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• Posted August 1, 2024

14 Risk Factors Raise Your Odds for Odds for Dementia

New research has added two conditions to the list of 12 risk factors that boost the chances of a dementia diagnosis.

The good news? You can guard against the development of both and researchers offer advice on exactly how to do that.

In a study published Wednesday in The Lancet, scientists reported that new evidence now supports adding vision loss and high cholesterol to the list of modifiable risk factors for the memory-robbing illness.

“Our new report reveals that there is much more that can and should be done to reduce the risk of dementia. It’s never too early or too late to take action, with opportunities to make an impact at any stage of life,” lead study author Gill Livingston, from University College London, said in a journal news release.

“We now have stronger evidence that longer exposure to risk has a greater effect and that risks act more strongly in people who are vulnerable," Livingston added. "That’s why it is vital that we redouble preventive efforts towards those who need them most.”

The new risk factors for dementia join a list that includes:

• Less education

• Head injury

• Physical inactivity

• Smoking

• Excessive alcohol consumption

• High blood pressure 

• Obesity

• Diabetes

• Hearing loss

• Depression

• Infrequent social contact

• Air pollution

Luckily, years of research have suggested that eating healthy, exercising and avoiding both smoking and excessive alcohol use should improve your odds against dementia.

“Healthy lifestyles that involve regular exercise, not smoking, cognitive activity in midlife [including outside formal education] and avoiding excess alcohol can not only lower dementia risk but may also push back dementia onset," Livingston noted. "So, if people do develop dementia, they are likely to live less years with it. This has huge quality of life implications for individuals as well as cost-saving benefits for societies.”

For the two latest risk factors that were spotted, the study authors urged doctors to detect and treat high cholesterol from midlife on, while also making vision loss screening and treatment more accessible.

While air pollution is considered a lesser known risk factor for dementia, it's one that has become even more pressing as wildfires spread across the western United States and Canada this summer.

In a study published last year, researchers estimated nearly 188,000 dementia cases in the United States every year may have been caused by air pollution. 

More recently, a study presented at the Alzheimer's Association annual meeting in Philadelphia this week found exposure to wildfire smoke could raise the risk of being diagnosed with dementia. That early research is now undergoing peer review.

"Wildfires can be very disruptive to daily routines, and so it's possible that the stress, the anxiety, the disruption of day to day life could unmask an underlying dementia and somebody who has not been diagnosed," study author Holly Elser, a neurology resident at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told CBS News when the study was presented.

More information

The National Institute on Aging has more on Alzheimer's.

SOURCES: The Lancet, July 31, 2024; CBS News