Global dementia cases, driven mainly by population growth and enhanced life expectancy, are skyrocketing at the moment. Experts anticipate that by 2050, 153 million people could be living with the disease – triple the number today.
Meanwhile, progress towards a cure has been sluggish. The brain is immensely complex, and our understanding of how dementia is caused and eliminated changes all the time. Even developing drugs capable of crossing over the blood-brain remains a challenge.
But all hope is not lost just yet. Rather than waiting around for a treatment, there are things you can do today, experts say, that can reduce your risk of diagnosis and slow cognitive decline once one is received.
One day, scientists may find a cure for dementia, which would improve life outcomes for millions of patients and their families. In the meantime, why not give these mind-sharpening techniques a go?
1. Keep your eyes on the move
Vision is generally thought of as our most important sense and for good reason. Our eyes are highly intricate – capable of distinguishing 10 million colours by some estimates – and compared to other creatures in the animal kingdom, our vision is among the keenest.
It makes sense, then, that vision is closely related to our cognitive health and that better eyesight might be related to maintaining healthy brain function as we age. Research backs this up; a recent study published in Scientific Reports found that visual sensitivity can predict dementia as many as 12 years before it’s formally diagnosed.
The study was based on 8,623 healthy people in Norfolk, UK, who were followed for many years. Participants were shown a field of moving dots and asked to press a button as soon as they saw a triangle forming within it.
Explaining how the test worked, the paper’s co-author, Prof Eef Hogervorst, says: “At any point, these dots could form a triangle facing upwards or downwards in the visual field, and people who would go on to develop dementia were much slower to press a button indicating they’d recognised the triangle.”
But what if vision could be used as a preventative tool too? As it turns out, it can.
Research in this area is nascent and mixed, but there have been some promising results in recent years. A 2021 study, for example, found that horizontal eye movements can improve memory retrieval, although right-handed people seem to benefit more from this and vertical movement. Experts still aren’t sure why this is.
In the same year, Hogervorst and her team published research showing that people who watch more TV and read more have better memory and significantly lower dementia risk. She points out that the reason for this could be, at least in part, due to the eye movements indicative of both activities.
So, while treatments for dementia based on eye movements are non-existent for the time being, it’s clear that it can’t hurt to keep your eyes moving and engaged and that doing so will likely have some benefit as you age.
And the good news is that it doesn’t mean you have to sit around looking up and down and left and right. Instead, Hogervorst recommends simply reading, watching TV, playing computer games or even just going for a walk in nature. Sounds pretty manageable, right?
Read more:
- The new science of dementia: Everything you need to know, from causes to risk factors
- We could soon detect (and treat) dementia decades in advance. Here’s how
- How to keep your brain young: Scientists uncover key link between dementia and your social interactions
2. Keep on learning
The effect of education on health is multifaceted and complex. Still, one thing is clear: being more educated and having a higher-quality education tends to be associated with better health outcomes. The same is true for dementia.
Several studies have shown that the more time you spend in education, the lower your dementia risk – by some accounts, this could be as much as an 11 per cent drop for each additional year spent learning.
It’s worth noting that higher levels of education are typically associated with higher socioeconomic status and a healthier lifestyle, so untangling where the benefits of these end and those of education specifically begin is difficult.
That said, the mountain of research in education’s favour is convincing and long-established.
It even appears that for people who develop dementia, being more educated allows you to stave off some of its effects. A 2010 study from the University of Cambridge, for example, showed that education allowed patients to cope better with changes in their brains due to dementia before exhibiting symptoms.
3. Surround yourself with others
No one likes being lonely, but its effects might be more long-lasting than you think.
“It’s not abnormal for people to feel lonely in certain instances,” says Eileen Graham, associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University, Illinois. “You know, low points in a person’s life, such as after a breakup or something like that. These sorts of things aren’t particularly problematic.”
What is problematic, she says, is longer-term, persistent loneliness. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, this kind of social isolation can increase a person’s dementia risk by around 60 per cent.
Graham points out that understanding what loneliness is doing to the brain to heighten the risk of dementia is “an open question”, but she thinks it could be that lonely people engage in unhealthy behaviours or that loneliness is physically stressful for the brain.
Either way, the key is to surround yourself with people, especially as you age.
Graham’s advice: “You need to know yourself really well and know what your social needs are. So, if you need a lot of social interaction to not feel lonely, then make strides to get out there and reach out to friends for coffee or a phone call.”
She also highlights the need to know your neighbours, especially older people who might not have opportunities for social contact and, more broadly, for society to create systems capable of protecting those vulnerable to loneliness.
4. Be conscientious, not neurotic
Your personality may feel as fundamental a part of you as, say, your arms or legs, but it turns out you can change it. In fact, you might want to if you’re keen on keeping your dementia risk as low as possible.
Recent research published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association analysed data from multiple studies including a total of 44,000 participants to compare personality traits with dementia risk.
The team measured the so-called ‘big five’ traits (conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism and agreeableness) and subjective measures of wellbeing (positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction).
The paper’s lead author, Prof Emorie Beck, explains that, as expected, high conscientiousness and low levels of neuroticism had “really clear links to a lower risk of dementia diagnosis”. Similarly, having a positive outlook and high life satisfaction were associated with lower risks.
What surprised Beck and her team, however, was that personality seems able to protect the brain from exhibiting symptoms of dementia – even where the pathology of dementia is present in the brain.
“We found that personality traits seem to be specifically associated with behavioural and cognitive aspects of dementia diagnosis, but seem to have no link to underlying biological mechanisms,” she says. In other words, fostering these positive traits appears to make the brain more resilient to the disease itself.
If you’re now feeling neurotic about the fact you’re neurotic or conscious of the fact you’re not conscientious, don’t fret, as there’s always time to change.
Beck recommends building good routines and habits, surrounding yourself with positive, conscientious people and, if necessary, seeking therapy to work out how to self-improve.
5. Reduce your exposure to air pollution
As cities have swelled in recent decades, air pollution has become increasingly problematic for health outcomes. Today, a staggering 90 per cent of the global population breathes air that exceeds the World Health Organization’s (WHO) targets on particulate matter.
It’ll come as no surprise, then, that scientists have found a link between how much polluted air someone is exposed to and their risk of developing dementia in later life.
According to a 2023 systematic review on the topic, for every 2 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) increase in the annual average of particulate matter of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) a person is exposed to, the overall dementia risk rises by four per cent.
For context, London’s 2023 average PM2.5 concentration was 8.4 µg/m3, Coraopolis in Pennsylvania (the most polluted city in the US last year) clocked 19.3 µg/m3, while India’s capital Delhi averaged a mind-blowing 100 µg/m3.
6. Make sleep your priority
Dementia comes in many different forms and affects everyone uniquely. Still, it’s been long established that a dementia diagnosis often goes hand in hand with disturbances in sleeping patterns.
‘Sundowning’, for example, is a common occurrence for someone with dementia. This is where a person becomes restless, confused and agitated as the Sun sets and it gets dark outside.
But how about before a diagnosis? We know sleep is good for keeping us generally healthy; does it help keep our brains sharp too?
Well, the science is unclear. Researchers aren’t sure how sleep and dementia are linked, but evidence is stacking up in favour of proper sleep being a protective factor.
One 2021 study published in the journal Nature Communications tracked the sleep of 8,000 middle-aged participants between the ages of 50 and 70. They defined a normal night’s sleep as seven hours and found that consistently getting less than this was associated with a 30 per cent increase in dementia risk.
“Poor sleep, particularly in midlife and often when women go through menopause, sets you up for dementia, possibly because your body’s ability to get rid of dementia-causing plaques in the brain is associated with it,” Hogervorst says.
“So I always tell people to make sleep their priority. Do everything in the day to make sure you sleep well at night.”
7. Exercise and eat healthy
Causes of dementia tend to cluster together, which makes reducing risk complicated and non-linear. For example, education is associated with socioeconomic status, which is associated with where you live, which is associated with your social connections and exposure to pollution. So on and so forth.
But by now, at least, you might have picked up a common thread: being generally healthier reduces dementia risk.
In particular, research shows that what’s good for the heart is good for the brain. In other words, preventing cardiovascular disease and diabetes, maintaining a healthy weight, keeping blood pressure low and avoiding smoking will all reduce your risk of dementia.
Diet and exercise are the bedrock of a healthy lifestyle, so they’re key to achieving this healthy heart-brain combination in old age.
Somewhat annoyingly, experts haven’t settled on exactly which diet is best yet. A Mediterranean diet high in fruits and vegetables is often recommended, although a large 2022 study found it didn’t reduce the odds of getting dementia.
Responding to the study at the time, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, Dr Sara Imarisio, said that, “the evidence for specific diets affecting dementia risk isn’t clear cut” and that more research was needed. She also pointed out that what’s “good for our heart health is also good for our brain health” and that maintaining a “healthy, balanced lifestyle” is important.
The message on exercise is, thankfully, more straightforward – do it. Regular exercise can reduce your risk of developing dementia by about 28 per cent and for Alzheimer’s disease specifically (the most common form of dementia), that number rises to 45 per cent.
About our experts
Eef Hogervorst is a professor of psychology at Loughborough University. Her research interests are in early dementia screening and treatment.
Eileen Graham is an associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University. Her work focuses on personality differences that are associated with health outcomes in older adulthood.
Emorie D Beck is an assistant professor in the Psychology Department at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the question of what personality is and how it can change over time.
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