And the saga continues...

... but... does this mean permanent afib only? Or does it mean everybody? I hate these articles that aren't clear.

PETEY! Calling PETEY!

Everything can cause AF and AF evidently can cause everything. Crazy stuff. :/

I just want to make 65 or even better over.

One things for certain, a stroke can lead to early thinking problems. It seems to me that finding a definitive source of one's dementia would be hard to do. Throughout our lives we're exposed to many things that pose a risk and then there's genetics. I'm a firm believer in challenging the mind on a daily basis to keep it firing on all cylinders.

Just a guess...but I think it is referring to persistent a fib. I suppose that the more time one spends in a fib, the more risk of negative effects on the brain.

.......except, it says, 'rapid' irregular heart beat. That makes me think of uncontrolled. That could/would be paroxysmal before taking a PIP.

I qualify for that~

I really think the study was poorly executed. They didn't even separate who had hypertension and who didn't. What's wrong with these people. Okay, so anyway, I synopsized what I thought was most important in the article. I also, in the second paragraph, distilled down the important stuff... how important blood pressure and just getting older affects dementia. So, let's put it all in perspective... people, according to the study get dementia 2 years earlier. While hypertension does not need a sudy to determine how it affects dementia, they did need a study to determine how afib affects dementia. It could be just the hypertension in that part of the afib population has it (because the afib population is more likely to have hypertension). I also believe those that don't treat their hypertension and afib (because maybe they don't know they have either) are hammering their brains the most. My takeawy: controll your BP, treat your afib, keep your mind active, and put these studies in perspective. The guy that did the study always wondered about the conection according to the article... looks like he had the answer bvefore the study. In the immortal words of Fred Sanford: "You big dummy! You didn't even check for hypertension in those that had earlier onset of dementia." petey

As they aged, people who were diagnosed with Afib developed dementia two years earlier on average, at age 85, compared with age 87 for people without Afib. People who developed Afib in the study were more likely to have other heart conditions, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, and heart failure. It's possible that any or all of these heart conditions influence brain function. One of the reasons people with atrial fibrillation get cognitive decline may be due to small blood clots in the brain. Taking blood thinners may help, like they help prevent a stroke. Atrial fibrillation is often a result of high blood pressure, so controlling high blood pressure may be a way to avoid both atrial fibrillation and the associated earlier dementia.

If the cardiologist's warnings do not scare you, consider this: Controlling blood pressure just might be the best protection yet known against dementia. The longer people spent with uncontrolled high blood pressure, the more white matter damage they accumulated. Age is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia that affect about one in eight people 65 or older.
"We show herein that the presence of hypertension predicts progression to dementia in a subgroup of about one-third of subjects with cognitive impairment, no dementia," they conclude. "Control of hypertension in this population could decrease by one-half the projected 50-percent five-year rate of progression to dementia."

BTW, the second paragraph is from a different article. I didn't proofread the post, so there are many misspellings and fat fingered errors.

petey

So you think it's more from untreated high blood pressure... I hope you're right. I'm not ready to be in a wheel chair drooling in the hall of a nursing home.

Good points Petey. Lots of factors to try to sort out.
So I guess we play the cards we're dealt and just try to control the things we can (B/P, etc)
and enjoy life as much as possible.