In France, nearly 900,000 people currently live with Alzheimer's disease, a number projected to rise to 1.3 million by 2020, according to Inserm estimates. A study from the University of Florida College of Medicine, published in The EMBO Journal, highlights stress as a key factor that may trigger and hasten the disease.
Researchers found that stress prompts the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (CRF), which ramps up production of beta-amyloid proteins. When these proteins accumulate excessively in the brain, they become a primary driver of Alzheimer's pathology.*
Supporting this, a 2010 study from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, published in Brain, tracked the psychological and psychiatric health of 1,415 women over 35 years. It revealed that stress significantly elevates dementia risk—by 65% compared to those without stress episodes.
This underscores the importance of stress management for brain health.
*Alzheimer’s disease involves two main lesion types: excess beta-amyloid proteins, which aggregate and damage neurons when not cleared naturally; and tau protein dysfunction, causing neuron stiffening and cognitive decline.
