Lifestyle factors and Alzheimer's disease prevention

Professor Kenneth Kosik discusses lifestyle factors that will delay onset of Alzheimer’s disease. These include diet, exercise, controlling hypertension, and not smoking.

The question often comes up about how we might prevent Alzheimer’s disease or delay its onset. This is a very exciting area right now because it turns out that there actually are things that we can all do, non-pharmacological things we can all do, that will delay its onset. The word has to get out about these interventions because they really can have an impact. They are things that will not surprise you. For instance, controlling cardiovascular risk factors – we know that if you are able to control hypertension, keep your cholesterol down, have a good diet and engage in exercise, stop smoking, control diabetes – all of those things not only affect the heart and the blood vessels in your body, but also affect your brain. The brain is an organ, like any other organ in your body, and reducing cardiovascular risk factors is not just prevention for heart attacks but is also prevention for Alzheimer’s disease. So we can work a lot harder to, I think, have an impact on this disease in that manner.