Preventing dementia

Your weekly roundup of other hopefully helpful things

Photo by notorious v1ruS on Unsplash

Almost half of dementia cases are preventable, according the brand-new 2024 update to the standing Lancet Commission on dementia prevention.

First up: the thing you don’t see on there is ‘menopause’ or ‘estrogen deficiency’, no matter how many people are gunning for it to be that way.

The commission has officially added high cholesterol and vision loss to their list of modifiable risk factors, bringing the number to 14. (I was just being lazy about getting my glasses and squinting at something the other day and I actually wondered – knowing that hearing is related – ‘could this be increasing my dementia chances’?)

There is an argument to be made that the ‘50 percent preventable’ figure could be much higher if all the over-the-counter and prescribed medications that are associated with cognitive decline were to be factored in. However, this is a mainstream medicine commission and we can’t expect them to start criticizing the medication their members so…