December 2nd is Women’s Brain Health Day!
by Chelsea Smith
Photo by Fuu J on Unsplash
Women’s Brain Health Day was first recognized on December 2nd, 2019. This day was created to bring awareness to the role of sex and gender in research and emphasize that many brain health conditions occur more frequently in women than in men. For example, two-thirds of Canadian seniors living with dementia are women.
To celebrate this day, the Women’s Brain Health Initiative (WBHI), a Canadian and U.S. charitable foundation established in 2012 and solely dedicated to protecting the brain health of women, has created a campaign called the Stand Ahead Challenge. Each year there is a different challenge: in 2019 the challenge was to do a headstand (or ask someone to do one for you) and the 2020 campaign involved a memory challenge. The 2021 challenge challenges people to write their name on a sheet of paper with each hand and then post the comparison. The campaign has resulted in over 1.2 million dollars being raised for new women’s brain health research.
The mission of the WBHI is to “help protect women’s brain health by focusing its resources on research to combat brain-aging disorders that disproportionately affect women, and by creating compelling preventative health education programs, grounded in science, so there is a greater understanding by the public of the best ways to prolong their cognitive vitality”.
Did you know? (Stats from the Women’s Brain Health Initiative website2)
Almost 70% of those with Alzheimer’s disease are women.
Women with early memory changes decline about twice as fast as men and end up worse off, too.
Women are diagnosed with depression, stress and anxiety twice as often as men.
Women take longer to recover from concussions and have more severe symptoms than men.
Four times as many women have multiple sclerosis as men, and more and more women are developing it.
Stroke disproportionately affects women: more women die of stroke, women have worse outcomes after stroke, more women are living with the effects of stroke, and women face more challenges as they recover.
References
Stats from Dementia in Canada, including Alzheimer’s disease fact sheet (Government of Canada) https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/diseases-conditions/dementia-highlights-canadian-chronic-disease-surveillance.html
Stats from Women’s Brain Health Initiative website
https://standahead.org/why-take-the-challenge/
