Breaking News Round-Up
Chronic loneliness is not only unpleasant, it actually poses a threat to our wellbeing.
We know this.
In a 2022 Informed Aging podcast episode, geriatrician Dr. Rosemary Laird discussed how disconnection impacts older adults.
The following year, we learned that the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy considers isolation as dangerous as “smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.”
His 82-page report, published in 2023, specifically highlights the connection between solitude and cognitive decline.
“Chronic loneliness and social isolation can increase the risk of developing dementia by approximately 50% in older adults, even after controlling for demographics and health status,” the report reads. “A study that followed older adults over 12 years found that cognitive abilities declined 20% faster among those who reported loneliness.”
And, in October, a study examining over 600,000 participants showed that secluded individuals were 31% more likely to experience dementia symptoms.
“The team’s work was spurred by the World Health Organization and U.S. Surgeon General, who declared loneliness a public health crisis in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated social restrictions,” a Florida State University press release states.
But now, a George Mason University study is examining how artificial intelligence can identify and mitigate isolation among Care Partners.
“The study aims to construct predictive models for social isolation, adapt them for Medicare claims data, and simulate their application across large populations,” a press release states. “The goal is to create a framework for AI-based interventions to address loneliness among caregivers effectively.”
Consumers concerned about developing dementia could soon get the answers they crave using their nose.
Columbia University researchers determined that, when coupled with a memory test, an exam involving smell can effectively determine the likelihood that an individual will develop dementia, a university press release states.
“The results demonstrated that combining the Brief Smell Identification Test (BSIT) and the Blessed Information Memory Concentration Test (BIMCT) was as effective in predicting cognitive decline and dementia as amyloid imaging, a widely used but expensive method,” that release reads.
Dr. Davangere P. Devanand, who helmed the study, said that the research shows that another path to interrupting progression exists, and that taking it could yield a larger pool of clinical trial participants.
Dementia diagnosis can be impacted by what time the blood is drawn, new research shows.
The University of Surrey investigation showed that biomarkers peaked in the evening, although it is unclear what causes the variations.
“This work shows the importance of considering the time of day when taking clinical diagnostic samples and how the clinical picture for an individual may be affected by varying sample times,” said Dr. Ciro della Monica, who was the study's lead author. “By standardizing the time of day that a sample is taken, the diagnosis of dementia and tracking disease progression can become more accurate.”
In a Town & Country interview, Bruce Willis’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, told Katie Couric how life has changed since her husband’s 2023 frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.
Emma is now a fierce advocate for people impacted by FTD— sharing education and her story with her 948,000 Instagram followers (she even completed Spencer Cline’s #pedalforSpencer bike ride), and contacting legislators.
“I’m writing a book for caregivers right now,” she told Couric. “It’s not just about how to care for your loved one, it’s about how to look after yourself in the process… This book is about all the emotions that come with caregiving: the sadness, the grief, how traumatic it is, but also resentment and anger, and all these emotions that you’re not allowed to talk about. It’s the book that I wish I had been handed when we got the FTD diagnosis.”
A couple weeks prior to the article’s publication, Willis’s ex-wife, Demi Moore, offered a health-update during the Hamptons International Film Festival.
“You know, I’ve said this before. The disease is what the disease is,” she said. “And I think you have to be in real deep acceptance of what that is. But for where he’s at, he is stable… When you show up to meet them where they’re at, there is great beauty and sweetness.”
Emma expressed gratitude for her blended family.
“They’re very supportive, very loving, and very helpful, and a lot of people don’t have that.”