The Connection Between Physical Health and Dementia Development: The Need for Early Intervention

Physical health is a key wellbeing goal. To avoid diseases and disorders, such as dementia, later in life, it’s imperative for individuals to maintain physical health throughout their lives. According to a report published in Lancet, there are 12 modifiable risk factors that may delay or prevent dementia development later in life.¹

Focusing on education, nutrition, health care, and lifestyle changes is important for all individuals, especially for the prevention of dementia. The development of dementia is associated with level of education achieved, hypertension, hearing impairment, smoking, obesity, depression, physical inactivity, diabetes, low social contact, alcohol consumption, traumatic brain injury, and air pollution.¹ These 12 modifiable risk factors are associated with 40% of worldwide dementia cases.¹ Staying healthy is essential to maintain cognition, making early sustained preventative interventions crucial.¹

It's worth noting that several of the modifiable risk factors are cardiovascular risk factors. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 1,518,028 patients (54% women) with median age of 54 years showed that body-mass index, systolic blood pressure, non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, current smoking habits, and diabetes attributed to 57.2% incident cardiovascular disease among women and 52.6% of incident cardiovascular disease among men.²

As pharmacists conduct mediation management services with their patients, asking about these risk factors and addressing them across the health care continuum of practitioners is important to reduce age-specific incidence of dementia.

References

1. Livingston G, Huntley J, et al. Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission. Lancet. 2020;396(10248):413-446. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30367-6.
2. Global Cardiovascular Risk Consortium. Global effect of modifiable risk factors on cardiovascular disease and mortality. N Engl J Med. Published online August 26, 2023. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2206916