Some of these cost money, others are free. Based on extensive hard data.
Expert Panel: Target These 14 Factors to Cut Dementia Incidence by Nearly Half
— Update from Lancet Commission adds vision loss, high LDL to previous list
by John Gever, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today, July 31, 2024
The Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care has raised the number of modifiable risk factors definitively linked to cognitive loss to 14, based on research conducted since its last update in 2020.
The 14 factors include:
Education
Hearing loss
Depression
Head trauma from sports and bike riding
Physical activity
Smoking
Hypertension
Obesity
Type 2 diabetes
Alcohol drinking
Social isolation
Air pollution
Vision loss
High LDL
If all of these were fully addressed – providing higher education to everyone, ending obesity, making helmet use mandatory for youth, eliminating air pollution, etc. – worldwide risk for dementia would fall by 45%, the commission found in its review of nearly 600 scientific publications… [end quote]
I have practiced this low-risk lifestyle since I began working out at age 15.
My cardiologist asked me on Monday how I managed to stay so young. Since the vast majority of his practice is elderly he has a large group to compare me to. I answered, “I eat collagen every day. Plus I work out 5 days a week, don’t smoke, drink or use drugs.” I forgot to mention my low-stress lifestyle – stress is very aging. Not to mention the crystal clean air of the Olympic Peninsula.
Not all lifestyle factors. Why the deceptive title? If all of these were fully addressed – providing higher education to everyone, ending obesity, making helmet use mandatory for youth, eliminating air pollution, etc. – worldwide risk for dementia would fall by 45%, the commission found in its review of nearly 600 scientific publications.
End air pollution? Too silly to even laugh at. Just sad. End obesity will never happen because they make too much money treating it. They will, as they always have, keep lowering the"magic" weight limit to create obese people out of perfectly normal people. Some people will always be prone to overweight anyway so let’s dump on the “big boned gal” and “husky guy.”
Lower? What does that mean? “the risk”…? What’s that mean? What’s the risk? 45% of what? And as always there are plenty of studies that undermine this press release, so it has little value except for the obvious ones: smoking et al
Ending air pollution is a big dream. But we have lowered air pollution in the past. And we can get rid of dirty coal power plants and switch to hybrids and EVs and power them from wind and solar. Even powered from fossil sources moving the pollution away from cities would be a win.
Regardless of any magic number the data shows average weights have been increasing. Are you suggesting this isn’t true?
Have you asked him how come your stenosis reached the stage it did without being picked up sooner?
Only asking because on my most recent follow up, and me bellyaching yet again about how miffed I was to, effectively, be a subject of supervised neglect (didn’t quite phrase it that way, mind), my cardiologist actually did say that “someone should’ve said something”.
I’m totally convinced that my appearance and history of good self care has been something of a smokescreen to earlier diagnosis and remediation of my ASCVD. The Curse of the Healthy Lifestyle.
Burning fossil fuels is not the only cause of air pollution, so is wind blown sand. I’ve written before that sand from the Sahara blows across the Atlantic all the way to Trinidad which is a problem for open air painting of boats. Desertification is a mayor problem which includes air pollution. I watched a video about the Green Wall in China which claims it has reduced the air pollution in Beijing.
The basic technique is simple, change the topography of the land to slow rain water flow. The puddles retain the water long enough to let it seep into the ground replenishing the water table and top soil is not washed away. Nature does the rest.
Videos about Green Walls in China and Africa.
45 years on, China’s Great Green Wall continues to grow
How Africa’s Great Green Wall Will Make the Sahel Green Again
Green Walls are a much better solution than the war on Fossil Fuels and impossibe Net Zero policies.
Yes, I think that was the case for me also. My doctor didn’t listen to my heart because how could there be anything wrong with the heart of a person who does Zumba and lifts weights 5 days a week while enjoying the sensation of a heart rate of 135 beats per minute?
Little did I know that all that blood flow was shooting through an aortic valve opening of only 1 square cm while striking the ascending aorta at 4 times normal velocity.
Update on Monday’s visit to cardiologist: He will consult with both TAVR and surgical teams since it’s not clear whether my severely calcified bicuspid aortic valve is even a candidate for TAVR. Or whether my dilated ascending aorta will need reconstruction since it is 4.4 cm which is borderline for a bicuspid valve.
I have also bought a Galleri cancer detection kit ($945 out of pocket). My non-smoking mother got lung cancer at my age and I’m already 10 years out from treatment for double breast cancer. I want to make sure that I’m clear of cancer before investing in heart treatment.
@WendyBG …it’s good to be pro active but I doubt I would be using the results of the Galleri test in my decision-making with something like your aortic stenosis. Or my CAD, come to that (well, I didn’t, did I?)
CT angiography is quite amazing, really…dh has been getting his vessels looked at this way every 6 months for the past 5 years (set for a while longer with the HALT diagnosis on what should’ve been the last) Mine hasn’t been repeated yet but was an interesting experience. Not least because the nurse who was clerking me in beforehand remarked that “You don’t look like you have heart disease!”… and not in a way that was particularly encouraging, either. For all the world as if I was a malingerer or someone there for amusement only. I could’ve replied “Well…YOU DO!!” quite truthfully…but I didn’t.
If you have to take something like nitroglycerin beforehand (to dilate the vessels), be aware that you’ll get a sensation of having peed yourself. That wasn’t articulated clearly to me ahead of time and I was really worried even though I’d used the toilet immediately beforehand.
Another bit of proactivity which may be redundant …try to have a few goes on a treadmill ahead of time if you end up needing The Works. I don’t believe dh had ever used one before he started rehab, and the lack of familiarity with the feel of it combined with his sudden frailty had his heart rate shooting up and stopping the treadmill pretty much the whole of the first session.
Although it’s a definite relief, even though my husband’s lipid profile has been pretty close to mine…HDL-C a bit lower, triglycerides and bit higher, maybe…and he’s certainly been less active/fit, his coronary arteries are as clean as a whistle (as they were in the pre op catheterization and the “post mortem” pathology report) Another reason why I thought that CAC scan I had just over 2 years ago would be reassuring.
