Can you reduce your risk of dementia?
Dementia is becoming a growing societal burden throughout the world, especially in the industrialized world where increase longevity results in larger numbers of people experiencing dementia. So far, advances in medical treatments to mitigate this burden have been modest, at best.
There are known genetic risk factors for Alzheimers and frontotemporal lobe dementia. I’ve had my genome sequenced and I have none of the currently recognized variants associated with elevated dementia risk. Of course, none of us can control our genetics. But there are environmental inputs to dementia risk that we can control for ourselves, regardless of our genome makeup.
“The Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care has raised the number of modifiable risk factors definitively linked to cognitive loss to 14, based on research conducted since its last update in 2020.”
“The 14 factors include:
• Education
• Hearing loss
• Depression
• Head trauma from sports and bike riding
• Physical activity
• Smoking
• Hypertension
• Obesity
• Type 2 diabetes
• Alcohol drinking
• Social isolation
• Air pollution
• Vision loss
• High LDL
“If all of these were fully addressed — providing higher education to everyone, ending obesity, making helmet use mandatory for youth, eliminating air pollution, etc. — worldwide risk for dementia would fall by 45%, the commission found in its review of nearly 600 scientific publications.”
Each of these factors has a different impact on risk. Read the link for more details. Of course, addressing these factors will have positive externalities for your health beyond reducing dementia risk.
14 factors to halve your dementia risk
There are known genetic risk factors for Alzheimers and frontotemporal lobe dementia. I’ve had my genome sequenced and I have none of the currently recognized variants associated with elevated dementia risk. Of course, none of us can control our genetics. But there are environmental inputs to dementia risk that we can control for ourselves, regardless of our genome makeup.
“The Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care has raised the number of modifiable risk factors definitively linked to cognitive loss to 14, based on research conducted since its last update in 2020.”
“The 14 factors include:
• Education
• Hearing loss
• Depression
• Head trauma from sports and bike riding
• Physical activity
• Smoking
• Hypertension
• Obesity
• Type 2 diabetes
• Alcohol drinking
• Social isolation
• Air pollution
• Vision loss
• High LDL
“If all of these were fully addressed — providing higher education to everyone, ending obesity, making helmet use mandatory for youth, eliminating air pollution, etc. — worldwide risk for dementia would fall by 45%, the commission found in its review of nearly 600 scientific publications.”
Each of these factors has a different impact on risk. Read the link for more details. Of course, addressing these factors will have positive externalities for your health beyond reducing dementia risk.
14 factors to halve your dementia risk
Good article.
I look forward to the accompanying article “How public policy can reduce dementia risk & improve our lives by improving air quality, water quality, food quality, working conditions, societal connectivity”.
Sorry for the snark. But I get tired of articles about how it is up to individuals to reduce the risks & impacts of inhumane public policy & sociopathic businesses and corrupted institutions.
@just,
I guess you didn’t read or understand my post. If you had, you’d have seen that it was about what each of us can do *without the nanny state* to reduce our risk.
I don’t take a back seat to you or anyone else in my advocacy for improved air quality, water quality, food quality or societal connectivity. Sorry for the snark, but part of being an actual, you know, adult, is taking responsibility for your personal decisions. That includes getting vaccinated, brushing your teeth and exercising. And following the list I posted, none of which requires the nanny state to enforce.
I enjoyed your comment. Mine wasn’t really aimed at you. Just a general observation about medias role in taking “public good” and “public policy” and devolving and degrading it to “what YOU can do to save the environment”. Individual actions do matter, and they can aggregate & bubble up. But there seems to be an imbalance in which government and corporate action & responsibility has been de-emphasized.
But hey, for me it was a good day – because I came back to check for comments, which proves that I do not yet have dementia 😉 Have a great weekend.
And may we both be free of particulates & microplastics.
joel
i still did not see “nanny state” in your post. i did see “policy choices ” in the cited article, which imply to me government action, which, i think, is also implied by “nanny state.”
Joel:
Nice list of what each individual could do to help avoid dementia if resources were readily available.
Your first sentence presents the barrier to accomplishing the list of things. “Growing societal burden” which to me would take in access to healthcare, food, better environment, etc. Each of the three I present are more of a right to which others may oppose because of a cost to society.
We (I) have seen it in the opposition to legislation helping people with a better environment such as replacing lead piping in places such as Flint, Michigan or a better quality of municipal water rather than drawing from the same river that GM dumped chemicals in from an obsolete plant.
I do not believe we have awoken to the impediments yet and the opposition to fixing things so all can achieve at a lesser cost than afterwards.