12 Ways You Can Drastically Cut Your Dementia Risk
By Alice Klein, New Scientist
July 30, 2020 -- Almost half of
all dementia cases could potentially be prevented or delayed by adopting 12
health measures, a major review has found.
The review identified the biggest known
risk factors for dementia as
·
Smoking
·
Excess Alcohol Consumption
·
High Blood Pressure
·
Obesity
·
Diabetes
·
Head Injury
·
Depression
·
Hearing Loss
·
Exposure to Air Pollution
·
Lack of Exercise
·
Lack of Education
·
Lack of Social Contact
Minimizing these 12 risks could
potentially prevent or delay up to 40 per cent of dementia cases globally,
according to the review of the latest evidence by 28 leading dementia experts
from around the world.
“People who have family members with
dementia often ask me, ‘Is there anything I can do to prevent myself from
getting it?’,” says David Ames at the University of Melbourne in Australia, who
was one of the authors of the review. “There are certainly some things you can
do that might make a difference.”
For example, the review finds that
individuals can partially protect themselves by not smoking, drinking less than
21 units of alcohol per week, maintaining a systolic blood pressure of less
than 130 mmHg, avoiding activities that could lead to head injuries, using
hearing aids if needed, eating a healthy diet, and exercising and socialising
regularly.
Even older people can delay or possibly
even prevent dementia by taking steps to improve their lifestyles, says Ames.
“It’s never too early and it’s never too late to think about reducing your
risk,” he says.
In addition to making recommendations
for individuals, the review calls on governments to protect their populations
from dementia by providing primary and secondary education for all children,
improving air quality, promoting healthy behaviours, and discouraging smoking
and heavy drinking.
In some higher-income countries,
including the UK, US and France, dementia rates in older people have fallen in
recent decades, possibly due to improvements in education, nutrition and health
care. This suggests that preventative health measures can have an impact on
dementia, in the same way they have helped to reduce rates of lung cancer and
deaths from heart disease in many higher-income countries, says Ames.
Two-thirds of dementia cases currently
occur in lower-income and middle-income countries, where education is often
less accessible and rates of smoking, obesity and diabetes are relatively high.
“The higher prevalence of dementia risk factors means an even greater
proportion of dementia is potentially preventable than in higher-income
countries,” says review co-author Adesola Ogunniyi at the University of Ibadan
in Nigeria.
That means government interventions like
increasing education and introducing anti-smoking campaigns could have an even
bigger impact in lower and middle-income countries, says Ogunniyi. In Latin
America, for example, it’s estimated that 56 per cent of dementia cases could
be prevented or delayed by targeting the 12 risk factors.
However, there is a limit to how much
you can prevent dementia with lifestyle interventions, because the brain
inevitably starts to shut down in very old age, especially in people
who live past 100, says Ames. “We’ve become very good at keeping people from
dying of things like childhood diarrhea, and that means we now have a high life
expectancy,” he says. “If you hang around long enough, something eventually has
to catch you, and dementia is one of those diseases.”
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