Dementia is an increasingly widespread disease around the world: a study shows that seven healthy habits can prevent its onset. Here are which ones.
Being active, eating healthy, maintaining a healthy body weight, not smoking, controlling cholesterol and blood pressure and keeping blood glucose levels low during middle age: these are the seven good habits that, according to a study by the American Academy of Neurology, lower your risk of developing diseases like Alzheimer’s as you get older.
The data speak for themselves: over one million Italians live with dementia (about 600,000 are Alzheimer’s) and, according to forecasts, the number of people in the world who will be affected by this disease will reach 153 million in 2050, tripling compared to to current figures. That’s why it’s crucial to understand if there are ways to prevent the onset of dementia.
The researchers involved 13,720 women with an average age of 54, and followed them for over 20 years by monitoring their habits. Outcome: At the end of the study, 1,771 participants (13%) had developed the disease, but for each of the seven good habits adopted, the risk of suffering from dementia dropped by 6%.
Confirmed by other studies. The results of this study coincide with those of a decade-long Chinese study published in the BMJ. In that case, the researchers had found an association between some healthy habits – such as eating healthy, exercising regularly, playing cards and socializing at least twice a week – and a decrease in memory loss and dementia risk.
However, the US researchers point out that their study has limitations, including the fact that it did not consider whether abandoning certain unhealthy habits at some point in life (e.g. quitting smoking) affected the risk of dementia in old age . “In addition to being active and taking care of our heart, to fight dementia it is important to sleep well, train the mind and stay in touch with the people next to us,” Susan Mitchell of Alzheimer’s Research UK reminds the Guardian.