Middle-aged people are too sad, they may really become stupid
In the eyes of Singularity Cake, young people can be divided into three types, ordinary, literary, 2... I'm sorry to take it into an old script again. According to the current classification, it should be Buddhist, mourning and sunshine? Of course, Singularity Cake considers itself to be a Schrödinger system. It has all three qualities. Humans are such complex animals.
However, among the three departments, Qidian Cake does not like the funeral department so much. Although life can be hard sometimes, and all kinds of negative emotions are inevitable, it is not always a good thing to be mourning all the time. Like... it might not be good for the brain.
Recently, a new study by a team from University College London found that middle-aged and elderly people are in "Repetitive Negative Thinking" (RNT) for a long time, which may be related to cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease (AD). of harmful proteins deposited in the brain.
In other words, always mourning can be silly! ! !
This study conducted multi-dimensional evaluations such as cognitive function assessment and PET scans on 360 middle-aged and elderly people over 55 years old who had a higher risk of AD than the general population, and confirmed the relationship between repeated negative thinking and AD risk for the first time [ 1]. The paper is published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia.
Picture 1 (Picture on Pixabay)
Some studies in recent years have preliminarily confirmed that depression, anxiety and other negative emotions are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease [2-3], but from the perspective of thinking process, these emotions are more like a "final" The end product" is not necessarily the real man behind the scenes.
The "repeated negative thinking" mentioned in this study, that is, RNT is a relatively new term. It is also called perseverative cognition. It mainly includes continuous reflection on what happened in the past and the future. There are two sides to constant worrying, and the focus is on the thought process that produces the emotion.
To put it simply, it is easy to be immersed in the past, or always worry about the future, which belongs to the category of RNT, and such a thinking mode also has a forming process. Like negative emotions, RNT can theoretically be changed.
However, it is first necessary to prove that RNT is really a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, which is why this study was conducted. The study team recruited participants in two groups, most from the "Alzheimer's Disease Prevention" cohort, who were all over the age of 55 and had one parent or at least two siblings with a history of AD.
Dementia feels worse than just getting old
(Picture on Pixabay)
Of this group of participants, 113 underwent brain PET scans, followed by another 68 participants who had all received PET scans, which were used primarily to assess the brain Deposition status of endoamyloid and tau proteins.
Whether the participants have RNT thinking patterns and whether they have negative emotions such as depression and anxiety were confirmed by filling out questionnaires. In addition, the research team also evaluated the patients' cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and spatial cognition. aspect of the situation.
An analysis of cognitive function, brain PET scans, and questionnaires led to the conclusion of this study: During the four-year follow-up, the more severe the participants' RNT, the greater the correlation between cognitive function and cognitive function. The faster the memory decline, the greater the likelihood of amyloid and tau deposits in the brain!
This figure shows the relationship between RNT and cognitive function and memory decline. The more severe the RNT represented by the numbers, the more obvious the decline.
In contrast, if participants only experienced negative emotions such as depression or anxiety, it was only associated with cognitive function and memory decline, but not with AD-related protein deposition suggested by brain scans. APOE genotype, age and other factors will not affect the main conclusions of the study.
In the paper, the research team believes that this unique way may involve the body's stress regulation pathways, such as increased blood pressure, glucocorticoid regulation, etc. These regulation methods may also be associated with AD pathogenesis, such as affecting amyloidosis Protein and tau protein deposition [4].
As for how RNT affects the pathogenesis of AD, more follow-up explorations are definitely needed, and some experts say that this study cannot determine the causal sequence between RNT and AD pathogenesis, and it is possible that harmful proteins appeared first. Deposition and cognitive decline, followed by RNT.
In any case, it is always right to take care of those elderly people who live alone at home during the epidemic and have been greatly affected on the psychological level. As for young people like Qidian Cake? Don't be sad, sunshine, Tomorrow is another Day!
References:
1.Marchant N L, Lovland L R, Jones R, et al. Repetitive negative thinking is associated with amyloid, tau, and cognitive decline [J]. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2020.
2.Diniz B S, Butters M A, Albert S M, et al. Late-life depression and risk of vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease: systematic review and meta-analysis of community-based cohort studies[J]. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2013, 202(5): 329-335.
3.Pietrzak R H, Lim Y Y, Neumeister A, et al. Amyloid-β, anxiety, and cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer disease: a multicenter, prospective cohort study[J]. JAMA Psychiatry, 2015, 72(3): 284-291.
4.Sotiropoulos I, Cerqueira J J, Catania C, et al. Stress and glucocorticoid footprints in the brain—the path from depression to Alzheimer's disease[J]. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2008, 32(6): 1161-1173.
5.https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/07/health/negative-thinking-dementia-wellness/index.html
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