8 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Risk of Dementia

From eating your greens to making time for friends, there's a lot you can do to reduce your risk for dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

By Madeline Vann, MPH 

Medically reviewed by Lindsey Marcellin, MD, MPH

If you took music lessons as a kid, there’s good news: Whether you tooted a trumpet or pounded away at the piano, researchers at Emory University have found that it may have fine-tuned your mental abilities.

The new, small study looked at 70 adults between the ages of 60 and 83, all with good bills of health. Those with the most musical experience tended to perform better on cognitive tests than those with little or no musical know-how. Interestingly enough, the participants who still played an instrument performed no better than those who played an instrument as a child, showing the importance of starting at a young age.

The cognitive tests used in the study measure brain functions that typically decline with age and more dramatically with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. So are piano-playing child prodigies scot-free from getting dementia one day? No, but it certainly can’t hurt. And that’s not the only way to potentially lower your dementia risk.

How to Reduce Your Dementia Risk

There is a lot you can do to proactively reduce your risk of dementia. The first step is just being realistic about your risk — if dementia occurs in your family, that should spur you on to take better care of yourself.

Here are some more steps you can take:

• Manage stress. “Biologically speaking, stress does really bad things to our brain, especially the hippocampus. It’s an essential brain structure as far as learning and memory and it’s the first structure that starts to show problems with dementia,” explains Andel. Stress management involves a multitude of tools but one approach that can be helpful to dementia caregivers is taking advantage of support services and respite care so they can get a chance to recharge their batteries.
• Treat depression. A history of depression seems to predict dementia later on — so if you live with depression, seek treatment now.
• Eat your fruits and veggies. Andel says that new data suggests that adults who eat their fruits and vegetables, especially during middle age, are at lower risk for developing dementia than their peers whose plates are less green.
• Be active. Regular physical activity has a protective effect. Don’t sweat it if you aren’t running marathons — moderate daily activity is fine.
• Make friends. Strong social networks provide some protection against Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss, says Andel. Researchers aren’t sure exactly why this is, but friends provide many benefits, including keeping you mentally active and staving off stress and depression.
• Seek complexity. The brain flourishes when it is challenged to learn and remember new things. This may be why taking classes or doing crossword or logic puzzles seems to ward off memory loss. But Andel says that this benefit is also seen in people who have occupations with a high degree of complexity.
• Stay healthy. Staying on top of conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes are all key to reducing your risk of dementia. Likewise, stop smoking and cut back on drinking alcohol, as both add to your risk.
• Know the signs. Even with hard work and good intentions, you may one day be faced with dementia. Don’t delay getting memory loss or other worrying symptoms evaluated — many forms of dementia respond to early treatment.

Ultimately, say Andel, the best advice for calming your fears about future memory loss or Alzheimer’s disease is to live as full and rich a life as you possibly can right now.

“Basically if you’re active in one respect or another, you’re better off than someone who is not,” Andel says.