Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging

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Report Finds Risks of Developing Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases Can Be Dramatically Reduced [PDF]

October 23, 2008 – Boston, MA – Environmental factors are key drivers in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, according to the authors of a new report, Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, released today.

Importantly, the report demonstrates that the risks for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be dramatically reduced.

It offers the most comprehensive review of the currently available research on the lifetime influences of environmental factors on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, two of the most common degenerative diseases of the brain. These influences include common dietary patterns, toxic chemical exposures, inadequate exercise, socio-economic stress and other factors. These influences can begin in the womb and continue throughout life, setting the stage for the later development of neurodegenerative as well as other chronic diseases.

In addition, the report describes the substantial emerging evidence that, collectively, these environmental factors alter biochemical pathways at the cellular and subcellular levels. These alterations fuel Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, as well as other chronic illnesses referred to in the report as the 'Western disease cluster'– diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. Each of these diseases in turn increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. This collection of diseases is being driven by dramatic alterations over the past 50 to 100 years in the U.S. food supply, an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, and exposure to toxic chemicals.

The full report, Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, is published jointly by Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Science and Environmental Health Network and is available online at: www.agehealthy.org.