What We Are Learning About Protecting the Brain Before Symptoms Appear
For generations, Alzheimer’s disease has carried an especially frightening implication: if it is in your future, there is little you can do about it.
You might inherit the wrong genes. You might grow older and begin forgetting names, appointments or where you put your keys. Eventually, perhaps, a physician would diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Medicine might help manage some symptoms, but the underlying trajectory would largely continue.
That fatalistic view is beginning to change.
There is still no guaranteed way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, and there is no single lifestyle program that can promise protection. Genetics and aging remain important risk factors, and Alzheimer’s is an extraordinarily complex disease.
But an increasingly important body of research suggests something much more encouraging: brain health is influenced by many of the same factors that determine the health of the rest of the body, and many of those factors can be changed.
Author’s Note: This article was inspired by and draws in part from a conversation between Dr. Mark Hyman and neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter on The Dr. Hyman Show, presented in the video “Why 1 in 2 Seniors Get Alzheimer’s (And How to Be the Exception).”
