Posted by katekite on July 4, 2002, at 17:30:08
In reply to Cushing's and hypertension » katekite, posted by IsoM on July 3, 2002, at 13:14:57
I just sound knowledgeable because I've read so much on pubmed... but honestly my deep knowledge is slim, not being a physician. So take it all with a grain of salt. When I read things on pubmed its hard to know if it's one person's opinion or the consensus of the whole field.
I don't know off-hand about cortisol and your mom. I did run across a study looking at the hormones of the 'oldest-old', people who were over 100, and they compared them to your average 70 year old, and found differences in the ratios of some of the hormones. ie a particular hormonal set-up might be good for living longer. It was on pubmed. I was looking for stuff on my agegroup so don't remember the details. But certainly means I will be aware of hormone levels now, my whole life.
Sensitivity of body tissues to cortisol changes in some people with age and also changes after menopause. Receptor densities change, so it takes more or less cortisol to achieve an effect.
Many older people have borderline high cortisol (in general it tends to increase with age, although some old people still have nice low cortisol), and those higher individuals tend to have a higher amount of dementia vs. individuals who happen to have lower cortisol. Is your mom foggy and forgetful or sharp as a tack? If the latter, high cortisol is less likely.
High blood pressure definitely does not have to accompany other signs of Cushing's. It is a clinical picture so the signs can be one or many. I think it must be that different genetics means cortisol has different affects in each individual. We are all individuals.There is no reason to accept that since someone is aged that any change is less important.
My own grandmother had something that looked quite a bit like a buffalo hump, and it turned out to be that osteoporosis had allowed her spine to sag some -- she got shorter and got a bowing of the spine. She was on calcium but needed much more, it turned out. I'm not suggesting that your mom has osteoporosis or curvature of the spine -- just saying there are probably other reasons for that humpback look as well -- curvature of the spine and cushing's are the two I know of.
Hope that helped. Don't really know much about buffalo humps specifically.
kate
poster:katekite
thread:111175
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020628/msgs/111416.html