Health, Mental Health, Women's Health
As a woman in her fifties I give a lot of thought to my future health. I’m fully aware of how exercise and healthy eating will have an effect on my body long term. I am careful about the foods I eat and use supplements which I believe will benefit my heart.
What I don’t give any thought to is the healthy state of my brain. Should this vital organ fail me my life could be a complete misery. What has prompted me to get the grey matter thinking is that more women than men suffer from dementia. Out of the 800,000 people currently living in the UK with dementia two thirds of them are women.
One in three people over the age of 65 will develop one of the many brain diseases. Alzheimer’s disease is the most commonly known and prevalent. Research has been carried out over a number of years into the reasons why so many people succumb to this illness, yet we still haven’t found a cure.
The starling fact is that although there are more women than men suffering dementia the research carried out is on men. Research shows that men and women’s bodies do not react in the same way to illness. The female heart attack is different to the male, and stroke victims behave differently depending on their sex. Most laboratory studies have been carried out on male rats because the female rats are considered too complex!
Many diseases have specific causes so scientists look for factors that appear to be linked to the development of a disease. These are ‘risk factors,’ and if they are present there is an increased chance, but not a certainty, that disease will develop. They are characteristics of the person, lifestyle, environment, and genetic background that can contribute to the likelihood of getting a disease. Risk factors on their own do not cause disease, but scientists believe that Alzheimer’s disease is caused when there are too many risk factors. The brain becomes overwhelmed and its natural self-repair mechanism fails. This reduces the brains ability to maintain healthy nerve cells.
As daughters, mothers, wives and carers this is a frightening prospect. More needs to be done to not only find a cure, but also to find out if there are ways in which our lifestyle is contributing to the increasing numbers of people being diagnosed with the disease.
Future predictions are that by 2051 the number of people in the UK suffering from Alzheimer’s will have almost doubled. It’s hard to imagine 1,700,000 people needing care, especially when it is currently costing society £23bn, excluding the work done by family carers.
Some of us talk about these issues and some of us get out there and tackle the problem. One such woman is Lynn Posluns, former president of a Canadian clothing chain, Lynn is the driving force behind the Women’s Brain Health Initiative. Lynn said “Collectively we are more powerful than any generation of women before us. We want to know why we are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s and what we can do to maintain our physical and mental wellness as we get older.”
Raising money for research and awareness throughout the world the Initiative has already attracted funding from major companies in Canada and will be looking at research projects to support in the UK in the future.
Read Lynn Posluns article in the Huffington Post here and please visit the Women’s Brain Health Initiative website for more information.
The Daily Mail article is also worth reading here.
Women’s Brain Health Initiative
