Keeping your marbles – Steps to Prevent Dementia

Steps to Prevent Dementia

What are you doing to prevent dementia? Yes, you can reduce your risk!

An influential report, the Lancet Commission Report of Dementia Prevention,  updated in 2024, details 14 risk-reducing steps. I have 3 steps to add to that list.

Why bother?

Dementia is a big problem that you don’t want to get:

• It affects a large number of people, and it is devastating. Over age 65, there are 1 in 14 people with dementia, and for over 80’s it rises to 1 in 6. 
• Women are twice as likely to suffer.
• Dementia is currently the most important contributor to death in the United Kingdom, ahead of heart disease and stroke.

What do you need to do?

Tackle the problems: these 17 risk factors are all modifiable and allow you to reduce your risk of dementia by at least 50%, and at the minimum, delay the onset. Worth doing, don't you think? Addressing some personal weaknesses, keeping slim and active with all your health issues under optimum control will make the difference.

 

The risk factors fall into 5 groups, 4 you can work on ie poisons, social isolation, lifestyle medical issues, major medical metabolic problems, and the public health issues that are less controllable. The additional steps are taking HRT/TRT, perfect oral hygiene and shingles control.

Blood pressure control – take the low road

Take the low road

Parts I and II of this series explain why this is important and how to recognize hypertension. This post is about how to get it all under control.

Your target and how to bullseye it

We need ‘normal’ [young person] levels of <120/<80 to minimise cardiovascular risk. For example, a level of 110/70 would be wonderful.

Two Key Questions:

1. How do we get to that level when our BP is up?
2. Is this degree of reduction safely achievable?

There are lifestyle and medical approaches.

The best approach is a combined one. Don’t say ”I will try the lifestyle approach first and see about medication if that fails”, because any time spent with high BP is damaging, and the acute events like heart attack and stroke that may occur with untreated BP are life threatening. SO do not delay getting your BP down. Fortunately, as modern BP medication is non-harmful there is no reason to be shy of taking treatment. 

The optimum approach is start on medication, get control, do the lifestyle change, too, and maybe later, reduce the meds a bit. Moreover, if you are overweight, a drinker, eat a lot of salt, and have insulin resistance you will only get optimum control by making lifestyle changes to alter those factors alongside your medication. Around 50% of you will need only one drug to get your BP down but equally 50% will need two.

Salt reduction is always helpful but has a low impact; magnesium supplementation at around 300mg daily has a significant effect.

The Short Answer

Reduce alcohol; lose 5-10 Kg depending on how over-heavy you are; try for 10,000 steps a day and a more active life overall; take either candesartan 8mg [potentially increasing to 16mg] or indapamide Slow Release 1.5 mg as your first line agent and add the other drug if you need a combination to get the needed result. It is possible that taking a magnesium supplement as I recommend for all over 60’s may have a beneficial effect.

To get the whole inside story read more

How to MAXIMISE your healthspan and have a Diamond Life

Your Diamond Life

Not in the sense being rich materially, but rich in good 'quality of life' years. So your HealthSpan is the good years, your LifeSpan the total including those bad end-of-life years you have seen others have.

Want help you to limit the effects of ageing and maximise your HealthSpan?