The Myth of Senility

by Dennis Green

It was once thought that everyone who lived long enough, past 70, would begin to suffer senility, especially forgetfulness. We know now that Alzheimer’s is a disease that not everyone has or gets, along with other forms of dementia. Young children can be tested and show signs of forgetfulness and may well carry the gene for Alzheimer’s.

So the aging brain is not as simple as we once thought. And although most of us older citizens have moments of forgetfulness, when that synapse for recalling the name of someone or something just won’t fire off, chances are that in a few more minutes it will. Patients with dementia lose whole big blocks of memory and recall which don’t come back, ever.

Scientists and care givers see an “epidemic” of Alzheimer’s because more people are living past 70 and into the years when its usual onset occurs. Early onset Alzheimer’s is still somewhat uncommon, but might begin to affect humans as young as 5-7 years of age.

The old question of course persists: Is such a disease genetic or environmental? And the evidence so far suggests that it is almost entirely genetic in origin. But we don’t yet know whether its genetic properties are even dominant or recessive, whether it can be inherited from only one parent, or must be reinforced by genetic determinates from both.

I was hoping for the recessive gene, because, while my mother, in her late 80s now, suffers from a form of non-Alzheimer’s dementia, my father was very clear headed until he died at the age of 90. But now evidence is emerging of another factor that is not genetic at all.

Researchers now believe that prolonged periods of high blood pressure, such as my mother suffered in her fifties, can cause scarring in the veins and arteries and the blood vessels that feed the brain. Later in life, this scarring can impede the flow of blood, and cause the gradual death of some brain cells farthest from the source of oxygen-rich blood supply. This damage then results in various degrees of non-Alzheimer’s dementia — what we might once have called “senility.”

Before I submitted to bypass surgery, I insisted that they do a sonogram of my carotid arteries, those big arteries running up my neck and providing blood to my brain. I had heard that blockage in arteries to the heart is often accompanied by blockage of the carotids, and I didn’t want to be saved from heart failure only to suffer a massive stroke. One carotid was blocked about 40%, not enough for concern but enough for me to want to keep my cholesterol and inflammation under control.

Because of my own health problems, and family, inherited diseases such as kidney stone formation, I take a keen interest in all these subjects. When DNA testing becomes a little more affordable, I will have it done, and by then the genes for dementia may be known, and I’ll ask to know everything. What cannot be prevented can at least be prepared for in various ways, if only to steel oneself against the inevitable, or the probable.

Senility may be a myth, but aging is certainly not!

©2010 Dennis Green