Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common type of dementia, was first discovered in 1901 by Auguste Datar, a 50-year-old woman admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Frankfurt, and clinical psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer. was first discovered by.
It affects 1 in 14 people over 65 years old, 1 in 6 people over 80 years old, and 1 in 3 people over 85 years old.
But has Alzheimer's disease always affected the population? The Bible doesn't hide the disease, but it doesn't say anything about it either. Some of our ancestors and mothers suffered from vision problems, weakness, and other physical problems at the end of their lives (Sarah does not), but there was nothing about dementia. .
A new study from the University of Southern California finds that medical texts from 2,500 years ago barely mentioned severe memory loss, and that today's widespread dementia is due to modern environments and lifestyles. Suggested.
A new analysis of classical Greek and Roman medical texts shows that the severe memory loss that occurs at epidemic levels today was extremely rare in the time of Aristotle, Galen, and Pliny the Elder, 2,000 to 2,500 years ago. It suggests that.
This research alzheimer's disease journal The title, “Dementia in the Ancient Greco-Roman World Was Rarely Mentioned,'' explains that Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are diseases caused by modern environments and lifestyles, including sedentary behavior and air pollution. This strengthens the idea that exposure to is the main cause.
“The ancient Greeks had very little mention of something like mild cognitive impairment, but we have discovered it,” said lead author and gerontologist Professor Caleb Finch. “When we got to the Romans, we found at least four descriptions that suggested a rare case of progressive dementia. We don't know if it was Alzheimer's disease. So from the ancient Greeks There was progress to the Romans.”
Historical references to memory loss
The ancient Greeks recognized that aging causes memory loss, commonly recognized as mild cognitive impairment, but also memory, language, and language problems such as those caused by Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. , he continued, has nothing comparable to a significant loss of reasoning.
Finch and co-author Stanley Burstein, a historian at California State University in Los Angeles, reviewed key parts of ancient medical texts by Hippocrates and his followers. The text lists diseases of the elderly such as hearing loss, dizziness, and digestive disorders, but does not mention memory loss.
Centuries later in ancient Rome, several references appear. Galen notes that some older people find it difficult to learn new things once they reach 80 years old. Pliny the Elder wrote that Valerius Messala Corvinus, a senator and famous orator, had forgotten his own name. Cicero carefully observed that “the foolishness of old men…is a characteristic of irresponsible old men, but not of all old men.”
The Greeks and Romans were primarily concerned with the physical frailty of old age. Professor Finch speculates that as Roman cities became denser, pollution increased, leading to an increase in cognitive decline. Additionally, Roman aristocrats used lead cookers, lead water pipes, and even added lead acetate to their wines to sweeten them, unknowingly poisoning them with a powerful neurotoxin. .
Although several ancient writers recognized the toxicity of lead-containing materials, little progress was made in addressing the problem until the turn of the 20th century. Some scholars blame lead poisoning for the fall of the Roman Empire.
In this essay, Finch did not only think about the Roman Empire or the Greeks. In the absence of demographic data from these ancient cultures, Finch turned to a surprising model of ancient aging: today's Tsimane American Indians, an indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon.
The Tsimane, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, practice a pre-industrial lifestyle, are very physically active, and have very low rates of dementia. An international team of cognitive researchers led by psychology and gerontology professor Margaret Gatz discovered this among older Tsimane people.
“The Tsimane data is serious and extremely valuable,” Finch said. “This is the large population of older adults with minimal dementia and the most evidence, all of which points to the environment as a major determinant of dementia risk. They give us a template for asking these questions.”
