Transcript
[Beginning of recorded material]
[Title card animation: Dementia Australia Research Foundation - Diagnose]
[Text: Dr Christa Dang, National Ageing Research Institute]
Dr Christa: I am Dr Christa Dang. I am a research fellow at the National Ageing Research Institute and at the University of Melbourne. I'm interested in dementia because there are so many things that we don't really understand about the brain just yet. There are so many different things that could contribute to somebody developing dementia, and all of these things maybe interact and interplay with each other.
There are different risk factors for dementia, so a risk factor might be something that makes you more likely, or at greater risk of developing a kind of dementia. And there are modifiable ones, so things that we can do something about, like your lifestyle. And then there are non-modifiable ones, things that we can't really do anything about, like your age or like your genetics.
We know from past research that about 30 to 40% of a person's risk for dementia are things that we can do something about, and those things might include your mental health, exercise, diet, and other things like that. So, one thing that I'm particularly interested in is something called repetitive negative thinking, which is something that can really contribute to your mental health, and possibly, also to your risk of dementia.
Negative thoughts are something that everyone might experience every so often. Some examples of that might be self-doubts, or just even thoughts about things that you're experiencing at any point in time, but it can become an issue when it becomes repetitive, when it becomes pervasive, when it becomes something that you can't stop, and that can be really detrimental to your mental health and to your health overall.
We know repetitive negative thinking is an issue because it can contribute to developing depression or anxiety. We know it also leads to increased stress. Increased stress also leads to higher levels of stress hormones in your body, that can then lead to things like inflammation, and poor physical health, and also poor mental health. All of these things separately, we know also contribute to dementia risk. Another component of this research is understanding how well we can use blood tests as a screening tool for early detection of dementia.
[Text: Karen and Kerin Glennan, dementia advocates]
Karen: This is a life changing and life altering thing for us, and life limiting for Kerin. And to be diagnosed at such a young age, when you are in a professional capacity or a work capacity, financial obligations, family, children, and yeah, it's really difficult. In terms of diagnosis, as I said, we had no reason to think about dementia as an option for Karin. And so, if there was a blood test that just meant that a GP could organise that and that was going to be part of just a normal screening, that would make such a difference for us.
Christa: If we find that higher levels of repetitive negative thinking are associated with higher levels of these proteins associated with dementia, and that tells us that repetitive negative thinking is something that we can possibly target, or develop an intervention to help modify this risk factor for dementia.
The process of getting diagnosed with dementia is a really lengthy and exhausting process for a lot of people, which is why early detection can be really helpful, because it means that people can start making preparations for this long and difficult journey ahead, and doctors can also start making treatment decisions to hopefully improve outcomes in the future as well.
I'd really love to thank The Co-Group and the Dementia Australia Research Foundation for the funding that I've received for this project. It is super valuable because as an early career researcher, there aren't very many opportunities for me to get funding to do the research that I love.
The goal of this project is to understand how repetitive negative thinking might contribute to your risk of dementia, but that doesn't actually mean that just because you've had negative thoughts that you will develop dementia. It just means that repetitive negative thinking might be a contributing factor that we can actually look at modifying - we can develop interventions or therapies that can actually help somebody reduce their negative thinking, and this is something that I'm really interested in looking at in the future.
[Title card]
This research is supported by:
The Co-Group Project Grant
Dementia Australia Research Foundation
National Ageing Research Institute
The University of Melbourne
Dr Dang would like to acknowledge:
The MiND Study research team and participants for their support
We thank The Co-Group for its support.
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[Title card]
Dementia Australia Research Foundation:
A cure is just the beginning
If you would like to see dementia research make real impact, donate today:
1300 636 679
www.dementia.org.au/donate-research
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