Adults over age 65 who expertise imaginative and prescient loss have an almost 50 p.c elevated threat of creating dementia. If these imaginative and prescient issues are corrected, that threat drops dramatically.
That’s in response to a report revealed final week by a global fee centered on dementia prevention, which added imaginative and prescient impairment to its listing of 14 whole modifiable threat elements for dementia. Different threat elements embody smoking, diabetes, social isolation and hypertension.
Consultants say the addition of imaginative and prescient loss shouldn’t be a shock, significantly on condition that one other sensory impairment — listening to loss — has been linked to dementia and can also be on the listing.
Right here’s what we learn about how even gentle to average imaginative and prescient and listening to impairment enhance the danger for dementia, and what to do about it.
How Sensory Loss Might Contribute To Dementia
Individuals with sensory loss have much less enter coming into their brains. Mind tissue is “use it or lose it,” so much less stimulation might result in extra atrophy, mentioned Gill Livingston, a professor of psychiatry at College Faculty London, who led the dementia prevention fee.
The world of the mind that processes auditory info is near the area most affected by Alzheimer’s illness, suggesting there could also be an anatomical connection. Visible info is fed into one other a part of the mind, however how we use that info prompts many various areas.
