A recent study found that some behaviors can affect a person’s memory, even if they have the APOE gene, which has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease. A recent study found that older people can stop their memory loss from getting worse if they do one of six things: eat healthy food, exercise, spend time with other people, do mental activities, and don’t drink or smoke.
Even though many studies have found a link between lifestyle and memory loss, most of those studies only looked at one behavior. This study claims to be the first to look at a number of different habits.This study was done by Chinese researchers and came out in the BMJ on Wednesday. It looked at more than 29,200 people aged 60 and older and tracked them for ten years.
Can you tell me what the study discovered?
Diet was found to be the easiest of the six factors to change. People who ate seven out of twelve healthy foods on a regular basis lost their memories less quickly than people who didn’t eat any of these foods.
After eating, exercising your mind at least twice a week is the next most important thing for your memory. These activities include reading, writing, and even playing card games and other games.
The next step is to be physically active on a regular basis. According to the results of the study, a healthy amount of activity each week is at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of intense-intensity exercise.
It has been shown that some lifestyle choices are good for memory and cognitive function and that these choices can delay the natural loss of memory that comes with getting older. Keeping your brain healthy and preventing memory loss can be done in a number of ways, such as:
- Do physical activities on a regular basis. Studies have shown that exercise can improve brain function and make it less likely that you will lose your memory as you get older.
- A diet full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats Eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats will protect the brain and keep you from losing your memory.
- Mental stimulation: Brain-challenging activities like reading, puzzles, and learning a new skill can help keep the mind sharp and slow the loss of memory. One of these things is learning a new skill.
- Taking part in social events Keeping in touch with friends and family and doing other social things has been linked to better brain function and a lower risk of losing your memory.
- Ways to deal with stress Because long-term stress can hurt both your memory and your ability to think clearly, it is important to learn how to deal with stress and find ways to relax.
- Get enough and good sleep: Getting the right amount of sleep each night is important for keeping your mind sharp and preventing memory loss.
- It’s important to remember that these are just suggestions and that each person’s needs and circumstances may be different. Talk to a trained medical professional about your situation to figure out which method will work best for you.
- Recent studies show that individuals and their dogs who get regular exercise have a lower risk of developing dementia.
The fourth thing on the list was to meet up with at least two people every week. Participating in social activities, like going to meetings or parties, visiting friends or family, going on vacations, and talking to people online, has been shown to help slow down memory loss.
The last thing was that they didn’t drink alcohol or smoke. The participants whose memories were the most accurate were those who hadn’t smoked in more than three years or who only drank occasionally. The memory of these people was worse than that of people who smoked or drank a lot during the study.
The results of the study showed that all of this was true even for older people who had the APOE gene, which is known to be linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
A study that followed nearly 30,000 older people for more than ten years found that six important parts of living a healthy life can help slow down memory loss in old age by a lot. Even if they have genes that make them more likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, people who do between four and six of the healthy lifestyle activities could greatly lower their chance of getting dementia, the study found.
The goal of a recent study was to find out how much keeping a healthy lifestyle can help older people with memory loss. The goal of this study was to find out how different parts of a person’s life affect the rate at which they lose their memories as they get older.
The results of the study showed that people whose lifestyles were average or bad lost their memories much faster than those whose lifestyles were good. In the ten years that the study was done, people in the “favorable lifestyle” group were 90% less likely to get dementia than those in the “unfavorable lifestyle” group. Participants in the average group who did two to three healthy things didn’t lower their risk of dementia by more than 30%. This finding suggests that a person’s cognitive benefits can be greatly increased by doing more healthy things in their daily life.
How did the study get done?
After the participants signed up for the study in 2009, memory tests were done on them in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2019. The memory tests involved listening to 15 nouns and repeating them right away, three minutes later, and 30 minutes later.
The researchers put the subjects into three groups based on how many of the six healthy habits they did consistently. Those who did four to six healthy habits were considered “favorable,” those who did two to three healthy habits were “average,” and those who did zero to one healthy habit were “unfavorable.” People in the “favorable” group lost their memories the least over time. This is clear from the names of the groups.
Memory loss in old age does not always mean that dementia is starting, and it can be fixed, as the study’s introduction says. If you want to get a head start, you might want to try making these six changes to your life.
Rosy