Age Wise
Dementia Starts Sooner Than You Think
But it’s never too late (nor too soon) to take these preventive steps
Long before you routinely forget where you left the keys or why you walked into a room, the wheels of cognitive decline could be turning in your brain, setting you on a course to eventual dementia.
But dementia is not inevitable, experts say.
Several new and recent studies strengthen the case for prevention strategies that you can employ starting right now — no matter how old you are — to improve your chances of staying sharp down the road.
“The underlying process related to cognitive decline starts in early adult life, and probably even earlier,” Walter Willett, MD, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, tells me. “Thus I don’t think we can start too soon.”
Before you know it
For reasons still somewhat mysterious, brain cells sometimes stop working, and connections between brain centers weaken, leading to poorer memory and thinking ability at the root of most forms of dementia. (One particular type, vascular dementia, is brought on by a stroke or other event that restricts blood flow to the brain.)
