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PARIS: Losing your cognitive powers could indicate heart problems, according to a new study, which claims that people who struggle with problem-solving and organizing their time are 85 percent more likely to have a heart attack.
The study, published yesterday in Neurology, the American Academy of Neurology’s medical journal, assessed almost 4,000 participants with a mean age of 75. The researchers from Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) in the Netherlands found that people with low levels of executive function—which refers to high-level reasoning and problem-solving abilities, such as those required to plan a trip to a foreign country—were 85 percent more likely to have a heart attack than those with the highest levels of executive function. They found that people with low cognitive scores were also 51 percent more likely to have a stroke. No link was found between memory and the risk of heart attack or stroke.
The study was led by Behnam Sabayan and Somayeh Rostamian. Sabayan, a research fellow at LUMC, says the results have implications for the medical treatment of elderly people. “This calls for closer collaboration between neurologists and cardiologists. When an older patient experiences cognitive problems, certainly it should be discussed with a physician since it might give clues about higher risk of cardiovascular events in the future.”
