Healthy Lifestyle May Reduce Risk For Dementia, Despite Genetic Risk Factors

Genetic proneness to dementia is something that is out of our control, however preventing the onset, or in its entirety is something that can be helped: through a healthy lifestyle. It has been shown that people who were regular with their exercise, had a balanced diet, didn’t smoke and drank alcohol in moderation, reduced the risk of dementia, even if they were genetically prone to dementia.

Stats check

Many studies have indicated lifestyle changes can reduce the risk of developing it, considering the startling number of lives it has taken. A third of the cases have been prevented by taking factors like blood pressure, hearing and diet into consideration. In May, the World Health Organisation has also shown the doing brain exercises can put off the onset of dementia. However, it is still uncertain as to which measure taken has had an effect on the genes that cause dementia.

It may have something to do with how your brain is stimulated. Leading a sedentary lifestyle does not help, of course. If you keep your brain active with reading, solving puzzles, crosswords, sudoku, and so on, it keeps the grey cells active. Exercise has a similar effect. It keeps the neurons buzzing and sufficiently lubricated. There are certain foods called brain foods that have a positive effect on the brain, like fish and green vegetables.

Genetic risks and more

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study by Llewellyn and colleagues that stated how 200,000 individuals of European descent aged 60 and older, did not have cognitive problems or dementia. The team had split the participants into five equal groups based on their combination of almost 250,000 genetic variants related to a high genetic risk of dementia. There were three categories from these groups: low risk, medium risk, and high risk.

The researchers had taken a dive into their lifestyles and found four factors that contributed to a reduced risk of dementia: exercise, lack of smoking, having a large variety of foods in their diet including fruit and fish, and having a drink a day for both men and women. The participants were scored on their score for overall ‘healthiness’ of their lifestyle. The team had tracked the participants for eight years, during which time only 1769 people, that is 1% of them, had developed dementia.

How a healthy lifestyle can help

The results show that more people had developed dementia in the high-risk group than the low-risk group. People who had healthier living styles were less likely to develop dementia than the relatively unhealthy lifestyles. These trends happen to be independent of each other: when the team took into account factors like sex, age, and economic status, they found a healthy lifestyle was linked to 32% lower risk of dementia compared to unhealthy lifestyle, independent of their genetic predisposition.

The bottom line is, the more you keep your brain active and healthy, and away from factors that might harm it, it can significantly reduce the chances of developing dementia. This includes stressors, smoking and excessive amounts of alcohol.