A new study has revealed that Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia will have a worldwide cost of $604 billion in 2010, and is expected to triple to $1.08 trillion per year by the year 2050.

Lead authors Martin Prince of King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry and Anders Wimo of the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm, Sweden gathered global data, including new research out of Latin America, China and India.

Broken down by monetary wealth, the data indicates that poorer nations make up 14% of dementia cases, but account for under 1% of the total cost.  Middle income nations make up 40% of dementia prevalence and 10% of the cost; rich nations account for 46% of prevalence, but account for 89% of the cost, according to Reuters. 

Put another way, 70% of the global cost is attributed to North America and Western Europe.

Alzheimer’s Disease International maintains that if the 35.6 million people who have dementia populated one area of the globe, they would form a country between the sizes of Turkey and Afghanistan.

ADI chairman Daisy Acosta:  "World governments are woefully unprepared for the social and economic disruptions this disease will cause," said Daisy Acosta, ADI's chairman, describing dementia as "the single most significant health and social crisis of the 21st century."

Adding to the problem is the fact that the United States and other countries do not have an Alzheimer’s policy strategy in place.  The countries that do have such a plan are France, England and Australia. 

The Alzheimer’s Association, based in Chicago, is one advocacy group that is pushing for governmental attention to the problem, rather than continuing the United States position that families alone can take care of the growing number of dementia patients.

Alzheimer’s Association president Harry Johns tells Reuters that Alzheimer’s is not “normal aging,” but is, in fact a degenerative, progressive disease that will increase in prevalence as time goes on.

Some cognitive decline is normal in the course of aging; many times older adults repeat stories or have trouble remembering what day it is. These types of memory glitches are referred to as mild cognitive impairment, or MCI. The difference between MCI and early warning signs of dementia is that those who have MCI are still able to conduct their daily affairs with relative ease. Those who continue a downward cognitive decline will eventually be unable to manage household chores or hobbies.

However, amid all of the grim news surrounding Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, there is evidence that adequate levels of vitamin D could help mitigate risk. 

In July, a study published in the journal Neurology suggested that vitamin D deficiency is linked to dementia.  Specifically, one particular study showed that those with insufficient levels of vitamin D were 2.3 times more likely to suffer from all-cause dementia.  The risk of Alzheimer’s disease, exclusively, was 2.5 times greater in those with inadequate vitamin D.

Additionally, those who suffered a stroke were two times more likely to be vitamin D insufficient.

Exposure to the sun is the most efficient means of obtaining adequate levels of vitamin D.  Fifteen – twenty minutes of exposure provides 10,000 IUs of the this health elixir, know as the sunshine vitamin.