Why Alzheimer's patients are indebted to Rita Hayworth; Ronald Reagan too

Rita Hayworth is best known as one of World War II's pin-up girls but a much greater gift came with her public diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease in 1979 which was a big step in destigmatizing the degenerative disease. Ronald Reagan's public acknowledgement of his condition had a similarly positive effect 15 years later. Due to increased public awareness of the disease, Alzheimer's research has risen from $146 million in 1990 to over $650 million today. (Source: LA Times).

Hayworth's public admission was powerful for several reasons. She was relatively young, she was well-known, and she had been misdiagnosed for years. She was a notorious heavy drinker and friends, family, doctors and the public at large assumed that her aberrant behavior was the result of her drinking. This belief also kept Hayworth from actively seeking medical help since she wanted to avoid the lectures from the doctors about her drinking.

What is interesting is that the original Alzheimer's patient was also a woman of roughly the same age as Hayworth (late 40's early 50's) when the disease was discovered by German physician Alois Alzheimer in 1906. (Alois actually diagnosed it as 'presenile dementia', which was later known as Alzheimer's disease).

Hayworth died from Alzheimer's in 1987 at age 68 and 8 years after her diagnosis.

Unfortunately modern science has yet to develop a cure for Alzheimer's and the best cure remains avoiding the high risk behaviors that are believed to contribute to the onset of Alzheimer's. Another suggested activity is to support the Alzheimer's research charity of your choice to help fund the many possible cures in development. Many of which could be deployed by the time that middle aged adults reach their high-risk years.

There are several activities that adults can do to reduce the risk that they will develop Alzheimer's. Click on the "brain health" tag below for related LifeTwo articles.