1. terrasig
  2. Alzheimer's disease and risky sexual behavior?

Alzheimer's disease and risky sexual behavior?

By terrasig on November 15, 2007.

No..it's a false alarm. [***or not - see note added at end of post]

But I had to do a double-take last night when reading my e-mail notification of the new HealthCentral newsletter with the subject line:

Celebrate Alzheimer's Awareness Month; How risky is your sexual behavior?

For the grammar police out there, this is a great example of the difference in meaning of a semi-colon vs. a colon. However, given the size of the print on my screen and my pending need for bifocals, I couldn't tell the difference.

Anyway, I blame the editors of the e-mail release for alarming me.

Or maybe it was intentional. After all, I've written a blog post about it and linked to their site.

On the more serious side, Alzheimer's is a terribly devastating disease that is only due to increase in incidence as baby boomers move toward their more senior years.

For those interested, the links to the two separate stories are:

Celebrate Alzheimer's Awareness Month
Learn about the symptoms of Alzheimer's, the struggles of caregiving, and take our Alzheimer's IQ Test! Educate yourself, in honor of the 5 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.

How risky is your sexual behavior?
Everyone knows you can't judge a book by its cover - but neither can you judge someone's sexual health by their good looks and charm. Take this quiz to find out whether or not you're taking the right precautions in your sex life.

***Note added 16 Nov 2007: Evil Monkey at Neurotopia 2.0 notes that there may indeed actually be a link between sexual behavior and risk of Alzheimer's. It's a great read - who knew?

Tags
advertising
health care
Medical Publishing

More like this

Alzheimer's Disease and risky sexual behavior: not quite a false alarm?
Abel over at Terra Sigillata got is writ in a tinger over bad grammar and was concerned that Alzheimer's Disease had been tied to risky sexual behavior. His conclusion was that he got a poorly worded email notice about two separate problems that were linked inappropriately by a semicolon. So…
A blood test for Alzheimer's?
An international team of researchers led by Tony Wyss-Coray of the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine report that they have developed a blood test that can predict with 90% accuracy the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. By analyzing the…
APHA Annual Meeting focuses on prevention and wellness
The American Public Health Association's annual meeting is taking place this week in San Francisco, with the theme of "Prevention and Wellness Across the Life Span." If you're not there (or if you're there but can't possibly attend all the sessions you want to), the APHA Meeting Blog is a great way…
Ohhh the Irony! Enzyme responsible for Alzheimers can suppress tumors
Clearly I'm not a medicine bio person - but this just had to make it onto the blog. Researchers at Burnham Institute for Medical Research ("Burnham") have provided the first evidence that gamma-secretase, an enzyme key to the progression of Alzheimer's, acts as a tumor suppressor by altering the…

Don't blame your interpretation of the email's headline on your eyes. The capital 'H' would be appropriate iff (and only iff) the punctuation mark had been a colon. After a semi-colon, the editors of the email should have used an 'h'. So no wonder you thought the two phrases were linked.

Grammar discussion aside, though, I highly recommended Evil Monkey's post (as noted above). Turns out the truth is more complex--and considerably more interesting--that the email's editors probably realize.