Unhealthy diet . Behavioral risk factor surveillance system . Environmental diseases . Social factors affecting health . Environmental causes of mental illness

 Healthy lifestyle linked with lower dementia risk

For those with a low or moderate genetic risk for dementia, changing health and lifestyle factors may reduce this risk.

Dementia is a complex disease whose causes are still unclear, but genetic and lifestyle factors (such as lack of regular exercise) are thought to be the main contributing factors. Previous studies have focused primarily on individual protective factors. However, the beneficial effects of combining multiple factors can be greater than the sum of the individual factors.

To examine the effects of a combination of lifestyle factors and genetic predisposition on dementia risk, S Licher et al. Analyzed data from over 6000 participants to score individual participants based on desirable health and lifestyle factors (e.g. regular exercise, healthy diet, limited alcohol consumption, smoking cessation, etc.) Wearing. The results showed that when genetic dementia risk was low, scores for desirable lifestyle factors were associated with a further reduction in dementia risk. Conversely, participants with low genetic dementia risk were found to be at high risk if they scored poorly on lifestyle factors. It also found that in people with a genetic predisposition to high risk for dementia, both favorable and unfavorable lifestyles had no effect on dementia risk. rice field.

The strength of the Rotterdam study is that it is a large, long-term project, but the findings need to be confirmed by analyzes in an unrelated population, the authors say.