The way a person reacts to a stressful daily event would have negative impacts on their cognitive performance in the long term.
It is well known that stress is bad for your health. Prolonged and chronic it can cause various afflictions ranging from diabetes to cardiovascular diseases through depression or even schizophrenia. But according to a new American study published in October in the journal in Psychosomatic Medicinea high level of stress could even have negative impacts on cognitive abilities in the long term.
To reach this conclusion, Robert Stawski, associate professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University, and his colleagues followed 111 seniors aged 65 to 95 in life-threatening situations. stressors of daily life in order to observe how their brain reacts. For 2.5 years, the researchers subjected the participants to various memory tests, also asking them to recount the stressful events to which they and their loved ones had been exposed during the day. The seniors also had to rate their negative and positive emotions during the stressful moment via an intensity scale and describe the physical symptoms felt at those times.
Overall, the scientists found that those who reacted worse to everyday stressors took longer to answer questions, so they had more difficulty concentrating than those who didn’t. In detail, the participants most affected by stress were those aged 70 to 95, the group with the lowest cognitive performance.
Listening to a stressful event
On the other hand, the 60-70 year olds reacted rather well to stress, the latter even seeming to be beneficial to their mental health. “These relatively young participants have a more active lifestyle and advantages of social and professional commitments, which undoubtedly helps them to sharpen their mental performance”, advances Robert Stawski in the study.
The latter therefore recommends that older seniors pay more attention to their reactions to daily stressors and try to reduce their anxiety as much as possible in order to preserve their mental capacities as they age. “It could improve their mental health in the long term,” he says.
And to conclude: “These results prove that people’s daily emotions and the way they respond to stressors play an important role in mental health. It is not stress itself that contributes to mental decline but how a person responds to it.
Today, 13% of the world’s population is 60 or older.
According to the United Nations, in 2017, about 962 million people were aged 60 and over, or 13% of the world’s population. With this rate increasing by about 3% per year, by 2050 a quarter of the populations of all continents except Africa will be aged 60 and over. Moreover, during this same period, the number of people aged 80 or over is expected to increase from 137 million to 425 million. It will eventually reach 909 million by the year 2100. However, the oldest populations are the most likely to be affected by Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
This month, a German study published in The British Journal of Psychiatrythere also made a link between stress and mental retardation. According to these researchers, anxiety is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.
“Anxiety is likely to damage the brain directly through ongoing stress and indirectly through the lack of physical activity it engenders,” they noted. Thus, according to them, people who present both anxiety and depressive symptoms run a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. “Anxiety related to personality traits should be taken seriously from an early age, as it could be a modifiable risk factor for future dementia”, they deduced, encouraging to break the vicious circle in which many seniors fall. who are worried about losing their minds.
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