Motherhood affects Alzheimer’s risk? Here’s what you need to know
Many everyday things have been proposed to cause Alzheimer’sdisease over the years deodorant, dental fillings, diet soda, and flu shots, to
name just a few. But none of these proposed causes has stood up to sustained
scientific scrutiny, and the alarm bells raised by early research have turned
out to be false alarms.
Specifically, according to NBC, “Women who had three kids
had a lower lifetime risk of Alzheimer’s than women who had one child,
researchers found.”
The implications for women who have fewer children is clear:
This decision may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease later in life.
But is this new culprit–based on an observational study of
about 15,000 women reported at the Alzheimer’s Association conference in
Chicago–any more likely to be guilty than the previous suspects?
Stephen Soumerai, ScD, Professor of Population Medicine at
Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, says it is
way too soon to know.
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