If you’re depressed now, it can cause havoc in your brain later, new research says

Here’s an understatement: life is better when we are Happy.. Positive outlook can be improved even in the most disastrous days. Of course, the ability to keep a smile in the face of adversity and everyday life is not always easy.Everyone is sometimes in a bad mood or engages in a full-fledged match depression To varying degrees.But did you know that depression is also associated with increased risk? dementia??

for example, One study Was announced in Archive of general psychiatry We conclude that depression in old age has a 70% higher risk of dementia. But what about depression early in life? Do feelings of dissatisfaction in early adulthood also increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia decades later?

That was the question Attractive new research Conducted at University of California, San Francisco We set out to answer and the results that followed were convincing. Depression is a complex condition that requires individual attention, treatment, and understanding, but the results of this study motivate all of us to find the bright side of life. Should be.

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The authors of the study report that depression in early adulthood appears to have a detrimental effect on cognitive and thinking skills for the rest of life, independent of depression at other life stages.

Even after just 10 years, people who became depressed at the age of 25 were more likely to have cognitive decline by the age of 35. In addition, the same person was more likely to experience full-blown cognitive decline by the time he was old.

In a collection of about 6,000 older people, researchers found that those who reported struggling with depression in early adulthood were 73% more likely to experience cognitive impairment in old age. bottom. Similarly, older people who dealt with depression in mid-to-late adulthood were 43% more likely to report cognitive impairment in old age.

Overall, the research team concludes that early adult depression appears to predict the onset of dementia decades later. On the other hand, maintaining a certain degree of positivity between the 20s and 30s seems to retain the protective effect against cognitive decline in later years.

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A complex set of statistical methods was adopted to predict the “average trajectory of depressive symptoms” of approximately 15,000 people of various ages. The large group was divided into three cohorts, young adults, middle-aged, and old, according to life stage.

Researchers also have other life stages, ages, genders, BMI, Education level, race, and Smoking status..

For the 6,000 older people who participated in the survey, the average age at the start of the survey was 72 years. From that point on, each person was inspected annually or semi-annually for up to 11 years.

All 15,000 study subjects were screened for depression by a 10-question survey. Symptoms of middle-aged to high depression were recorded in 13% of young adults included, 26% of middle-aged adults, and 34% of older people. Eventually, 1,277 people were diagnosed with at least some form of cognitive impairment.

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So why does depression today promote dementia tomorrow? Although uncertain yet, the authors of the study theorize that all of the extra stress hormones associated with depression actually impair the brain’s ability to form new memories.

“Several mechanisms explain how depression increases the risk of dementia,” said the first study author. Willa Brenowitz, Ph.D., MPH,of University of California, San Francisco School of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Weil Neuroscience Institute.. “In it, hyperactivity of the central stress response system increases the production of the stress hormone glucocorticoid, causing damage to the hippocampus, a part of the brain that is essential for the formation, organization and preservation of new memory. There is something that causes it. “

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“In general, we found that the greater the depressive symptoms, the lower the cognitive ability and the faster the rate of decline,” explains Dr. Brenowitz. “We have found that older people who are presumed to have moderate or severe depressive symptoms in early adulthood experience cognitive decline for more than 10 years.”

More research is needed to refine and validate these findings, but the research team found that doctors, caregivers, and therapists likewise find a strong link between depression and dementia much more often. I think we should admit and discuss.

“Future work is needed to confirm these findings, but in the meantime, we need to screen and treat depression for a number of reasons,” concludes the senior research author. Christine Jaffe, Maryland, In the UCSF Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

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