Page 188 - The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss and Enhance Memory Power

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not very useful and don't tell us how well estrogen is being utilized in the brain), which is why the
other treatments did not work as well as they usually do.

Estrogen in Long-Term Prevention of Memory Loss

Clinical anecdotes and observations about the power of estrogen have been supported by the results
from systematic studies, especially of elderly women living at home. In a report from the Baltimore
Longitudinal Study on Normal Aging, 472 menopausal and postmenopausal women were followed
for sixteen years. Women on estrogen-replacement therapy were 50 percent less likely to develop
dementia. Other studies of women living in the community have also shown that estrogen provides a
protective effect against dementia. Most of these studies suggest a twofold to fourfold protective
effect, meaning that if you are sixty years old and your risk of getting dementia in the next ten years
is 12 percent, this risk will drop to 3 to 6 percent if you are taking estrogen. No one is suggesting that
estrogen will cure Alzheimer's, but rather that the procognition properties of estrogen will delay the
onset of the disease by several years. The results of several studies indicate that the longer you take
estrogen, and the higher the dose, the greater the protective effect against this dreaded disease.

Estrogen Therapy for Memory Loss

In a study that used the cholinergic medication tacrine (Cognex) to treat Alzheimer's disease, an
incidental result was that women who also took estrogen were the patients most likely to improve
cognitively with tacrine. This intriguing result suggests that estrogen may be particularly effective
when used in combination with other medications.

Recent studies suggest that estrogen by itself is not an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease.
However, other studies show that estrogen may slightly enhance memory performance in
postmenopausal women who do not suffer from memory loss. My view is that estrogen may be
particularly effective in women who have symptoms of both depression and cognitive impairment.
This dovetails perfectly into the differences that I observed between the two sisters, with Cynthia
suffering from mild depression and mild memory loss while Myra had neither syndrome and took
estrogen.