Obsessing Over Things May Be a Good Thing

Today, we bring you two stories in our special report on the international Alzheimer's conference in Chicago. Come back tomorrow for more news.

A new study shows that what researchers politely call “a tendency to ruminate,” by which they mean obsess over problems, actually appears to protect people against Alzheimer’s.

“The study looked at people who were obsessive, but not all the way to an obsessive-compulsive disorder,” says one expert.

In an Israeli study that originally focused on the risk factors for cardiovascular disease in 9,000 men, researchers assessed the way the men handled family and work problems, from always forgetting about them to usually ruminating about them. Three decades later, other researchers assessed dementia in 1,890 of the 2,604 survivors of the original study.

A total score for rumination in family and work settings was calculated, and the men were divided into four groups according to their scores. Compared with the group with the lowest score, the group that ruminated the most had 30 to 40 percent fewer cases of any form of dementia, from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease, the severest form of dementia. “Your personality traits, specifically your psychological and cognitive style when confronting distress, may be associated with your risk for dementia,” Ramit Ravona-Springer, M.D., a researcher at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel, says in a press statement.

The study findings were presented today at the international Alzheimer’s Association conference in Chicago.

Read More: Relationships Do Matter in Fending Off Alzheimer’s