Her classes are much bigger: doctors and thousands of medical professionals and average readers around the world interested in old age dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Her doctorate is in history--not medical science--but her brain will be yielding results for decades to come.
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| By looking at the nun's youthful writings, he could predict with 85 percent to 90 percent accuracy which ones would show brain damage 60 years later. | ||
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Ryan is part of a study that shows that traits in early, middle, and late life have a strong relationship with the risk of Alzheimer's disease. According to the study, people who have positive attitudes about life and are full of ideas in their late teens seem to have a lower risk for mental and cognitive disabilities in old age.
Ryan is one of 110 School Sisters of Notre Dame of St. Louis who volunteered to participate in a national study of nuns over age 75. The study included 678 sisters from the order nationwide.
David Snowdon's 15-year-old "Nuns' Study" at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky Medical Center forms the basis for his book, "Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier and More Meaningful Lives" (Bantam Books), which was published May 8. Snowdon, a former Southern California Roman Catholic altar boy, has donated 50 percent of his book royalties to the order.
He has a doctorate in epidemiology and is a professor at the University of Kentucky. His study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, began in Minnesota in 1986 and expanded to include the sisters in St. Louis and five other cities in 1991. Snowdon hopes the research will continue for decades.
Nuns are a great study group, he said. Their order mandates that all of their medical records, work records and the autobiographies they must write before taking their vows and on retirement are securely filed. The nuns opened these files to Snowdon and his research team. And each nun signed a form giving her brain to science at her death.
