It’s estimated that two thirds of Alzheimer’s patients are postmenopausal women, and new evidence suggests that chronic stress might be a risk factor.
Alzheimer’s disease, a type of dementia that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, occurs when neurons in the brain become damaged and lose connections to each other. It can be caused by a combination of age-related changes in the brain, environmental factors, genetics, and even lifestyle choices.
Some of these factors like smoking, obesity, and unmanaged high blood pressure have all been shown to lead to a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s, but the research connecting stress and Alzheimer’s has long been based on the assumption that women’s brains are identical to men’s.
Until now. Leading neuroscientist and women’s brain health specialist, Lisa Mosconi, PhD, along with a team of researchers examined the relationship between cortisol levels — a marker of chronic stress — and Alzheimer’s risk.
The findings, recently published in Scientific Reports, looked at roughly 300 people in midlife, 79 percent were women and the average age was 51. Among women, 40 percent were postmenopausal, including 8 percent of whom were in surgical menopause. About 22 percent reported taking menopause hormone therapy.
They specifically tested for the different impacts stress has on the brain in women versus men, and found that cortisol affects the brain differently depending on gender.
In women, higher cortisol levels were more strongly linked to reduced brain energy metabolism, particularly after menopause, and to Alzheimer’s plaques. In other words, the higher the stress levels a woman reported the more likely she was to suffer from cognitive decline.
But men’s cortisol had stronger associations with brain development and cellular energy utilization in some regions. The research also found that women were more susceptible to stress-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical burnout syndrome.
And menopause was a key player. Menopause is a neurological change, and depending on the stage of menopause (pre-menopause, perimenopause, and post-menopause), the brain structure and neural connectivity, as well as energy metabolism, undergo unavoidable changes. This coupled with the stress levels women reported contributed to a greater risk of memory loss and cognitive decline that could lead to Alzheimer’s.
“In a nutshell, this research highlights the importance of stress reduction in our daily lives, especially for prevention,” Mosconi said in an Instagram post. “I hope it will inspire many of you to take good care of your beautiful brains, both before and after menopause.”