Study connects low social engagement to amyloid levels and cognitive decline

How is your doctor making sure you have the ability to stay socially engaged even after your stroke? ANYTHING AT ALL? 100% recovery would be the best solution but I know your doctor will fail at that. I joined numerous Meetup groups. Of the various stroke support groups I attended most were of the 'Woe is me' and useless. The one good one had us bowling every week and I became quite proficient with a number of 200+ games. You do expect your doctor to have protocols to prevent your cognitive decline and chance of dementia, don't you? Or are you giving a pass to your possibly incompetent doctor?

Study connects low social engagement to amyloid levels and cognitive decline

Summary: An association has been discovered between cognitive decline and social engagement in older adults. Older people who are less socially active have a greater accumulation of amyloid beta and increased cognitive decline over a three-year span, compared to more socially active peers.
Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Social relationships are essential to aging well; research has shown an association between lack of social engagement and increased risk of dementia. A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that higher brain amyloid-β in combination with lower social engagement in elderly men and women was associated with greater cognitive decline over three years. The results of the study were published last month in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
“Social engagement and cognitive function are related to one another and appear to decline together,” said senior author Nancy Donovan, MD, chief of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at the Brigham. “This means that social engagement may be an important marker of resilience or vulnerability in older adults at risk of cognitive impairment.”
The investigators sampled 217 men and women enrolled in the Harvard Aging Brain Study, a longitudinal observational study looking for early neurobiological and clinical signs of Alzheimer’s disease. The participants, aged 63-89, were cognitively normal, but some individuals showed high levels of amyloid-β protein, a pathologic hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease detected with neuroimaging techniques.
The investigators used standard questionnaires and examinations to assess participants’ social engagement (including activities such as spending time with friends and family and doing volunteer work) and cognitive performance at baseline and three years later.