While caring for my husband who eventually died from Alzheimers I noticed that he was most likely to escape from the house as I was quickly trying to get dinner cooked for him. I then though of those stories of American Indian elderly wandering off into the forest in the middle of winter to die so their grandchildren would have more food.
Anyway, I have developed a theory that Alzheimer’s is actually a positive genetic survival gene. Among tribal and spread out populations, if there was a tendancy to wander off in search of food while failing from Alzheimer’s ones descendents probably stood a better chance of surviving because more food was available. This behavior on my husband’s part was about a year before he became too debilitated to be useful around the house/camp. Thus, had we been a primative encampment, he would have gone out to pee and look for food, and never found his way back just before he would have become a general burden to the tribe.
Genetically, my husband was Scottish, with some American Indian, red haired, reddish sun sensitive skin, heavy boned, pale blue eyes, very hairy, warrior temperment, and I suspect more of the Neanderthal genes than most.
Bookmarking this due to interest in Alzheimer’s stories....
Your observation is very interesting.
Interesting theory. Alzheimer’s almost always strikes the elderly well past child bearing and effective working age. However, in primitive societies the elderly perform the critical task of childcare and food preparation while the parents are out hunting/gathering/growing food and Alzheimer’s doesn’t affect everyone or even most people. I don’t know if it is more prevalent among some races than others. Do you?
Thanks gleeaikin.