Can anxiety disorder lead to neuronal cell death and then dementia, parkinsons etc?

[peace800]

Studies have linked long term stress to nerve cell death and also nerve protein build up which leads to alzheimers. That is scary. So if you have had an anxiety disirder for years you are destined for those diseases?

Stressed people are more likely to get alzheimers due to brain changes according to those studies. This is very worrying!

[Rennie1989]

That's nonsense. No such link exists. Anxiety does not stress the brain or nerve cells at all. The only stress anxiety causes, and I'm talking very long term anxiety of constant adrenaline rushes, is adrenal exhaustion and depression.

[inCOGnito]

Do you have a link to any of these studies?

[peace800]

Here is a link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/chronic-stress-alzheimers-cause_n_2885419.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/chronic-stress-alzheimers-cause_n_2885419.html)

another link

http://www.nextavenue.org/article/2012-04/alzheimers-and-stress-new-study-reaffirms-link (http://www.nextavenue.org/article/2012-04/alzheimers-and-stress-new-study-reaffirms-link)

and another

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/06/29/could-stress-lead-to-dementia-yes-but-read-this-before-you-panic/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/06/29/could-stress-lead-to-dementia-yes-but-read-this-before-you-panic/)

a final link

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314085049.htm (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314085049.htm)


This is very worrying.

[nomorepanic]

The answer is don't get so stressed out. I keep telling people on here to go with the flow and not stress over things. There is no point worrying so much!

[steveo]

Not overly bothered. The beauty with alzheimer's and dementia is that you don't know you have it.

I also don't find the study to be overly conclusive. The study was done in mice and not humans. It didn't show a direct link between sufferers of neurological disorders and stress.

Have a look at the abstract instead of reading how an online news article has chosen to word it. It holds as much truth as the classic Daily Mail cancer scare stories.

If I can take one thing away from my nursing degree, it's that I now am able to not take what I read as gospel and I'm able to critic the research.