In a flurry of new studies, scientists scanned people's brains and showed that high blood pressure promotes a type of scarring that is associated with the subsequent development of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. . These scars can begin to accumulate in middle age or later, decades before memory problems appear.
Scientists have long known that some of the same triggers for heart disease, such as high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes, also appear to increase the risk of dementia.
But for years they thought the memory problems were linked to „vascular dementia,'' which is usually associated with small strokes. Now they have learned that factors like high blood pressure also seem to promote processes like Alzheimer's disease.