High Blood Pressure Linked with Dementia and Alzheimer’s

Although there are many steamy summer days remaining, the nearer we creep towards August, the closer we get to the back to school rush.  In a few weeks, high school athletes will begin try-outs for fall sports and parents are busy getting equipment ready and making appointments for physicals.  But kids are not the only ones who should make time for an annual physical or check up with their doctors; older adults can benefit from keeping a close eye on their health and especially their blood pressure.

A new public health campaign out of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke is urging people with high blood pressure to control their hypertension with regular exercise, stopping smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and eating a balanced diet.  Controlling high blood pressure not only reduces the risk for stroke, it can lower the chances of developing dementia in older age.

According to a recent NPR Your Health report, checking your blood pressure is important not only to prevent vascular dementia, when blood flow to brain cells is reduced or blocked, but also to lower the risk for Alzheimer’s disease.  Tiny blood vessels in the brain can be damaged when the heart must push too hard as a result of high blood pressure.  Higher blood pressure readings are also linked with a higher number of tangles in the brain, the twisted fibers within neurons, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.   

Hypertension is also associated with lesions in the brain.  According to a recent study by the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago, published in the journal Neurology, with each standard deviation in blood pressure above the group average, the risk for developing one or more lesions rose 28 per cent.

Recent studies have also found that if you have had a stroke, even a small one, the risk for dementia in the following two years is significant.  Even with all these warnings, high blood pressure, a risk factor for stroke, is only treated in about 50 per cent of cases.   Controlling high blood pressure with diet, exercise and in some cases medication can reduce your risk for not only stroke and dementia but also heart failure, vision loss, heart attack, kidney disease and sexual dysfunction.

Learn more about the risk of dementia as a result of high blood pressure by following this link to the National Institute of Health website.