Pursuing a healthier lifestyle reduces your chance of developing dementia whatever your genetic risk of being affected by the condition, according to new research.
鈥淚n a sense we [already] knew what is good for the heart seems to be good for the head,鈥� says David Llewellyn at the University of Exeter. 鈥淏ut that seems to be the case regardless of genetics.鈥�
The new research should encourage people not to be fatalistic if they have, say, a family history of dementia. 鈥淥ne of the concerns is if you tell people to live healthily to reduce your risk of dementia, some people think they will probably develop dementia anyway because of their genetics,鈥� says Llewellyn.
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Genetic risk
Around 196,000 people aged 60 and over with genetic data in the UK Biobank were followed for eight years, during which time 1769 developed dementia. The researchers grouped people into three levels of genetic risk for dementia 鈥� low, intermediate and high 鈥� using previous work on associations between genetic variants and Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, a type of dementia.
The people鈥檚 lifestyles were classed as favourable, intermediate and unfavourable. Someone was considered to live favourably if they did not smoke, exercised more than 150 minutes a week, had no more than one drink a day for women and two for men, and ate at least four of seven food groups including fruit, vegetables and wholegrains.
Llewellyn and his colleagues discovered that people with a high genetic risk of dementia had a 32 per cent lower chance of developing the condition if they maintained a 鈥榝avourable鈥� lifestyle compared to an 鈥榰nfavourable鈥� one.
There is no guarantee that eating more greens and drinking less beer will ward off dementia. But in terms of likelihood, the combination of high genetic risk and poor lifestyle have a large effect, says Llewellyn. 鈥淧eople who were unlucky in terms of their genetics and had an unfavourable lifestyle were almost three times more likely to develop dementia [than those with a low genetic risk and healthy life].鈥�
Eat well
The study complements the advice the World Health Organization 听urging people to exercise regularly, eat well and avoid smoking to reduce their risk of dementia.
The researchers admit they may have missed some cases of dementia. David Curtis at University College London, who was not involved in the research, says because the study only considered cases of dementia diagnosed through hospital admissions and deaths, there could still be plenty of physically healthy people walking around with dementia.
Another big limitation is the findings only apply to white people, due to the study鈥檚 reliance on previous genetic research which was solely based on a white population.
Journal reference:听JAMA,听
