There are established risk factors for dementia, some of which can be reduced by changing your lifestyle and others by detecting cognitive impairment early or even before it is even detectable clinically.
- Older age:
Getting older is the greatest risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Two percent of people between the ages of 65 and 69 have dementia. This risk doubles every five years, so that over a third of people over 90 years old have dementia (not all AD). Part of the increased risk over time occurs because it takes longer to develop dementia, and part because of other physical ailments that are co-morbid (occur at the same time as AD) are more common in the elderly.
- Genetics
Some genes are passed down from parents to children that increase the risk of developing AD and other forms of dementia. Some are “familial” and others “risk” genes. Familial genes definitely cause dementia if passed down. If one parent has a familial gene and the other doesn’t, then each child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting it and developing early dementia (50’s or 60’s). Risk genes, on the other hand, increase the chance of developing dementia but do not guarantee dementia will develop. The most common risk gene is one of the four types of the APOE gene (apolipoprotein E). Having this version of the APOE gene can increases the risk of developing AD four times over someone who doesn’t have it.
- Lifestyle
Smoking, excessive alcohol use, and social isolation increase the risk of developing dementia while regular exercise reduces it. Adopting health behaviors by middle age (40-65 years of age) reduces the dementia risk the most.
- Gender
There are more women than men with dementia but that is in part due to the fact that women tend to live longer. The risk of developing dementia is the same for men and women in most age groups. However, women over 80 have a slighter greater risk. Two plausible explanations include less access to education and work, which is protective, and changes in sex hormones around the time of menopause. Some studies suggest that the risk is greatest is in those women who experience menopause at an earlier age. Yet, there has been no convincing evidence that hormone replacement makes a difference.
- Cognitive reserve
Greater cognitive reserve means that it takes a greater degree of disease in the brain to interfere with obvious cognitive function. A larger cognitive reserve results in a delay in demonstrating the signs of dementia even though the disease process has begun.
Autopsies done on patients with the same degree of cognitive impairment clinically found much greater pathologic changes in the brains of those with higher levels of education who had worked as professionals as compared with the brains of those with no higher education whose occupations had not required as much mental skills (memory, organization and communication). In other words, it took much greater pathology to cause the same amount of cognitive impairment in those with greater education and with professional occupations.
- How BeCare Link can help
Through its quantitative assessment of cognition and other neurologic function, BeCare Link can help detect early signs of dementia, whether in the children of parents with dementia or in people who notice some change in their cognition. Earlier detection means better clinical outcomes. Become empowered and be a driver in your own neurologic health.