For someone experiencing Alzheimer’s, life can be frustrating and scary. It’s probably just as frustrating and scary for a person caring for someone with Alzheimer’s. It can be frightening when your mind doesn’t work quite right. When you forget names, faces, places and even recent events. When you struggle to find the right words or even repeat words you just said. What do you do? This disease is so much different than all the others.

If you’re obese, you can change your eating habits, start exercising and lose some weight. If you have high blood pressure, you can control it with medication until you lower it through lifestyle choices. Your chance of surviving most cancers is about 90%. But if you get Alzheimer’s, there’s not a lot you can do to just fix it, which is why prevention is so important.

Before we get too far into this, I want to point out that dementia is the general term used to describe a set of symptoms that affect memory, thinking, and behavior. Alzheimer’s is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that’s the most common cause or type of dementia. Throughout this post, I use the terms interchangeably.

Last summer, the Lancet Commission on dementia published a new report on dementia prevention, intervention, and care. The report identified 14 risk factors for dementia and stated that nearly half of all dementias could be prevented by eliminating these 14 risk factors. The risk factors they list are less education, head injury, physical inactivity, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, hearing loss, depression, infrequent social contact, air pollution, vision loss, and high cholesterol.

That’s a long, overwhelming list. Where do you start? When you realize that several of these risk factors are connected, taking action to prevent them becomes a lot easier.

Keep Your Mind Working

You can do a lot of things to keep your mind working as you age. Reading daily, doing puzzles, and working math problems will all help keep your mind sharp. But some other factors seem more impactful for mental health. The level of education a person attains significantly impacts brain health as we age. So, if you’re thinking about going back to school to get that master’s degree, do it. The most beneficial way to keep your mind strong as you age appears to be exposure to cognitive stimulation at work. So, anytime you can change your role at work to something that requires more brainpower, go for it. If you really want to keep your mind sharp, don’t retire. If you do retire, find some part-time work or take up an activity or hobby that requires a good deal of brain power.

If You Have Hearing Loss, Get Hearing Aids

People with hearing loss who use hearing aids have a significantly lower risk of cognitive decline.

Protect Your Head

Having a traumatic brain injury with loss of consciousness increases the risk of dementia and leads to earlier onset of dementia by 2 – 3 years.

Completely Stop Smoking, And Limit Your Alcohol

There is nothing good about smoking for any aspect of your health. And now we are seeing that smoking in mid-life is worse than smoking later in life. If you smoke and you want to quit, start here.

Drinking moderately seems to be okay, but having more than five alcoholic beverages a week greatly increases your risk for dementia.

Get Help for Depression

Depression and dementia are bidirectional: depression increases your chances of getting dementia and dementia increases depression. Depression is associated with 51% higher risk of dementia, most likely because of the effects of cortisol on the hippocampus. Treating depression with pharmaceuticals, therapy, or a combination of both has been shown to lower risk of dementia.

Stay Socially Connected

Risk for dementia is higher in people who socially isolate. A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2022 found that people who are socially isolated (living alone, seeing family or friends less than once a month, and participating in no weekly activities) have a 52% increased risk of dementia. Another study published in 2023 found that social participation of any kind is associated with a 30-50% lower risk of dementia.

Keep Your Eyes Healthy

Vision loss is a risk factor that has only recently been considered for Alzheimer’s. A metanalysis in 2021 involving 30 studies found that cataracts and diabetic retinopathy are associated with an increased risk of dementia; glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration are not. A study published in the Journal of American Medicine in 2022 found that cataract extraction was associated with a significantly reduced risk of dementia.

Purify Your Air

Most of us live in an environment where too many particles of all sorts of abnormal matter float around in our air. This is true of the air outside urbanized areas, but even more true of the air in our homes. The most concerning abnormal particle in the air in our homes is microplastics, which are tiny plastic particles small enough to enter our bodies through the air we breathe. Researchers at the University of Mexico have detected microplastics in human brains at much higher concentration than any other organs. The researchers also found that people diagnosed with dementia have up to 10 times as much plastic in their brains as everyone else.

A good HEPA-certified filter (high efficiency particulate air) can remove particles in your air up to 0.3 microns with 99.97% efficiency. You can purchase a really good HEPA-certified air purifier for about $200.

When it comes to Alzheimer’s, controlling risk factors is the key. Hopefully you can start following some of these lifestyle practices.

Watch for our next blog post. We’ll discuss the role of exercise and nutrition in preventing Alzheimer’s.

Stay Strong,

Bo Railey