By Shannon Wygant, Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) and owner of the Waterford and Walled Lake, Michigan franchises of Home Instead Senior Care.
Q. My 80-year-old mother who lives alone sometimes gets herself so worked up over things that suddenly she can’t remember anything and then become nearly incapacitated. Have you ever heard of such a behavior?
Yes, we have heard of such a condition, and research also confirms its existence. A study earlier this year from Rush University Medical Center found that people who are easily distressed and have more negative emotions are more likely to develop memory problems than more easygoing people.
In commenting about the study, author Robert S. Wilson, PhD., a neuropsychologist at Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, said: “People differ in how they tend to experience and deal with negative emotions and psychological distress, and the way people respond tends to stay the same throughout their adult lives.
“These findings suggest that, over a lifetime, chronic experience of stress affects the area of the brain that governs stress response. Unfortunately, that part of the brain also regulates memory.” An earlier study by Wilson and his colleagues showed that people who are easily distressed also are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than more easygoing people. (more…)
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