Want To Prevent Dementia? Pay Attention To This, Study Suggests

A study built on existing evidence found that staying on top of your heart health in middle age could have protective benefits. Here's what to know.

Studying the connection between coronary heart disease & dementia

For this study, researchers wanted to look into whether the age of coronary heart disease onset impacted Alzheimer's and dementia risk later on. In case you need a refresher, coronary heart disease (CHD) is the most common type of heart disease, and it happens when blood has trouble reaching the heart due to fatty buildup in the coronary arteries. Roughly 5% of Americans over the age of 202 have it.

Using data from over 430,000 people taken from the UK Biobank, the researchers looked at the CHD numbers alongside the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Based on their findings, the earlier a CHD diagnosis, the greater the risk of cognitive decline. More specifically, participants with CHD had a 36% increased risk of developing dementia, a 13% increased risk of developing Alzheimer's, and a 78% greater risk of developing vascular dementia, compared with participants who did not have coronary heart disease.

And when CHD onset was earlier in life (before 45), the researchers observed even more significant increases in risk, highlighting the importance of early intervention and prevention in middle age—and even early adulthood.

What to do about it

As senior study author Fanfan Zheng, Ph.D., says of the findings in a news release, "What surprised us most was the linear relationship between age of coronary heart disease onset and dementia. This shows the huge detrimental influence of premature coronary heart disease on brain health."

The good news, it's never too early to start taking better care of your heart, and this research suggests your brain might just thank you for it.

Given that research on dietary choices and cognitive decline has suggested that heart-healthy diets, like the DASH diet and Mediterranean diet, can benefit both your brain and your heart, it seems like tackling the food on your plate is a good place to start.

To that end, there's a diet that combines the DASH diet with the Mediterranean diet called the MIND diet, or Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay. Just like the DASH diet, the MIND diet has been found to be associated with better heart health, cognitive performance, and in some studies, to prevent cognitive decline3.

The takeaway

The more we learn about healthy aging, the more it's abundantly clear that our bodies are deeply interconnected systems that require whole-body approaches to health. Supporting both brain and heart health is no exception, so if you want one, you have to take care of the other.