Advice on Safeguarding Your Emotional well-being

According to research that was published in the journal Nature Communications, there are three important steps that may be taken to slow down the rate at which people who are at risk of dementia are losing their cognitive abilities. Three “modifiable” risk variables have been shown by the University of Oxford’s Professor Gwenaelle Douaud to be particularly important in influencing the brain’s susceptibility to aging and degeneration.

The study, which looked at brain scans from 40,000 people over 45 in the UK, discovered that lowering sugar intake, avoiding busy roads, and cutting back on alcohol use were all linked to a lower chance of cognitive impairment. Furthermore, a specific region of the brain was found to be more vulnerable to deterioration than others, particularly in response to exposure to alcohol, diabetes, and pollution from moving vehicles.

Professor Anderson Winkler of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the National Institutes of Health said that these results emphasize how critical it is to address modifiable risk factors as part of a comprehensive approach to brain health. People may be able to stop dementia in its tracks or postpone its start by altering their lifestyle.

With approximately 55 million cases of dementia worldwide, the disease is becoming a bigger public health concern. According to WHO and Alzheimer Disease International, dementia has become a worldwide health issue, and the number of cases is expected to climb in the years to come. Over a million people suffer from dementia in Italy alone; of these, about 600,000 have Alzheimer’s disease.

The condition has received more attention as a result of recent diagnoses of dementia in well-known individuals, such as American presenter Wendy Williams and Hollywood actor Bruce Willis. Willis, 68, was forced to retire from his job owing to frontotemporal dementia, while Williams, 59, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia linked to alcohol consumption.

It is becoming more and more obvious that lifestyle decisions can significantly slow down cognitive decline as research into dementia risk factors continues to yield new insights. People may be able to lower their risk of dementia later in life by being proactive in addressing modifiable risk factors.