Increasing physical activity, quitting smoking, and overcoming social isolation can cut risk of dementia in more than half the cases of the neurological condition worldwide, according to a new study.
Although health awareness campaigns for dementia prevention reach wide audiences, they lead to only limited changes in behaviour, say researchers from Curtin University in Australia.
So they conducted a new study to analyse public health campaigns and programmes across eight countries.
“There is still a widespread belief that dementia is an unavoidable part of ageing, which is not the case,” said Blossom Stephen, an author the study published in The Lancet Health Longevity.
“But even when people are aware of the risks, barriers such as time, cost, and motivation can prevent them from making changes to their lifestyle,” Dr Stephen said.
The findings showed a clear gap between what people know and what they do.
They provide further evidence on the relevance of specific modifiable risk factors for dementia.
“Up to 45 per cent of dementia cases are linked to modifiable factors we can change, such as our lifestyle, health status and environment,” said Mario Siervo, an author of the study.
“But simply telling people what those risks are isn’t enough; awareness campaigns are important, but on their own they rarely lead to meaningful or lasting behaviour change,” Dr Siervo said.
In the study, scientists followed nearly 500,000 adults for over a decade.
They found people with both low muscle strength and excess body fat, known as sarcopenic obesity, had a higher risk of developing dementia.
But obesity on its own was not associated with increased dementia risk if muscle strength was preserved.
This indicates that muscle strength and body composition play a significant role in dementia risk, indicating prevention approaches targeting these changes can help.
Other risk factors, including midlife hearing loss, high cholesterol, depression, hypertension, physical inactivity, diabetes, smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, later life social isolation, untreated vision loss, and exposure to air pollution, can also increase dementia risk, scientists warned.
However, researchers caution that awareness alone may not lead to long term commitment from those at risk.
Instead, a more engaging, personalised, and community-driven approach can genuinely influence behaviour and reduce dementia risk, they say.
“The most promising intervention combined risk assessment with structured education, achieving a 26 per cent improvement in modifiable risk factor status over 3 years,” they wrote in the study.
Some interactive approaches can be consistently more effective for those at risk to make specific lifestyle changes, researchers said.
These include online education programmes, personalised risk assessments, and programmes delivered by trusted community-level local figures.
“With dementia rates expected to rise significantly in coming decades, prevention is one of the most powerful tools we have -but to get there, we need to rethink how we communicate risk and support people to act on it,” Dr Stephan said.
