New research indicates that elderly people with depression are at a higher risk of suffering from a stroke than those that are otherwise healthy. This finding has led the researchers involved to conclude that depression can cause stroke in some way. In this study, over 7,000 patients were looked at over the course of more than two years, none of which had a history of heart disease.
The interesting thing about this particular study was that it looked at people over the course of time, and tracked depression and its symptoms. Many people recovered from their depression quickly, while some did not. If someone had depression on just one observation, they only had a 15 percent chance of a stroke. If they had depression on two visits, they had a 32 percent chance of stroke. Three visits had a 52 percent chance of a stroke. For those patients that had depression on four visits, the chances of having a stroke jumped up to 75 percent. This study made it pretty clear that pervasive depression and stroke are far more clearly connected than anyone had thought before. Some have gone on to conclude that this is a causal relationship, although that’s not quite clear yet.
One of the things that researchers have noted in the past is that the likelihood of depression goes up as we age. This could be for a number of reasons, but one theory states that depression is much like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. It can happen to anyone, at any age, but the longer we are alive, the more opportunities there are for it to come into play. If this is the case, then there’s a chance that the link between depression and stroke could be coincidental. But researchers on this current project did find that depression was often the precursor to stroke, and that takes away some of the likelihood of this above theory.
What’s more likely is that those that are depressed do not do as good of a job of taking care of themselves, and as we age, this can have worse and worse effects. A healthy 25 year old that doesn’t take care of themselves because of depression might find that it takes over a decade before there are physical effects. A healthy 65 year old that stops taking care of themselves will see ill effects much more quickly, maybe even within the course of a year or two. This is why it’s so important that we do all that we can to help our loved ones stay healthy, both physically and mentally. In addition to getting them to their doctors’ appointments, there are a number of things that you can do to help them. You can find them a great in-home care service to help take the burden off of them and provide companionship to them. This might not seem like a lot, but it is a huge deal. Sometimes, depression can be exacerbated by having too much on your plate. Sometimes, being isolated all day can do the same thing. A caregiver can help with both of these things, and may even decrease the odds of suffering from depression.
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