Are you a windbag? Rambling speech 'could be early sign of Alzheimer’s'

Turning into an old windbag may be an early sign of mental difficulty that can lead to Alzheimer’s, new research suggests.

Rambling speech could be the first indication of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition marked by forgetfulness that pre-dates dementia, it is claimed.

Scientists in the US conducted an experiment in which 24 healthy older individuals and 22 people with MCI were asked to create a sentence out of three words.

One example used was water, stove and pot. A simple solution would be “I filled the pot with water and put it on the stove”.

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But lead researcher Dr Janet Cohen Sherman, from Massachusetts General Hospital, said: “The MCIs are very long-winded.”

They tended to use more words and “get lost along the way”, she added.

Dr Sherman hopes to develop the test into a method of detecting early changes that are predictive of Alzheimer’s disease within the next five years.

But she stressed that it was the way a person’s speech patterns changed over time that was important.

Someone who had always rambled would not be considered at risk in the same way as a person who turned into a rambler.