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Message: [QUOTE="diggerfoot, post: 2236199, member: 1673"] In a sense it is all of the above, but the news is not as bad as that may make it seem. Alzheimer's got tagged as such because Dr. Alzheimer discovered a person with dementia symptoms early (51 I believe) who had a pathology called beta-amyloid plaques. Since then Alzheimer's was considered to be dementia symptoms caused by those plaques. Narrowly defined, perhaps, but the most common cause of dementia symptoms nonetheless. However, people with such plaques have lived long lives without dementia symptoms, while people get dementia symptoms without those plaques (in which case it's not considered Alzheimer's even if the symptoms are virtually the same). Diabetes, poor blood flow, immune deficiencies, aluminum toxicity and other problems have led to dementia symptoms similar to Alzheimer's. The commonality to all this that I've noted and is becoming more of a research focus: oxidative stress, a problem with metabolism where there are free radical electrons wreaking havoc. Many things cause oxidative stress and, in turn, oxidative stress manifests itself in different problems. You can have a genetic predisposition for amyloid plaques, in which case you also are predisposed to Alzheimer's. Perhaps a pill can cure that someday, likely stopping early onset of the disease, yet one still might get dementia if one's quality of life is such to cause oxidative stress. On the other hand, if you have an exemplary quality of life (like the famous nun study, but a difficult task in our stressful society) you potentially can avoid dementia symptoms even if no "cure" is ever found for Alzheimer's. To also address Broadway's concern, you could have a hereditary predisposition in other ways besides amyloid plaques. To the extent that high blood pressure is hereditary in a family, you might see evidence of this for what is known as vascular dementia, unless intervening generations are better able to combat the effects of that. On the other hand, caregivers are six times more likely to get dementia. The reason obviously has to do with environment rather than being hereditary, with a caregivers quality of life taking a nosedive. It explains why the dementia might occur in a husband and wife team. The latter is why I've kept a blog on our journey. A caregiver does not have to get dementia as well, as long as they are conscientious about maintaining a high quality of life for both caregiver and patient, but that involves so much more than simply eating healthy. Here's my latest post on what I call the [URL='http://www.humanityhiker.com/wellness-pyramid-brain-maintenance/']Brain Maintenance level of the wellness pyramid[/URL]. Hope this helps you or someone, I truly do. Be well. [/QUOTE]

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