Blackmores Institute

Using data from the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP; n = 1,845) and the Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP; n = 920), the study defined a healthy lifestyle score by awarding points for each of the following:<ul><li>Non-smoking</li><li>≥150 min/week of moderate/vigorous-intensity physical activity</li><li>Light to moderate alcohol consumption</li><li>High-quality Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay diet (upper 40%), and</li><li>Engagement in late-life cognitive activities (upper 40%)</li></ul>Participants were given an overall score ranging from 0 to 5. “Older adults who adhere simultaneously to 4 or 5 healthy behaviours had a 60% lower risk of developing incident Alzheimer dementia than individuals with 0 or 1 healthy behaviours. These associations were independent of other established risk factors of Alzheimer dementia and persisted among white participants who were carriers of the APOE e4 allele. From these findings and the fact that the lifestyle factors we studied are modifiable and in direct control of the individual, it is imperative to promote them concurrently among older adults as a strategy to delay or prevent Alzheimer dementia,” the authors reported.The authors noted that while previous studies have shown that risk factors have been evaluated individually with respect to Alzheimer’s disease, they suggest that these lifestyle factors are often interrelated and evaluating them in combination accounts for a cluster effect within individuals. In fact, the authors pointed out that studies assessing the impact of lifestyle factors on cardiovascular disease underscored the significance of promoting these lifestyle factors concurrently to optimise preventive effects in the population. “While these factors are modifiable, they often require medical treatment and are not always under the control of the individual, therefore, from a public health perspective, promoting healthy lifestyle behaviours is a feasible strategy that is likely to have a significant impact on dementia prevention and cardiovascular-related conditions.Claiming the generalisability of the findings across age and race as a significant strength of the study despite the two cohorts have different mean ages and proportions of ethnicities, the authors showed the adherence to a healthy lifestyle had similar effects on incident Alzheimer dementia. “Our study suggests that a healthy lifestyle as a composite score is associated with a substantially lower risk of Alzheimer dementia,” the authors concluded. Source: 
 Neurology. 2020. DOI: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000009816">10.1212/WNL.0000000000009816</a>

The evidence for adopting a healthy lifestyle continues to mount with the results of two longitudinal studies showing that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is substantially lowered with increased healthy lifestyle behaviours.

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