changing your lifestyle can really slow cognitive decline, study finds

French researchers from Inserm have just shown that certain behaviors promote an earlier onset of neurodegenerative diseases.

Certain daily habits are protective against dementia, independently of predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease. Until now, the influence of the genetic background was not clear regarding preventive behaviors. Work carried out in the United States, the Netherlands and England, in particular, had given contradictory results, but this Inserm study, the first of its kind in France, clearly shows that it is possible to make prevention by promoting certain lifestyle habits, even in people genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease. The results of this study by French researchers from Inserm were published Wednesday May 22 in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. Prevention programs can therefore benefit everyone, insist the authors.

This Inserm team based in Bordeaux has developed a global lifestyle index which integrates 12 components. After following more than 5,000 participants over the age of 65 over several years, they found that the behaviors associated with an earlier onset of neurodegenerative diseases are a poor diet, an unbalanced diet, being physically inactive, not not having a social life or activities that stimulate the brain such as reading, games, crafts, smoking or consuming a lot of alcohol, having too much cholesterol, suffering from obesity, or ‘hypertension. On the other hand, acting to avoid these situations helps slow down cognitive aging even in people with genetic predispositions to Alzheimer’s disease.

How did the researchers go about measuring the genetic risk of each participant? They used two different criteria, on the one hand, the presence or absence of a well-identified gene, which is considered to be the main genetic risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease,
and on the other hand, the more or less high total of another more general risk score, bringing together other genetic susceptibility factors for this disease. The study therefore focused only on genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease. To go even further, the researchers believe that we should also study the influence of genes linked to nutritional metabolism. In the meantime, this avenue of prevention through lifestyle already brings hope, particularly in the face of Alzheimer’s disease which is the cause of 60 to 70% of dementia cases.