A New Study Hints That 38% of Cognitive Decline Risk Is Impacted By These Lifestyle Factors
If you can still sing along to every boy band song of the early 2000s and can recite your childhood best friend's phone number, you might be thinking you'll never have to worry about memory challenges.
While it's true that a minority of Americans are officially diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease, it's probably far more common than you might expect. According to an October 2022 study published in JAMA Neurology, 1 in 10 American seniors are currently living with dementia, and another 22% of those 65 and older experience mild cognitive impairment—one of the early signals that more serious cognitive challenges may be on the horizon. That's about one-third of all individuals 65 and older.
Cognitive decline naturally occurs as we get older; it's natural that our ability to remember details, understand, learn and think degrades slightly over time. But when it starts to impact the quality of daily life and the ability to lead a happy, healthy, secure life, that's when a brain-related diagnosis might occur.
Family history certainly plays a role in the risk for dementia and other cognition-related conditions, and scientists have discovered a variety of habits can also move the needle. Things that have been previously shown to reduce the risk for cognitive complications later in life include:
- Eating more fruits and vegetables
- Keeping a stable blood sugar
- Limiting intake of ultra-processed foods
- Maintaining a healthy blood pressure
- Not smoking
- Scoring enough sleep
- Staying socially engaged
- Incorporating regular physical activity
But there still appears to be a gap in the understanding of all of the possible risk factors for cognitive decline, so researchers at Ohio State University and the University of Michigan decided to focus their recent efforts to help clear up the cognitive confusion … and potentially prevent cases of cognitive decline in the future.
According to a study published February 8, 2023, in the journal PLoS ONE, a handful of less commonly cited factors account for about 38% of the cognitive function variation among Americans at age 54: personal education level, parental education, household income and wealth, race, occupation and depression status.
What This Brain Health Study Found
For this study, lead author Hui Zheng, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Sociology at Ohio State University, and his team crunched the numbers from more than 7,000 American adults born between 1931 and 1941 who had enrolled in the Health and Retirement Study.
