{"id":621995,"date":"2026-09-12T01:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621995\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T01:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:52:16","slug":"what-maria-shriver-wants-women-to-know-about-their-brain-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621995\/","title":{"rendered":"What Maria Shriver Wants Women to Know About Their Brain Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only one in five women<\/a> know that they\u2019re more likely to develop Alzheimer\u2019s disease than men, according to a recent survey. Maria Shriver wants that number to climb\u2014and for women to start thinking about their brains decades before symptoms show up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people talk about living longer, you\u2019re seeing a lot about people in the gym,\u201d Shriver said Thursday at the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York. \u201cBut what about their brains?\u201d<\/p>\n

Shriver founded the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement<\/a> and co-founded the Comprehensive Women’s Health and Research Center at Cleveland Clinic. She sat down with TIME deputy editor Kelly Conniff to talk about what women need to understand about brain health, and why the conversation can’t wait until later in life.<\/p>\n

She became passionate about brain health when her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s in 2003. At the time, Shriver said, there wasn\u2019t much information available to help families understand the disease or prepare for how their lives would change. She approached figuring that out as both a journalist and a daughter, while watching family members grapple with the diagnosis in different ways.<\/p>\n

Her kids adjusted easily, she recalled, simply accepting the grandfather in front of them as he was. She had a harder time. The man she saw didn’t match the father in her memory. Her mother, meanwhile, was losing something else entirely\u2014a spouse, a confidant, a partner.<\/p>\n

One growing area of research focuses on how the brain changes during menopause, and whether interventions during that period could reduce Alzheimer\u2019s risk, Shriver said. It\u2019s unclear whether hormone therapy<\/a>, for example, could help.<\/p>\n

Yet \u201cthere\u2019s more to women\u2019s health than menopause,\u201d Shriver added. Brain health, including mental health, is important to talk about throughout every stage of a woman\u2019s life. She pointed to the recent trial of Lindsay Clancy as evidence that women are talking more openly about maternal mental health. She recently had a conversation with six or seven other mothers who discussed the case and began sharing their own emotional and postpartum experiences.<\/p>\n

Clancy, a Massachusetts mother, was tried on charges of killing her three young children in 2023. Her attorneys argued that she was not criminally responsible because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis<\/a>, a rare psychiatric emergency distinct from postpartum depression. Prosecutors maintained that she understood her actions were wrong. The trial ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re talking about postpartum depression, the fact that we\u2019re talking about maternal health,\u201d Shriver said, represents a \u201chuge advancement in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The open discussion is part of the shift Shriver wants to see across brain health generally\u2014starting with the basics. You shouldn\u2019t have to overhaul your life to take care of yourself. Exercise, sleep, a decent diet, real social connection, and staying mentally engaged all move the needle on brain health. Shriver herself meditates twice daily to manage stress.<\/p>\n

Still, she acknowledges these kinds of activities won\u2019t all fit into everyone\u2019s day. They might sound particularly unrealistic to women juggling busy careers or young kids, or taking care of their aging parents. When her four children were young, she said, she would have snapped at any well-intended suggestions to meditate: \u201cYou\u2019re out of your mind. Go away. I didn\u2019t even go to the bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it would be ideal if advances arrived even more quickly, Shriver sees the growing attention to women\u2019s health and ongoing research as evidence that change is unfolding in real time. \u201cI\u2019m fully convinced they\u2019ll find a cure for Alzheimer\u2019s,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only one in five women know that they\u2019re more likely to develop Alzheimer\u2019s disease than men, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60,960],"class_list":["post-621995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}