Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Jun 29:2010:393579.
doi: 10.4061/2010/393579.

Prevention of dementia: focus on lifestyle

Maria Cristina Polidori  1 , Gereon Nelles, Ludger Pientka
Affiliations

Prevention of dementia: focus on lifestyle

Maria Cristina Polidori et al. Int J Alzheimers Dis. .

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to summarize current knowledge on the possible advantages of lifestyle interventions, with particular attention to physical fitness, cognitive activity, leisure and social activity as well as nutrition. There is a large amount of published papers providing partial evidence and asserting the need for immediate, appropriate preventive lifestyle measures against dementia and AD development. Nevertheless, there are currently great difficulties in drafting effective guidelines in this field. This depends mainly upon lack of randomized controlled trials assessing benefits versus risks of particular lifestyle interventions strategies. However, due to the rapid increase of dementia burden, lifestyle factors and their amelioration should be already made part of decision making in light of their health-maintaining effects while awaiting for results of well-designed large prospective cohort studies in dementia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Network of factors possibly and/or certainly influencing dementia risk. Factors specifically addressed in this paper are highlighted in bold.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Gavrilov LA, Heuveline P. Aging of population. In: Demeny P, McNicoll G, editors. The Encyclopedia of Population. New York, NY, USA: Macmillan; 2003.
    1. Essink-Bot M-L, Pereira J, Packer C, et al. Cross-national comparability of burden of disease estimates: the European Disability Weights Project. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 2002;80(8):644–652. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhu X, Lee H-G, Perry G, Smith MA. Alzheimer disease, the two-hit hypothesis: an update. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. 2007;1772(4):494–502. - PubMed
    1. Yeo LHJ, Horan MA, Jones M, Pendleton N. Perceptions of risk and prevention of dementia in the healthy elderly. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders. 2007;23(6):368–371. - PubMed
    1. Berr C, Wancata J, Ritchie K. Prevalence of dementia in the elderly in Europe. European Neuropsychopharmacology. 2005;15(4):463–471. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources