Stress 'may be mistaken for ageing'

Older people, who may use assisted living, could find it difficult to get their stress diagnosed, one expert maintains.

Ann Finnemore, a hypnotherapist and stress manager, said that younger people only recognise stress in older people as a sign of ageing.

The effects of stress such as poor memory, sleep, inability to concentrate and emotional liability may also be put down to ageing, continued the expert.

"Another factor that impacts on an older person's ability to learn to manage stress is simply that they have had many years of employing their own strategies and so any unhelpful or bad habits might be more ingrained," she added.

Ms Finnemore continued that older people are "just as capable" of learning new ways to cope with stress as younger people.

Meanwhile, research from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have found that the increased release of stress hormones in rats leads to generations of abnormally phosphorylated tau protein in the brain and memory loss.

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