According to recent research, lifestyle factors including diet, exercise, and sleep are important in reducing the risk of dementia.
A new study finds that inequality-related dementia risk is correlated with diet and other modifiable lifestyle factors.
New research indicates that lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, and sleep play a major role in reducing the chance of dementia, even as the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia continues to rise in the United States. This may interest you : Unlock the road to the So Good lifestyle. According to the researchers, two recent studies provide unique insights into factors that may contribute to dementia in nonwhite and low-income Americans.
“Our results support the beneficial role of a healthy lifestyle in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in American adults, including those with socioeconomic disadvantages and high risk of dementia,” said Danxia Yu, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, lead author of the study.
“We must recognize that it is difficult for people who face systemic and structural disorders to maintain a healthy lifestyle or to make lifestyle changes. It is very important to develop public health strategies to modify someone’s lifestyle. everyone, especially the poor.”
The results of two studies were presented online by Yu and her colleagues at NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE, the flagship annual meeting of the American Society of Nutrition. The study was also recently published in Neurology, the official journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The Southern Community Study, a long-term research project launched in 2001 to look at the causes of many diseases and health disparities, is the source of the study’s findings. Approximately 85,000 people were recruited from public health centers in the southern United States. Two-thirds of the participants are Black, giving the study the highest representation of African-Americans of any American research group. Researchers tracked Alzheimer’s diagnoses among participants over the age of 65 using Medicare claims data.
Examining five lifestyle factors
In the first study, data was collected from 17,209 elderly study participants, 1,694 of whom had forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s at a median follow-up of four years. This may interest you : A healthy lifestyle can reduce the genetic risk of prostate cancer. Smoking, alcohol consumption, leisure time exercise, sleep duration, and diet quality were all examined separately.
The results showed that healthy choices (no smoking, high leisure time exercise, low to moderate alcohol consumption, adequate sleep and a high quality diet) were specifically associated with an 11-25% risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia related. . Combined, the composite score for those five lifestyle factors was associated with a 36% reduced risk in the top and bottom quartiles. These associations were independent of participants’ age, sex, gender, education, income and underlying chronic diseases.
Analyzing dietary polyphenols
In the second study, the researchers extracted data from 14,500 elderly study participants, of which 1,402 developed Alzheimer’s or related dementia. In this group, they analyzed the intake of four major categories of dietary polyphenols – flavonoids, phenolic acids, stilbenes, and lignans – and their classes, using food frequency questionnaires and polyphenol data. This may interest you : Lifestyle, not aging, may better determine dementia risk, study finds. Polyphenols are a large group of compounds commonly found in tea, red wine, chocolate, berries, and other foods and have been associated with a variety of health benefits.
In this study, researchers found significant differences in the intake of polyphenols among racial groups, with white participants consuming an average of twice the total amount of polyphenols as black participants per day. Overall there was no significant association between total dietary polyphenol intake and the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia in either race; however, certain flavonoids were associated with reduced risk in Black participants but not in White participants. The results showed black participants in the highest quartile of tea consumption had a 28% lower incidence of Alzheimer’s than Black participants in the lowest quartile of tea consumption.
Although both studies were observational and did not evaluate the mechanisms behind the associations, the researchers said that a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet, can help maintain brain health by improving glucose and metabolism and reducing inflammation and psychological stress. Yu said more research is needed to further clarify the relationship between lifestyle factors and Alzheimer’s disease in different populations.
“Black Americans and people with low socioeconomic status have been disproportionately affected by the disease, but have been largely underrepresented in epidemiological studies,” Yu said. “Identifying modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in low-income populations of various races and ethnicities is an important health issue.”
Meeting: NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE
Reference: “Association of Healthy Lifestyles with Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia in Low-Income Black and White Americans” by Jae Jeong Yang, Laura M Keohane, Xiongfei Pan, Ruiqi Qu, Xiao-Ou Shu, Loren P Lipworth, Kyle Braun , Mark D Steinwandel, Qi Dai, Martha Shrubsole, Wei Zheng, William J Blot and Danxia Yu, 13 June 2022, Neuro.DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000200774
