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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn’t seem to posit one single cause, but anecdotally, the people in my family with dementia were women. One got it from smoking. Three others had Alzheimer’s. The one who had it least bad was the one who had a job other than housewife

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“Women have a greater risk of developing dementia during their lifetime. The main reason for this is thought to be because women live longer than men. Age is the biggest risk factor for dementia so living longer means that the risk of developing it is greater.”

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/blog/why-dementia-different-wo...

Unfortunately my mom developed dementia in her late 60s. Not exactly old. I’ve wondered if covid triggered the onset. Her husband was/is a covid denier though he had it three times and almost died once. My mom never had a bad case of Covid, but was exposed many times.

Women are twice as likely as men to get Alzheimer's.

The two current prevailing theories are, both of which focus on the amyloid hypothesis are

1) menopause changes in grey matter reduce the glymphatic systems ability to flush metabolic waste from the brain

2) sleep loss during child-rearing and menopause result in increased amyloid load, which begins the cycle of reduced ability of the glymphatic system to remove waste from the brain.

I know someone is going to come in complaining about the amyliod hypothesis, but it is unlikely to be "wrong", it is just incomplete. We are likely lumping multiple different diseases together under the label of Alzheimer's because we don't understand the disease well enough yet.

Interestingly, research, including UK biobank data with massive sample sizes, has proven many times that childless women are at considerably higher risk for dementia and Alzheimer's than women with 1-4 children.

I hadn't seen that. I'll take a closer look. Thanks

> sleep loss during child-rearing and menopause

The prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea is much larger in men than in women. If sleep loss were the only factor we probably would see greater dementia incidence in men, due to long-term chronic sleep loss from OSA.

Do you have anything that shows the link to sleep disorders and menopause? And if you happen to know, does that apply to artificial menopause, where the organs have been removed, and then you go through menopause directly afterward?

In my family it’s the other way around. It’s very worrisome that both my father and grandfather had dementia.

Same here. It's like a specter always one step behind me.

I've not seen air pollution mentioned yet. We've passed peak air pollution and generally research keeps revealing it to be worse than we thought for a variety of diseases you might not immediately link it to, like heart disease and stroke.

Some of the research on gas stove pollution noticed an uptick in problems for women and linked it to them being closest to poorly operating kitchen burners (and burning food particles themselves might be a factor).

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-world-has-proba...

Glancing at the data for the US this seems to go the opposite direction, ramping to a peak in the 60-70s when I'd assume most damage in early years and/or working age.

Though perhaps local and widespread air pollution are not following the same trajectory.

Not just air pollution at large but specifically we are practically sunsetting diesel engines in most developed urban centres.

I can't find a quote but one trivia bit from 'diesel gate' is that the execs were aware of the neurotoxicity of NO2 and other substances that were found in higher concentration in diesel exhaust.

How do you get dementia from smoking?

"Smoking increases the risk of vascular problems (problems with the heart and blood vessels). These vascular problems are also linked to the two most common forms of dementia: Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia.

Toxins in cigarette smoke also cause inflammation and stress to cells, which have both been linked to Alzheimer's disease."

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/managing-the-ri...

thanks for this link: they're interesting to mid 50s me, who never smoked, but whose dad did smoke for decades, and his memory started failing late 80s, i'd never seen it. useful link.

I don't know how you determine causality of dementia. But smoking leads to poor heart and lung health and function, and that's got to have follow on effects on brain health. And there's correlation linking smoking to dementia [1]. So, I think it's fair to say grandma smokes a lot who had dementia got it from smoking even without a specific link.

[1] https://www.heart.org/en/news/2021/07/06/smoking-harms-the-b...

The vascular damage seems to be the main suspect. But I also wonder if smoking causes poor sleep due to it being a stimulant. Poor sleep leads to dementia.

How was smoking identified as the cause’s of dementia in the individual you mention?

one got it from smoking, and the other 2 got it from not smoking

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