Dementia: Lifestyle changes that could lower your risk

Nearly everyone can lower their risk of dementia, even if it runs in the family, by living a healthy lifestyle, research suggests.

Dementia: Everything you need to know about the greatest health challenge of our time

What counts as a healthy lifestyle?

The researchers gave people a healthy lifestyle score based on a combination of exercise, diet, alcohol and smoking.

The study showed there were 18 cases of dementia per 1,000 people if they were born with high risk genes and then led an unhealthy lifestyle.

But that went down to 11 per 1,000 people during the study if those high-risk people had a healthy lifestyle.

It doesn’t seem like a big difference?

The figures might seem small, but that is because your mid-60s are relatively young in terms of dementia.

The researchers say cutting dementia rates by a third would have a profound impact in older age groups where the disease is more common.

Also, this type of research cannot definitively prove that lifestyle causes different risks of dementia. It simply spots patterns in the data.

Does this apply to everybody?

The findings may not apply to people with very early onset dementia that starts when people are in the 40s and 50s, say the researchers.

But they think their results would apply to people in older age groups when dementia gets more common.

The researchers say the study applies to dementia in general rather than specific forms of the disease like Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia.

What is the key message?

“You’re still likely to lower your own risk of dementia substantially if you change to a healthy lifestyle” doctors said

“While we can’t change the genes we inherit, this research shows that changing our lifestyle can still help to stack the odds in our favour.”

Lara Khouli