Are you exalted for practically anything? Do you get mad when something doesn't go as planned? Are you stressed out by the little setbacks of everyday life? Each of these emotions and moods has an impact on your body and, of course, the brain.

We can imagine emotions as little drops. One by one, they do not cause serious damage and may have no effect on the body, but when they accumulate, day after day, they can fill the jar.

Academic medicine has only now begun to recognize the impact of emotions and personality characteristics on the appearance and aggravation of diseases, but we are currently conducting a series of studies that show the impact that the emotional state has on our physical and mental health.

In this sense, a recent study carried out at the Karolinska Institute reported which would be the personality trait that most increases the probability of developing dementia. Undoubtedly, the results are very interesting because, unlike genetics, the expression of personality is something that we can influence, that we can change, to reduce the risk of suffering from a disease such as dementia, which already affects 47, 5 million people around the world.

Dementia: the disease that steals memories

Each year 7.7 million new cases of dementia are reported and it is estimated that by 2050 they will triple. It is a cruel disease, since it robs us of the best memories and then, little by little, it prevents us from recognizing our loved ones, erasing the traces of who we were and who we love.

Now, a group of American and Swedish scientists have published a study in which 1,082 twins were followed for 28 years. During this period, the participants underwent different personality tests every three years. In this way, it was possible to discover that anxiety is the characteristic that most affects the risk of developing dementia. Anxious people were shown to be no more and no less than 50% more likely to develop dementia.

What is "trait anxiety"?

Trait anxiety is a term used to refer to a relatively stable personality characteristic over time. It is a tendency of the person to react anxiously to different situations, a predisposition to perceive events as dangerous or threatening, and to respond to these with severe anxiety.

Why can anxiety cause dementia?

The researchers say that the master key to the relationship between anxiety and dementia lies in cortisol, also known as the "stress hormone." In fact, there are countless studies that show what are the damages caused by high levels of cortisol in the structure and functioning of the brain.

In this sense, a study conducted by the University of Iceland with 4,244 elderly people, found that high levels of cortisol, measured in saliva when people just woke up, were related to a decrease in the amount of gray matter and the volume of the hippocampus, an area of ​​the brain that plays a key role in memory. This and other studies suggest that cortisol has a toxic effect on the brain, especially in areas associated with memory formation.

However, one of the most decisive investigations in this direction was carried out at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. These researchers worked with 309 older people and found that elevated cortisol levels were associated with an increased risk of developing dementia, regardless of APOE-ε4, a molecule that increases the chances of developing Alzheimer's disease by more than 50%. This means that, beyond the genetic, in many cases emotional states are crucial in the onset of many diseases, including dementia.

Now that we know this for sure, anxiety is not a good travel companion. Therefore, it is better to do everything possible to fight anxiety.

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