3 Things to Avoid in Middle Age That May Delay Dementia Risk by 13 Years

From verywellhealth.com

Key Takeaways

• Avoiding smoking, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes in midlife may help you live up to 13 more years without dementia.

• These three risk factors can damage blood vessels, reducing blood flow to the brain and increasing the risk of dementia.
• Making small, healthy lifestyle changes in your 30s, 40s, and 50s can protect your brain as you age.

Your lifestyle habits right now play a big role in your brain health as you age. But according to a new study, there are three health factors that you may want to start paying closer attention to during midlife: smoking, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes.

Researchers found that people without these three risk factors lived without dementia for an average of 13 more years than people who had all three risk factors. As such, the findings suggest that taking care of your heart health in your 40s and 50s may protect your brain later in life.

Avoiding smoking, diabetes, and high blood pressure can delay dementia by up to 13 years.      miodrag ignjatovic / Getty Images

What the Study Found

In a new study published in the journal Neurology, researchers examined how modifiable vascular risk factors (factors affecting your blood vessels that can be changed) were linked to dementia later in life in four U.S. communities. This study investigated three risk factors in particular: high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and smoking. These three health concerns have long been recognized as some of the most common modifiable risk factors for dementia.

The researchers of this study followed more than 12,000 participants for an average of 26 years. At the start of the study, the participants’ ages ranged from 46 to 70 years. During this period, they monitored each participant’s high blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking status. Over time, researchers observed how many of their three modifiable risk factors each participant had. They also monitored how many years each participant lived without dementia.

They found that the fewer risk factors a participant had, the longer they tended to live without dementia. “In our study, having more of these risk factors in midlife was associated with progressively fewer years lived free of dementia,” said Jiaqi Hu, PhD, lead author of the Neurology study and assistant professor in the School of Healthcare Management at Tsinghua University.

From ages 55 to 95, participants with none of the risk factors lived an average of 30.1 years without dementia. The more risk factors a participant had, the fewer the dementia-free years they would experience. The average number for dementia-free years dropped to 26.3 years for people with one risk factor, 21 years for people with two risk factors, and 17.5 years for people with all three risk factors. “This is a difference of nearly 13 years between having none and all three,” Hu said.

These findings suggest that having multiple risk factors for dementia could be associated with a higher risk of dementia over time. However, it’s important to clarify that the study doesn’t say that smoking, high blood pressure, and diabetes directly cause dementia. And while having zero risk factors was associated with the longest amount of dementia-free years, it doesn’t mean that avoiding all three risk factors will automatically prevent you from getting dementia.

Why These Risk Factors Matter

These three vascular risk factors are important to understand for dementia because they can damage your blood vessels. Hu explained that smoking, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes are all major, modifiable vascular risk factors that can affect the blood vessels supplying the brain.

As you age, damaged blood vessels can reduce blood flow to your brain, which can impair memory, thinking, and executive function. Here’s how each risk factor actually affects dementia risk:

• High blood pressure: Can force blood to push too hard against the walls of the blood vessels, damaging them and making it difficult for the blood to pump efficiently to the brain
• Diabetes: Tends to damage the inner lining of the blood vessels, contribute to plaque build-up that becomes stiff, and restrict blood flow to the brain, heart, and other important organs
• Smoking: May cause blood vessels to narrow and become inflamed, which can limit how much oxygen your brain receives and raise the risk of stroke and dementia

  National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. How smoking affects the heart and blood vessels.

Despite all three risk factors’ association with dementia, no one behaviour or condition is considered most harmful. “I would not rank one as clearly the most harmful based on our study,” Hu said. “The three factors showed broadly comparable associations, and the stronger message was cumulative burden: The more risk factors a person had, the fewer dementia-free years they experienced.”

The point in life when these risk factors develop is also important to consider. When someone gets diagnosed with diabetes or high blood pressure earlier in life, they are more exposed to the health consequences of these conditions compared to someone who gets these conditions much later. “Timing likely matters because earlier onset generally means a longer period of exposure to vascular risk,” Hu said. “In our previous research, diabetes developing in midlife was associated with earlier and higher lifetime risk of dementia than diabetes developing later.”

This means that the earlier you develop these vascular risk factors, the more time they may have to harm your blood vessels and overall brain health. That’s why making or maintaining helpful lifestyle habits in your 30s, 40s, and 50s is so important for your brain as it ages.

How to Protect Your Brain Health

The good news is that there are several preventative strategies you can implement to protect your brain health and lower your risk of dementia as you get older. There’s no need to completely change your lifestyle all at once. But making small and sustainable changes over time can go a long way.

Generally, the earlier you start being mindful about your brain health, the better. “Midlife is an important window because vascular injury can accumulate for decades before dementia becomes apparent,” Hu explained. But there’s no harm in starting earlier, during your 20s and 30s, either.

To support your brain properly, Hu said to focus on a few specific lifestyle habits:

• Avoid smoking
• Stay physically active
• Eat a well-balanced diet
• Maintain a healthy weight that’s right for you
• Monitor and control your blood pressure and blood sugar

If, however, you already have diabetes, high blood pressure, or a smoking habit, don’t assume that it’s too late to make positive changes for your brain health. “The priority is achieving good, consistent control of these diseases,” Hu said. “I would emphasize taking appropriate blood-pressure and diabetes medications as prescribed, together with regular exercise, a healthy diet, weight management, and not smoking, with treatment individualized by a clinician.”

Unfortunately, there’s no surefire way to prevent dementia—at least not yet. But taking small steps to care for your vascular and brain health can add up over time.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/risk-factors-to-avoid-to-delay-dementia-12058576