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Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease. It's one we all theor I suspect as

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Speaker 1: we all get older, no one wants Alzheimer's and new

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Speaker 1: research suggests high blood pressure treatment should be a part

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Speaker 1: of Alzheimer's disease prevention strategies. Let's so find out about that.

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Speaker 1: Dr Matthew Lennon send her for a Healthy Brain Aging

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Speaker 1: Unit of New South Wales. Matthew good minding, gooday, matt

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Speaker 1: How I am all right? Thank you? This is interesting

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Speaker 1: a link to high blood pressure, Yes, yeah, so.

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Speaker 2: And it's you know, it's something that's previously been reasonably

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Speaker 2: well established. But what we found that's new in our

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Speaker 2: research is that if you have treatment for high blood

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Speaker 2: pressure in old age, the dementia and Alzheimer's disease reducing

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Speaker 2: effect is really substantial.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: In our study we found it was associated with forty

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Speaker 2: two percent lower risk of Alzheimer's disease in people over

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Speaker 2: the age of sixty.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So is it a matter of identifying high blood

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Speaker 1: pressure early?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and just identifying and properly treating it. I mean,

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Speaker 2: for people over the age of sixty five, two thirds

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Speaker 2: of people have high blood pressure, but of those people,

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Speaker 2: only around fifty to sixty percent know that they have

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Speaker 2: high blood pressure, and of the people with high blood pressure,

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Speaker 2: only about twenty eight percent have it adequately controlled. So

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Speaker 2: it's really it's a minority of people who have their

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Speaker 2: blood pressure properly controlled. And we know because for the

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Speaker 2: most part, high blood pressure it's silent, but it's deadly.

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Speaker 2: So it's you will have the high blood pressure without

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Speaker 2: really experiencing any symptoms until you get this stroke or

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Speaker 2: the heart attack or the dementia coming on. So it's

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Speaker 2: really it's something that people really need to stay vigilant

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Speaker 2: about and make sure their blood pressure, even if they're

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Speaker 2: taking tablets, is well controlled.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, indeed, So that's that's alarming that almost half of

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Speaker 1: the population, the worldwide population has no idea about their

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Speaker 1: blood pressure. Yeah well yeah, okay, so go and get

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Speaker 1: that checked out. Number one. Now, are there risk factors here, male, female, ethnicity, age, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So, I mean the age is a big risk factive

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Speaker 2: for high blood pressure. But in terms of what is

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Speaker 2: effective so managing blood pressure and whether or not anty

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Speaker 2: other tensives are effective for reducing demater risk, it's effective

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Speaker 2: in your sixties, in your seventies, in your eighties. It's

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Speaker 2: effective in people in all different races because you know,

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Speaker 2: we had a really interesting study where we looked at

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Speaker 2: people from fourteen different countries, including from Nigeria and Republic

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Speaker 2: of Congos, Singapore, Japan, and China, Europe, Australia, US and

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Speaker 2: it's similarly effective for people both male and female.

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Speaker 1: Is it too late to start treatment? So if in

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Speaker 1: hypothetical example, someone is saying their sixties or seventies or

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Speaker 1: even eighties and symptoms start coming on and the high

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Speaker 1: blood pressure is recognized, then is treatment too late? Will

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Speaker 1: keep progressing? Can treatment stop it at that point? Can

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Speaker 1: it be reversed at that point?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, my intuition would say that you can't reverse it

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Speaker 2: because we know that generally with Alzheimer's dementia, it's a

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Speaker 2: neurodegenerative pathway, so people will generally tend to decline, but

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Speaker 2: you may be able to slow it somewhat. In our study,

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Speaker 2: we excluded people with dementia at baseline, so we didn't

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Speaker 2: look at people with dementia and whether or not anti

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Speaker 2: appetensives would be effective in making their cognitive status better

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Speaker 2: over time. But it's certainly worth trying because when you're

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Speaker 2: treating blood pressure, you're not just trying to prevent dementia,

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Speaker 2: you're also really importantly trying to prevent strokes, heart attack,

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Speaker 2: kidney disease, and a host of other vascular illnesses.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Indeed, so all right, very important to get on

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Speaker 1: top of that as soon as you can, clearly, because

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Speaker 1: you don't want any of those other things strokes, heart attacks,

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Speaker 1: whatever it might be. Where do you go next? Are

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Speaker 1: you looking at prevention measures? Is that your next point

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Speaker 1: of calling this?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're looking at two things. I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 2: the big problem that faced us with high blood pressure

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Speaker 2: is that it's often so silent and it affects so

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Speaker 2: many people. So we really were next to we're kind

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Speaker 2: of asking the public health question of how do we

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Speaker 2: message to people the importance of observing and managing their

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Speaker 2: blood pressure and making sure it's well controlled. And the

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Speaker 2: second part that we're looking at is while we've looked

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Speaker 2: at cognition overall and whether or not people kind of yes, no,

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Speaker 2: have dementia, our next step is to look at various

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Speaker 2: cognitive functions, so to see if blood pressure affects people's

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Speaker 2: thinking capacity, their reaction time, their processing speed, their verbal memory,

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Speaker 2: their executive function in different ways because it may have

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Speaker 2: far different effects.

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Speaker 1: Does high blood pressure stay high? What can it be

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Speaker 1: linked to? Just certain stressful events, you know, week by week,

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Speaker 1: day by day.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and it changes hour by hour. Even coming

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Speaker 2: into a doctors is the thing that we call the

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Speaker 2: white coat hypertension. So when you go in see a doctor,

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Speaker 2: it's stressful, and so your heart rate increases, you get nervous,

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Speaker 2: your blood pressure goes up, and so often we find

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Speaker 2: that people in doctor's offices have higher blood pressure than

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Speaker 2: they do at home. So it varies a lot. But

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Speaker 2: what matters is the overall trend of blood pressure. So

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Speaker 2: if it's generally higher, generally low, and certainly as people

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Speaker 2: eat less salt, they lose weight, they exercise more, they

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Speaker 2: have more vegetables in their diet, they control their fluid intake.

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Speaker 2: That all those things tend to normalize and regulate your

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Speaker 2: blood pressure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, very important to follow that healthy almost Mediterranean,

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Speaker 1: isn't it?

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Speaker 2: Absolutely?

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Speaker 1: To home machines, are they effective? Are the reasonably accurate? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean if you have a home

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Speaker 2: blood pressure monitor, that will be reasonably accurate. And the

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Speaker 2: thing about it, though, is you don't. You don't necessarily

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Speaker 2: want to overmeasure because while while you'll be measuring your

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Speaker 2: blood pressure, sometimes it will be higher, sometimes it will

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Speaker 2: be low. It doesn't mean that you need to do

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Speaker 2: something straight away. If it's high one time, and if

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Speaker 2: you're measuring it constantly and worried about it, then that

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Speaker 2: that may increase your blood pressure itself because it's something

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Speaker 2: that's causing you great anxiety all the time.

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Speaker 1: Should you do it weekly though? At least is that

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Speaker 1: a reasonable type of measurement.

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Speaker 2: Usually my recommendation would be that get it tested whenever

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Speaker 2: you go to see your GP. So if you see

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Speaker 2: your GP once a month, then get it tested. But

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Speaker 2: you don't if if you're an older person and you

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Speaker 2: don't have a history of high blood pressure, you don't

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Speaker 2: need to test it.

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Speaker 1: Weakly, Okay, So keep all that in mind. Really interesting.

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Speaker 1: So treating high blood pressure, preventing Alzheimer's disease and getting

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Speaker 1: onto that as quickly as you can is the overall message. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: absolutely good on you, Matt, Thank you for your.

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Speaker 2: Time, beautiful, Thank you so much, Matt.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Matthew Lennon Center for Healthy Brain Aging UNI of

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Speaker 1: New South Wales. A link between high blood pressure and

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Speaker 1: Alzheimer's