What Can You Do in Midlife to Prevent Later-Life Dementia?
May 29, 2023
A recent Wall Street Journal article: https://on.wsj.com/4a1O87Q (apologize for the paywall) went viral focused on how we need to start fighting dementia in our 40s. Geez, what a buzz-kill. I bet this journalist has an ample ration of pork and beans in her basement in the case of our upcoming Armageddon. Most of us don’t want to think about dementia in midlife.
Seriously though, I did take a few things from this article including:
- Nearly seven million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease today, the most common type of dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The figure is expected to rise to nearly 13 million by 2050.
- Parts of the brain start to change faster during middle age, especially the hippocampus, which is important for remembering everyday events. Many of us think that playing Soduko later in life will solve everything but, for many, there’s been too much damage created to the brain in midlife for us to solve the problem in our 70s or 80s.
- In our 40s and 50s, the white matter in our brain—the connections between brain areas—decreases in volume. That likely results in slower processing speed, which could have further effects on cognition. In addition, proteins can build up in our blood, resulting in low-grade inflammation that can affect the hippocampus’s ability to encode and store new information. I know this sounds hyper-medical, but it’s important to know (if your feeble brain can remember it).
- The people who lose cognitive function faster during midlife are people who began using cannabis or tobacco as teenagers and continued to use in their 40s, and people with high levels of toxic lead in their blood from childhood. What if you were smoking weed because you lived next door to a toxic factory? Dude, you’re in trouble!
This sounds awful. So, what can you do? Here are the top suggestions:
- Brain and heart health are closely connected so listen to your doc when she talks about the condition of your heart.
- Exercise regularly, eat a healthy diet, don’t smoke, and don’t drink too much alcohol.
- Manage conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, and obesity, and treat obstructive sleep apnea.
For some of you, this is obvious. For others, it may feel like Mama Chip wagging my finger at you. In either case, just know that how we treat our body in midlife has a big impact on how we’ll experience our last decade of our life.
-Chip
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