Connection and Community are Good for Your Brain
Kelly O’Shea Carney, PhD, ABPP
Board Certified Geropsychologist
President, Dementia Friendly Lehigh Valley Steering Committee
Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” When he first coined this phrase, he could not have had any idea about brain health and the insights we have today into the risk factors for dementia. But even so, his words could not be truer for those who care about such things.
Research has identified 12 modifiable risk factors for dementia and seven of them are medical issues that your physician is likely to track during routine preventive care visits. In relation to brain health, this means that by seeing your physician for your annual physical and following the advice you are given, you can reduce your risk for dementia over the course of your lifetime.
The seven modifiable risk factors that your physician can help you to monitor and address, and the percent of total risk for dementia contributed by each factor is listed here:
- Hearing loss (8%)
- Elevated blood pressure (2%)
- Excess use of alcohol (1%)
- Obesity (1%)
- Smoking (5%)
- Depression (4%)
- Physical inactivity (2%)
- Diabetes (1%)
In other words, the research suggests that the risk of developing dementia could be reduced by 24% if each of us simply engaged in good preventive health practices and lifestyle choices that reduced the occurrence of these specific risk factors. Truly, a little bit of prevention can make a significant difference in brain health!
When you look more closely at the issues listed above, it becomes clear that most of them relate to the healthy behaviors we all know we should be engaging in. Regular exercise, healthy eating to reduce problems with obesity, managing hypertension and diabetes, giving up smoking, and drinking only in moderation. These are the same things we know are good for our overall health and heart health. Now we also know these same issues are important for brain health. Moreover, your family physician can both monitor for these problems during annual physicals and can treat the issues if they arise. For example, treating issues with blood pressure, diabetes, and/or depression reduces the risk these conditions present to your brain health almost as well as not developing them in the first place. Similarly, remediating hearing loss, if it occurs, also serves to reduce the risk of the damage to the brain that develops as a result of the
loss of the connection and cognitive stimulation that comes from not being able to hear. So even if you have a genetic predisposition to one of the conditions identified above, managing that health issue under the supervision of a physician can still help you to preserve the health of your brain.
In a 2020 article published in the Lancet naming the 12 modifiable risk factors for dementia, the researchers noted that the stage of life in which each risk factor comes into play is also relevant to preserving brain health (Livingston, et. al., 2020). That article included the graphic below that illustrates when each risk factors plays the greatest role in compromising brain health. This illustration makes clear that brain health and the prevention of the risk factors that compromise it is a life-long endeavor. While it is never too late to focus on a bit of prevention, it is better to be mindful and attentive to the prevention of health issues throughout the lifespan. Engaging in healthy behaviors, seeking preventive health care, and collaborating with your physician to monitor and treat any health issues that emerge is your best bet to reduce the modifiable risks for dementia later in life. That ounce of prevention is far better than experiencing the cognitive changes associated with dementia for which there is currently no cure.
Livingston G, Huntley J, Sommerlad A, Ames D, Ballard C, Banerjee S, et al. Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission. Lancet. 2020;396(10248):413–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/S01406736(20)30367-6.