There is a lot to look forward to when getting older. With age there often comes a wisdom and calm unachievable by youth that brings me so much joy. As I inch closer to 40 however, there is a lot I am afraid of. It feels weird to be in official mid-life, and instead of wondering who I’ll marry or what career I’ll have, the future now holds a different, heavier variety of uncertainties. Have I done enough to live comfortably in retirement? Am I going to achieve a healthy goal weight ever? How much more of said time do I have left?
One of the biggest things I worry about, even despite my lack of recorded family history, is that I will get something like dementia. Not only does it feel like a disease that wipes away the essence of who you are, it proves to be a hard burden for loved ones to bear. But that fear might not have to be realized. The LAD Bible reported that according to a new study, a lot of cases of people with Alzheimer’s are due to lifestyle factors that can be changed.
Lund University in Sweden, recently conducted a study that used a sample size of almost 500 people to come to this life-changing conclusion. They focused on patients with an average age of 65, and looked into changes in the brain’s white matter and proteins that linked to Alzheimer’s over the course of four years. Of the factors studied, Isabelle Glans, doctoral student at Lund University, says the “most modifiable risk factors” were linked to “smoking, cardiovascular disease, high blood lipids and high blood pressure.”
“Much of the research available on the risk factors that we ourselves can influence does not take into account the different causes of dementia. This means that we have had limited knowledge of how individual risk factors affect the underlying disease mechanisms in the brain,” explains Sebastian Palmqvist, senior lecturer in neurology at Lund University and senior physician at the Memory Clinic at Skåne University Hospital.
“This damage impairs the function of the blood vessels and leads to vascular brain damage – and can ultimately lead to vascular dementia,” Glans said. “Diabetes was associated with increased accumulation of amyloid β, while people with lower BMI had faster accumulation of tau.”
Which in turn means that changing eating habits and vice habits could result in a later diagnosis, thought it did not say it could completely prevent it. Doctors note that adding nutrient dense fruits and vegetables and avoiding processed foods are a key factor.
Palmqvist added, “Focusing on vascular and metabolic risk factors can still help reduce the combined effects of several brain changes that occur simultaneously.”
According to the Us Against Alzheimer’s organization, the projection for the disease to impact more and more people is staggering. “Approximately 5.7 million people in the U.S. currently have Alzheimer’s disease,” the site reads.
“The number of Americans with Alzheimer’s is projected to triple to 16 million by 2050.”
Hopefully making these changes will slow down that projection considerably.
