text_1: Worried About Dementia? You Might Want to Check Your Blood Pressure
text_2: This NPR report built around exhortations to control blood pressure by the head of a federal health agency draws attention to the long-documented links between hypertension and some forms of dementia. For many, many reasons, diagnosing and treating high blood pressure are good ideas for maintaining health and preventing strokes and heart disease, and the better news is that there are dozens of drugs and lifestyle changes available — some of them very inexpensive — to help people do so. But this story doesn’t explain that the evidence for an association between high blood pressure and vascular dementia, much less Alzheimer’s disease, is so far mostly observational. And perhaps more significantly, the story carries no data at all to support even the claims or strengths/weaknesses of the association. This NPR story missed an opportunity to offer the data and help the public understand more about risk assessment and probabilities of disease related to blood pressure. And it may mislead people into thinking that if they pop a pressure pill each day, they will avoid Alzheimer’s Disease. That’s unproven.