A recent study revealed that maintaining three specific health factors in middle age can extend dementia-free life by approximately 13 additional years.
The study was conducted by researchers at NYU Langone Health in New York, who analyzed data from more than 12,000 people with an average age of 56, following them for nearly three decades. The team focused on three health factors: normal blood pressure, the absence of type 2 diabetes, and not smoking.
The researchers found that people who had none of these three risk factors (high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and smoking) lived an average of 30.1 more years without developing dementia, compared to just 17.1 years for those who had all three. This represents a difference of more than 13 years of brain health.
The results also showed that women live longer dementia-free years than men, regardless of the number of risk factors they have. The data revealed that women lived an average of 18.1 years without dementia since the start of the study, compared to 16.6 years for men. The results were even better for white people (19.6 years) compared to Black people (16 years), reflecting well-known health disparities between racial groups.
Dr. Joseph Koresh, director of the Institute for Optimal Aging at NYU Langone and lead author of the study, which was published in the medical journal Neurology, said: "Our findings confirm that people need to actively avoid these factors in middle age as a strategy to maintain brain health for more than a decade. I hope these results will encourage people to quit smoking and closely monitor their vascular health starting at age 45."
These findings come at a time when the number of people with dementia worldwide is doubling, with projections indicating that the number will reach 153 million by 2050. But experts believe that half of these cases can be prevented or delayed through early intervention.
The study confirmed that the three risk factors "often appear in middle age" and "exert lasting effects on neurodegenerative diseases," highlighting the importance of early detection and effective management of these conditions.
