A healthy lifestyle not only makes you more long-lived, giving you about 5 years of extra life, but also helps to preserve cognitive abilities longer by preventing or delaying the onset of dementia associated with Alzheimer’s. This is what emerges from a study coordinated by Rush Medical College of Chicago and published in the British Medical Journal.
The research followed 2,449 over 65 of both sexes, verifying the impact on longevity and cognitive health of a healthy lifestyle, understood as the habit of following a healthy Mediterranean-style diet, physical activity, avoid smoking and alcohol, stay intellectually active. Among women who managed to maintain this lifestyle, the researchers observed a life expectancy of 3.1 years longer than their peers. Furthermore, 88.2% of their residual life could be expected to spend free from cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s compared to 80.7% of those with a less healthy lifestyle, with a difference of more than 4 years.
The benefits observed in males are even wider. Those who followed a healthy lifestyle could expect 5.7 more years of life; of these, 93.9% free from dementia compared to 88% of those who had an unhealthy lifestyle. This difference translated into 6.4 more years with good cognitive health. “This survey suggests that the lengthening of life expectancy achieved through a healthy lifestyle is not accompanied by more years of living with Alzheimer’s dementia,” the researchers conclude.