebral cortex. The extent to which long-term use of marijuana (either for medical or recreational purposes) produces persistent cognitive problems is not known.

  17. Cicero, her mother had it as well, so there’s that. I am obviously affected by having read Gary Taubes’ “War on Sugar.” There’s no direct causation which can be proved between cancer, dementia, and sugar, which Taubes acknowledges.

  18. Sorry, make that “The Case Against Sugar.” He’s right about carbs. It’s possible he’s wrong about sugar.

  19. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition used to say that the only two vitamins that seniors need to emphasize in their diets were cobalamin (B-12) and D. The NEJM said once in an editorial that seniors should always try B-12 if they had any undiagnosed neurological problem. The metabolism of D has been intensively investigated in the last 10 years or so and we find a large number of folks are deficient…mostly because of sun avoidance and northern living.

    Autism and its spectrum is perhaps another clue. In the latest Science magazine assessment these disorders are now being found on 1/59 births; and WHO says 1/50 births…both world wide. One large Texas study showed a strong correlation between areas of environmental pollution and ASDs. And there are lots of mutations associated, but none are very or highly associated with the disorder. So we have a quandary in etiology but most researchers believe there is some world wide exposure to something toxic that is causing ASD. Of course similar mechanisms could be involved with dementia.

    I have wondered personally about whether we could be harming ourselves by breathing in nano particles of asphalt—worldwide—or maybe similar erosive nano particles of automobiles and truck tires. They wear out and particles go somewhere. But we really do not know. We could be getting neural damage from some widely used food like coffee or food additive like sodium benzoate.

    I think molecular biology tools will figure this stuff out
    pretty soon.

  20. In fact, living for a really long time is next. This is a great conversation topic. Fun.

  21. An elevated blood sugar, aka uncontrolled type II diabetes, does not cause Alzheimer’s, any more than hair turning grey does.

    Maybe not Alzheimer’s specifically, but dementia. There is lots of evidence for this. High blood sugar causes blood vessels in the brain to deteriorate. Here, for example.

    I think earlier generations were tougher, and the weak were winnowed out earlier.

    It’s certainly true that a much higher percentage of us are making it to old age, and being kept alive by modern medicine with conditions that might have killed us in a previous generation, and now just result in dementia. A natural thing to study would be whether the increased cognitive decline is there once you control for other health conditions.

  22. I attend a 12-Step meeting every day that currently meets in a park, because of Covid-19. Some days I am the only male who doesn’t arrive on a Harley. The meeting has an average age over 70, and I don’t own a motorcycle because of a bad fall 30+ years ago. It doesn’t do anything good for your brain–helmets are not magic.

  23. Marijuana and other illegal drugs aren’t the only things many Boomers have ingested. I’m convinced diet soda with aspartame along with the many other chemicals in food have contributed to my parents’ rapid decline. They aren’t technically Boomers (born in ’41 and ’45), but still partook of the explosion of junk food over the past several decades.

  24. I’m a boomer and leaning toward the seed oils with excess linoleic acid. I try to never have them in my diet (soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil). with all this Covid stuff I do all my own cooking and carry lunch to work rather than going out or doing take-out. I lost a couple lbs and feel much better.

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