Living Single

The truth about singles in our society.

Bella DePaulo is author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After. She is a visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara. See full bio

August 1, 2008, Health

Comments on "Here Are the Details of that Delirious Alzheimer's Study"

Here Are the Details of that Delirious Alzheimer's Study

By Bella DePaulo, Ph.D. on August 1, 2008 in Living Single

Attention, single people: According to a study described at a conference, 5 Finnish people who had always been single also had Alzheimer's. Grab someone - anyone - and get married. Now! Read More

I saw this headline too and

Submitted by Mike on August 10, 2008 - 8:57am.

I saw this headline too and wondered if it was true.

Brilliant deconstruction.

thanks, Mike

Submitted by Living Single on August 11, 2008 - 1:18pm.

It still amazes me how often these sorts of headlines turn out to be grossly exaggerated or just plain wrong.

--Bella

Low incidence

Submitted by Rachel on August 12, 2008 - 8:03am.

Something else that struck me about this article: Alzheimer's has a fairly low prevalence. Only about 3 people in every 100 people will develop it. About 11 out of 100 get heart disease; 7 out of 100 get cancer... Reading articles like this makes me think everybody is going to get it. It pays to crunch the numbers...

The Medical News article you found actually hints at the real culprits: APOE-e4 genotype (there's a genetic predisposition toward Alzheimer's) and stress (people who have undergone stress are more likely to be affected by the damaging action of this genotype - loosing a spouse/partner through divorce or death is stressful...). So, here's our headline: Stress and genes can kill you! Well, we knew that already, so I guess that's no longer newsworthy...