The Newly Uncovered Causes Of Cognitive Decline In The Baby Boomers
A recent research paper, published in mid-2020, put forth a groundbreaking discovery in the mental capacity of one segment of America's elders. Now, experts are scrambling for answers: Are these newfound intellectual damages reversible, and perhaps most importantly, what are the causes and effects of such a cognitive decline?
Origin of the Study
At Ohio State University, associate professor Hui Zheng, PhD, is constantly asking questions. He's authored papers like "Do the Health Benefits of Marriage Depend on the Likelihood of Marriage?" and his past and current research concerns health and economic prosperity in the United States.
Field of Interest
More specifically, Dr. Zheng likes to focus on inequality and disparity among demographics in the United States, and how those uneven playing fields are intertwined with aging, health, and socioeconomic factors like income and opportunity. One aspect of the field really stands out to him.
Mental Deterioration
Because of his interest in the aging and mortality process, Dr. Zheng is drawn to cognitive aging — or how our minds deteriorate and shift as we get older. This unique subject formed the basis for his most recent inquiry.
Good Trend
While studying data, Dr. Zheng noticed that the widespread problem of dementia seemed to have lessened in the past few decades. Seeing this good news, his interest was piqued, and he dove into research to determine the cause for the trend.
Starting the Process
He began pulling data from seventy years of American birth brackets, beginning with data on adults from the Greatest Generation, and ending with data from the baby boomer generation, as they are the youngest age bracket able to be considered elderly.
Health Improvements
At first, Dr. Zheng was optimistic. Over the years, a decrease in dementia rates has been attributed to higher education and better health, as well as better treatment for ailments like cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Older people are increasingly able to stay sharp and active.
Reasoning
Since modern medicine and access to education continues to improve worldwide, both in developing and fully-developed countries, it would make sense that dementia's prevalence would continue to decline. And, at first, that's what Dr. Zheng found in his data.
Crunching Numbers
To conduct the research, Dr. Zheng pulled a dataset of results from over 30,000 older Americans, all of whom took a survey from the University of Michigan called the 1996 to 2014 Health and Retirement Study. Anyone over the age of 51 was surveyed every two years.
Specific Data
As part of the survey, participants had been asked to perform a series of brain tests, which would assess their cognitive function. Some of these tasks involved recalling words, naming objects, and counting backwards from 100 in increments of seven.
Improving Cognitive Function
Starting with the Greatest Generation, who were born between 1890 and 1923, cognition scores on the survey increased from one age bracket to the next. And by the "war babies" bracket, whose members were born between 1942 and 1947, cognitive function had reached a new peak.
Strange Reversal
Then, something happened. Instead of seeing continued improvement in cognitive function, Zheng found that survey results from the next two generations — the early baby boomers, born 1948-1953, and the baby boomers, born 1954-1959 — showed worrisome cognitive decline.
Bad Sign
He was shocked. After decades of continually improving brain function, something was undoing all of the progress. The boomers were slipping. Moreover, the cognitive decline was spread across the entire generation, and couldn't be pinpointed to any one subset.
Blanket Change
Zheng said that boomer "men and women, across all races and ethnicities and across all education, income and wealth levels," were suffering. Whatever had happened to cause such an impact on participants' brains had been fairly indiscriminate.
Comparisons
Concerned, he looked into other studies on baby boomer health. When it came to mortality rates and physical illnesses, their generation had seen an overall increase in sickness and death compared to older generations; however, wealthy and highly educated boomers were mostly spared from the increase.
No One Spared
But in the 1996-2014 Health and Retirement Study, wealth and education didn't seem to prevent cognitive decline. Zheng noticed that even though the rich and intellectual boomers experienced a less steep decline, they too were affected.
Possible Answer
The perplexing question remained: what had been the cause of such a blanket reversal of mental progress? He scoured the data for answers, and eventually found a social correlation that proved interesting.
Link
Although the declining cognitive function couldn't be linked to childhood conditions, education, or occupation, it could be linked to personal troubles. Survey takers experiencing depression, loneliness, and inactivity had a greater likelihood of showing cognitive decline.
Other Factors
In addition, lower household wealth — when compared to peers in the same wealth bracket — was correlated to cognitive dropoff. Other correlating factors included obesity and a lower likelihood of being married.
Stress
It seems as though the one thing these linked factors have in common is personal stress. Unhappiness and worry take a sharp toll on your brain function, so it makes sense that they'd take a long-term toll and lead to the possibility of dementia down the road, even if you manage to have a peaceful retirement...
Later Life
However we choose to spend retirement – by keeping active with hobbies and volunteering or simply enjoying the time we have left with our respective families – most of us want to live to ripe old ages. Rose Marie Bentley was fortunate enough to get that chance.
Passing On
You see, the resident of Molalla, Oregon, was 99 years old when she died – reportedly of natural causes. Upon Bentley’s passing in October 2017, she also left behind five adult children as well as, no doubt, some precious memories. And not only had the mom lived longer than many, but she had also packed many incredible experiences into her decades on Earth.
Shocking Discovery
For one, Bentley and her husband had enjoyed the freedom that had come with retirement by traveling around the U.S. And right up until the senior died, there didn’t appear to be any major problems with her health, either. So, taking that into consideration, no one could’ve predicted what the medical students discovered in March 2018.
Another Health Hurdle
“[Bentley] was always very healthy,” her daughter explained. “She was always doing something, taking us to Camp Fire Girls, fishing [or] swimming. She was an excellent swimmer.” But as it turned out, Bentley had to overcome another hurdle in order to enjoy those activities – and yet again, it was all to do with her health.
Operation Issue
For some reason, Bentley suffered from bad heartburn that she was unable to shift. Aside from this ailment, though, she appeared to be fit and well ahead of an operation in later life. At that time, the mom was scheduled to have her appendix taken out in what should have been a standard procedure. Yet the physician concerned with the op ultimately encountered a strange problem.
Misplaced Organs
Louise Allee – who was the youngest of Bentley’s girls – told CNN, “The surgeon made a note that [my mom’s] appendix wasn’t in the right spot when they took it out. But [they] never said anything to us. Nobody said a thing when they took her gallbladder out and [later] did a hysterectomy, either.”
Not Slowing Down
Bentley didn’t share anything untoward about her health with her family, either. And any issues she may have had didn’t stop her from opening up a local business with husband James. The Bentley Feed Store provided supplies for both pet owners and farmers in the Molalla area.
Hitting The Road
Then, when Bentley and her spouse reached retirement back in 1980, they decided to go traveling together. In fact, the pair went on to visit every state in the U.S. before fitting in some overseas trips, too. It was quite a way to celebrate their freedom from the world of work.
Donating Body
Meanwhile, as many older people do, Bentley and James both started to think about what would happen following their deaths. And after reading a Robert Test poem, James ultimately decided that he would put plans in place to donate his body to science. In fact, such was his passion for the matter that his wife showed an interest in following suit.
Inspiring Poem
Allee recalled to CNN, “There was a poem that my dad found, and it was all about donating your [body] parts. You know, ‘Give my eyes to a man who has never seen the sunrise’ and the like. He kept showing us the poem. It was really important to [him and my mom].”
Following Her Husband
So, when James died in 2004, the OHSU Body Donation Program took him in. Bentley then went on to live without her husband for the next 13 years until 2017. And in October of that year, she also passed away, leaving a grieving family in her wake.
Anatomy Lesson
From that point, Bentley’s body was moved to OHSU, where it remained until March 2018. Then, finally, the 99-year-old’s cadaver was brought out for a group of medical students as part of an anatomy lesson. Perhaps no one in the class could’ve predicted what would happen next, though.
Opening The Cadaver
With the cadaver resting on the table, Warren Nielsen and his fellow students were tasked to cut open the torso. Then, after that, they needed to look over Bentley’s heart. Yet within a few moments of making the incision, Nielsen noticed something really quite bewildering about the vital organ.
Missing Vessel
Talking to CNN in April 2019, Nielsen revealed, “Bentley’s heart was missing a large vein that’s normally on the right side. We asked our teachers, ‘Where’s the inferior vena cava? Are we missing it? Are we crazy?’ And they kind of rolled their eyes. Like, ‘How can these students miss this big vessel?’” But as it turns out, the trainees had a point.
Totally Backwards
“And then the teachers come over,” Nielsen continued. “And that’s when the hubbub starts. They’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this [vena cava] is totally backward!’” Now, a normal vena cava is situated on the right of the body; the vein also usually “curves” beneath the liver and carries blood up to the heart.
Bizarre Path
In Bentley’s case, though, her vena cava was on the opposite side. And it didn’t end in the regular place, either. As the university’s Professor Cameron Walker explained to CNN, “[Bentley’s] vein continued through her diaphragm, along the thoracic vertebrae, up and around and over the aortic arch and then emptied into the right side of her heart.”
More Curiosities
Walker added, “Normally speaking, none of us have a vessel that does that directly.” Then, following that surprising discovery, the group took a closer look at the inside of Bentley’s body. And as it turns out, there were further curiosities to be found. Not only was part of the woman’s heart abnormally large, but her right lung was also missing a lobe.
Going Lower
Certain veins in Bentley’s torso weren’t in the right places, either. And Walker and the students were in for another shock when they examined the lower half of her body. You see, many of her other vital organs were positioned abnormally.
Inverted Organs
“Instead of having a stomach on the left, which is normal, [Bentley’s] stomach was on the right,” Walker told CNN. “Her liver, which normally occurs predominantly on the right, was predominantly on the left. Her spleen was on the right side instead of its normal occurrence on the left. And then the rest of her digestive tract, the ascending colon, was inverted as well.” So what had caused this all to happen?
Genetic Condition
Well, Bentley had been suffering from an ailment known as situs inversus with levocardia throughout her life – although she hadn’t known it. This genetic condition usually manifests itself when a fetus is between 30 to 45 days old in the womb and causes the positions of its organs to become inverted.
Extremely Rare
But situs inversus with levocardia is actually incredibly rare, with only one in 22,000 people being born with the condition. And, unfortunately, it can also lead to heart disease – the reason why only 13 percent of sufferers at most survive beyond their fifth birthdays.
Longest-Survivor
But luckily for Bentley, she faced no such problems before her passing – other than that incessant heartburn. Existing medical records show, too, that someone else lived with the condition for 73 years ahead of their death in 1991. At that time, this individual was deemed to be the “second-longest survivor” of situs inversus with levocardia in history.
Unforgettable Lesson
To Walker, though, Bentley’s case would be tough to top. He said, “I think the odds of finding another person like [Bentley] may be as remote as one in 50 million. I don’t think any of us will ever forget it, honestly.” And the professor’s thoughts on the matter didn’t end there.
Posthuman Impact
In April 2019, you see, Walker also spoke to U.K. newspaper The Guardian about Bentley’s unusual anomalies. And over the course of the conversation, he claimed that thanks to her condition, the 99-year-old had made an impact even in death.
Critical Case
“This is an important case,” Walker told the publication. “[It] really gave us an opportunity to talk about the importance of future clinicians paying attention to subtle anatomic variations – not just large anatomic variations – in terms of addressing their future patients as individuals. Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Change In Outlook
Nielsen, too, was affected by what he saw that day at OHSU. Yes, the student went on to share his feelings during a talk with the college’s website in April 2019, and apparently his entire outlook on medicine had changed after examining Bentley’s body.
Learning Variation
Nielsen explained, “We were able to not only learn normal anatomy, but also all the anatomic variation that can occur. I grew to appreciate how [Bentley] was able to live as long as she did. It made me wonder who she was. The experience has me looking forward to caring for patients and being able to apply what I’ve learned from her.”
Stunned Family
But as Nielsen and Walker shared their astonishment with the world, Bentley’s family were just as surprised. After all, they’d had no idea about their mother’s condition prior to her passing. That said, Allee told OHSU that her mother may have appreciated being of real use to those medical students.
Proud Mama
“My mom would think this was so cool,” Allee said to the university’s website as she reflected on everything that had transpired. “She would be tickled pink that she could teach something like this. She would probably get a big smile on her face, knowing that she was different but [had] made it through.”
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