menopause, Alzheimer's & eating for retirement

“In the next three minutes, 3 people will develop Alzheimer’s. Two of them will be women.”

As neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Mosconi says in her article, “Alzheimer’s and Women’s Health, an Urgent Call,” while women account for two-thirds of Alzheimer’s cases, little is being done to understand why simply being a woman significantly increases your risk of developing the disease.

Dr. Mosconi is Associate Director of the Weill Cornell Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic, where she and her colleagues are working to understand this critical – and critically overlooked – piece of women’s healthcare.

Team genneve came across this story because Dr. Mosconi and others have linked Alzheimer’s disease with menopause. They postulate that as estrogen levels subside in a woman’s body as she ages, so do its neurological protections.

As Dr. Mosconi puts it: “In straight talk: menopause causes metabolic changes in the brain that seem to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”

“In straight talk: menopause causes metabolic changes in the brain that seem to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Fortunately, as Dr. Mosconi has helped identify the problem, she has also helped point to some powerful solutions. Exercise and nutrition, she says, can play a significant role in preventing cognitive decline.

In Part 1 of her podcast with genneve CEO Jill Angelo, Dr. Mosconi explains the mechanism behind menopause and Alzheimer’s risk. Come back for Part 2, where she discusses how women can protect their brains as they age.

Learn more about Dr. Mosconi, the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic, and how you might participate in their research. If you want to start nourishing your brain (“eating for retirement,” as Dr. Mosconi puts it), get your hands on a copy of her fascinating and very readable book, Brain Food: the Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power.

For a full transcript of this conversation, join us at genneve.com.

For further reading on nutrition and your health: check out how your gut flora affects your brain power and, now that you’re going to eat so much better, how to give up sugar.