Researchers say
certain personality traits, like jealousy, worry, anxiety and anger, can double
a woman’s chances of developing Alzheimer’s
We are familiar with many of the brain-related factors
that can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease—letting thinking networks go
inactive, putting off exercise and healthy eating, having few social
connections, enduring head injuries and genetic factors. But what about
personality? Can the way you look at the world affect your risk of developing
the neurodegenerative disorder?
Dr. Ingmar Skoog, professor of psychiatry and director of
the research center on health and aging at the University of Gothenburg
believes the answer is yes. In a paper published in the journal Neurology, he
and his colleagues show that women with certain personality characteristics in
middle age were twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s nearly 40 years later.
“Getting Alzheimer’s disease is some sort of sum of a lot
of different damages to the brain, and different things happening to the
brain,” he says. “[Personality] is one of them.”
Specifically, a suite of features linked to what mental
health experts call neuroticism showed the strongest connection to Alzheimer’s.
Study authors defined neuroticism as being easily distressed and exhibiting
personality traits such as anxiety, jealousy or moodiness. People with this
personality style are more likely, they said, to express guilt, anger, envy,
worry and depression.
Skoog and his colleagues tapped into a database of health
information involving 800 women who were 38 years to 54 years old in 1968, when
they filled in personality questionnaires and agreed to come in periodically to
evaluate their cognitive functions. The personality evaluation placed women on
a spectrum of neuroticism and extraversion; those showing more neuroticism
included women who reacted more emotionally to events and experiences, worried more,
showed lower self-esteem and were more likely to express jealousy, guilt and
anger. Those who were more extroverted showed high levels of trust,
gregariousness and fewer emotional peaks and valleys.
At each of the four follow ups over the next 38 years,
the women reported their stress levels—and women with higher neuroticism scores
consistently showed higher levels of stress than those with lower scores. Being
introverted or extroverted alone did not seem to affect dementia risk, but
women who were both easily distressed and withdrawn (introverted) had the
highest risk of Alzheimer's among all women analyzed. One-quarter of them
developed the disease, compared to only 13 percent of those considered outgoing
(extroverted) and not easily distressed.
Skoog believes that stress is the linchpin between the
personality traits and Alzheimer’s dementia; previous studies have connected
stress to dementia, and he says that the neuroticism characteristics are highly
correlated to stress. “It seems like the personality factor makes people more easily
stressed, and if people are more easily stressed, then they have an increased
risk of dementia,” he says.
What’s more, when he controlled for the effect of stress,
the association between neuroticism and Alzheimer’s disappeared, strengthening
the idea that personality may lay a foundation for being more vulnerable to the
effects of stress. Higher stress, particularly if it is persistent as it is
with certain personalities, can bathe the brain in hormones like cortisol.
Those can damage blood vessels and cells in the brain that can then make
Alzheimer’s more likely.
The results hint that people can lower their risk of
Alzheimer’s not just by keeping the brain active and improving social
connections, as earlier work suggests, but by addressing stress-related
personality factors as well. That, however, may require being aware of your
later Alzheimer’s risk as early as during childhood, when personalities are
forming. “Personality is something that occurs early in life, but you may be
able to do something about it,” says Skoog. Especially when it comes to stress
and how people respond to stress, interventions such as psychotherapy, for
example, can help people to cope in healthier and less harmful ways.
He does not believe that addressing stress and traits
like jealousy and worry alone will protect a person from developing
Alzheimer’s, but, he says, “it’s important to try to find as many factors as
you can that contribute to common disorders. The more factors we can do
something about, the more we can reduce risk quite substantially.”
The study author Lena Johansson, a researcher at
University of Gothenburg, said she believes the results would also be true for
men. But study data -- pulled from research that began in the 1960s -- happened
to include only women in an era when few medical studies focused on females.
Sources and
Additional Information:
