Sel Yackley is a busy woman.
She makes jewelry, sings in a choir and weaves hats and scarves for homeless people. Also read with your reading club, go to the gym several times a week and is active in several civic organizations. According to his fitbit, he still manages to sleep an average of 7½ hours per night.
At 85, Yackley is a “superager.” That is, someone who is 80 years old or more and retains the memory capacity, based on the delayed words withdrawal test, of a person at least two to three decades younger.
Dr. M. Marsel Mesulam, who founded the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s disease at the Northwestern University Faculty of Medicine University at the end of the 1990s, defined a surgery for the first time. The investigators of the center of Mesulam reflected on a study of a supply room of Superager in an analysis published on Thursday in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Yackley, who is among the almost 300 people who have participated in the Northwestern University Superage program (Nusap) since 2000, is proof that deteriorated memory is not always a distinctive seal of aging.
“We will be models to follow for other people who are aging,” he said. “Take care of your health and eat well and be sociable.”
Is genetic supplies?
Yackley, a Chicago wind that comes from Türkiye, acknowledges that genetic factors may be contributing to their youth cognition. His mother and father lived to be 86 and 88, respectively. On the other hand, Yackley feels that his joy of Vivre helps maintain his acute mind.
“I think it is partly your determination to live a long life and your activities that allow you to do it,” he said, encouraging older adults to follow “things that make you proud.”
Yackley’s pairs in the Superager program share a spirit of connection, according to Tamar Gefen, co -author of the analysis and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Feinberg school.
“I don’t know if social connections are necessarily, they are only connections in general,” Gefen said. “There are people who are connected to the earth, there are people who are connected with their ancestry, people connected to their grandchildren, who are connected to their art.”
Gefen added: “You don’t see many separate superpists.”
That said, people cannot simply go to “superses.”
More than 7 million people in the United States live with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s association, a statistic that is projected that rises to almost 13 million by 2050. Around 1 in 9 people in 65 years of age or older have this more common form of dementia.
At 45, the life risk of developing Alzheimer’s is 1 in 5 for women and 1 in 10 for men. Superimitators are challenging these probabilities.
“Genetics is part of this, definitely,” Gefen said. “We know that there are important risk genes for Alzheimer’s disease, and supervisors do not have those genes.”
For example, research has shown that people of European descent with two copies of a gene called APOE4 have a 60% chance of developing Alzheimer at age 85.
“My interest is, are there genes that superimators house that they can really protect them against Alzheimer’s disease?” Gefen said. “And there is a gene, let’s say it is related to the immune system, which is overexpressed in superimitosums that can be manipulated to help people protect themselves?”
While continuing to look for such answers, Gefen said that the most exciting findings of his team have emerged from the brains of the superimitors who have died.
The brains of superimenses can be built differently
Gefen and his colleagues in the Mesulam center have autopsy almost 80 supergeneral brains and have compared them with those of their “neurotypical” companions. They focused on two Alzheimer’s indicators: Protein accumulations in the brain called amyloid plaques and tau tangles.
“What we find in the memory centers of the trustee brain is that there are much less entanglements of Tau,” Gefen said. “But curiously, amyloid or plaque pathology really doesn’t differ much.”
Because a series of Alzheimer’s treatments highlight the amyloid plaques, the superimitors question such treatment methods, Gefen said: “Are we really pointing to the correct objective if the super -overgrants and their peers have similar amounts of amyloid?”
Other findings include that overragers tend to have larger entorrinal neurons, which are nerve cells that are key to memory, and more von Ecomo neurons, which are critical nerve cells for social behavior.
“Our assumption is that [SuperAgers] They are probably born with this type of structural protections, “Gefen said.” But now we are very deeply in the molecular mechanisms of the cell to discover what maintains that strong cell. “
Dr. Timothy Chang, who was not involved in the research of Superager, works at the opposite end of the spectrum. Assistant Neurology Professor at the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s research and care in UCLA, Chang Studies and sees patients who have dementia.
Analyzing the “atypical populations” as superimitors is valuable for the field of medicine, he said.
“Those cases are really interesting,” Chang said. “They can teach us a lot about how, potentially, those people, based on genetics or other lifestyle factors, could avoid the disease.”
Supes live in the laboratory
Yackley has traveled the Brain Bank of Northwestern, where she is “proud” of her own brain one day will be sent to study. He is also making plans to donate the rest of his body to science.
“Hopefully, maybe my heart or my kidneys can be used to transplant,” Yackley said. “I don’t want to be underground.”
Meanwhile, Yackley would be grateful to reach 90, he said. She maintains a task list and aims to register about 4,200 steps per day. The retired journalist, travel agent and memories are already working in his next company.
“I am trying to build an album of cuts from my life, and that is a great project,” Yackley said.
Although the prevalence of superagadores is not clear, they seem to be unusual. Gefen and their co -authors noticed that during the initial recruitment of the study participants, only 10% complied with the criteria of the supervisors. Today, 101 superimitors ranging from 81 to 111 actively participate in the investigation of the Mesulam Center.
Not all superimitors prioritize their health, on the contrary, some challenging their vices challenging, and many have lived difficult lives, Gefen said. But they do not assume their cognitive aptitude.
“These supervisors know they have a gift,” Gefen said.
