By MidLyfe Editor: According to the latest landmark study – there is now strong evidence that a healthy heart in middle age lowers the risk of developing dementia later in life.

Unsurprisingly, it is those who stop smoking,  exercise regularly, eat and drink healthily and cut their salt intake in their 40s and 50s who boost their chances of avoiding or delaying the onset of the condition that frightens us the most decades later.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, emerged from a 36-year study which has tracked the health of more than 10,000 Britons since 1985. The results highlighted the importance of making lifestyle changes in middle age according to researchers at Oxford University and University College London (UCL).

Whilst the vast majority of people are aware that they can reduce their risk of dementia by stimulating their brain — such as reading challenging books, learning new skills such as a new language or studying for new qualifications – few actually know just how significantly they can reduce their risk of dementia by first of all looking after the rest of their body. The key seems to making sure you do everything you can to look after your heart.

Dr Scott Chiesa, the research associate at the UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science, said: “It’s very much a case of early prevention for maximum gain … when you’re young, you’ve got to start thinking about the long-term consequences, rather than wait until you get old and hope someone cures you.”

What the research found was that faster aortic stiffening in mid-life to an older age is linked to markers of poorer brain health. The body’s largest artery, the aorta, can get stiffer with age and therefore there is a link.

Researchers focused on measuring aortic stiffness of 542 adults when they were 64 and 68 years – in a subset of the study of 10,000 Britons. From there, cognitive tests and MRI’s or brain magnetic resonance imaging scans assessed the size, connections and blood supply of different brain regions at the age of 69.

Tests and checks suggested that targeting arterial health much earlier in a person’s life and not waiting until its too late could provide cognitive benefits in older age and may help to delay the onset of dementia or avoid it altogether, researchers said.

Stiffening of the arteries also happens faster with long-term exposure to poor health behaviours and lifestyle risk factors, such as smoking or poor diet and if someone has pre-existing heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes and other vascular diseases.

 

“With arterial stiffness, it’s very important to get in early to try and prevent it,” said Chiesa. “With the aorta, once it has changed from being elastic, which is what you want, to being a stiffer artery, it’s very difficult to go back and make it less stiff. At the moment, there’s very few, if any, drugs at all which have been found that can actually reverse the process that well. So it’s very much a case of trying to stop it happening.”

 

The researchers highlighted the importance that changes in lifestyle made earlier in life could help to slow down arterial stiffening.

Dr Richard Oakley, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, which funded the study, said the findings “shed important light on a connection between the health of our blood vessels and changes in the brain”.

He added: “Dementia devastates lives, and with the number of people with dementia set to rise to one million by 2025 and more families affected than ever before, reducing our risk has never been more important. We know that what’s good for your heart is good for your head.”