Skyline Happenings

KPWHRI and UCSF’s new, first-of-its-kind U.S. study aims to help seniors change habits to postpone or prevent dementia.

By Eric B. Larson, MD, MPH, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute executive director, and Kaiser Permanente Washington vice president for research and health care innovation

I’ve long been amazed by people’s attraction to the appeal of one-shot remedies for complex health problems, for even the most sophisticated thinkers. Consider Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, for example, who believed vitamin C could be a cure for many illnesses, including heart disease and cancer. If only his theories had proven true. But unfortunately, years of scientific inquiry debunked this idea.   

The same goes for many people’s hope that we can find a magic bullet to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and similar forms of cognitive decline. Dozens of experimental trials on various supplements and prescription drugs have been conducted over the years and all have come up short. So far, researchers have found no single substance that can stave off Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. And last month, following failures of yet two more drugs targeting Alzheimer’s-related plaque accumulating in the brain, Lon Schneider, MD, a prominent Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Southern California, told the Wall Street Journal that “the idea of finding one drug that will hit that one receptor and cure Alzheimer’s disease is fool’s gold.” He added that progress in drug research is unlikely “unless we understand and are able to grapple with the heterogeneity of the disease.”

Whether such research can ever bear fruit is any body’s guess. But here’s the good news: Today’s science points to common stepswe can take to postpone—and possibly even prevent—Alzheimer’s disease. These include several healthy behaviors such as getting regular exercise, eating a healthy diet, and managing chronic conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes. In fact, research teams have estimated that one in three cases of dementia might be prevented by addressing modifiable risk factors, such as physical inactivity, smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity.  And researchers globally are observing that although the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease is increasing as populations grow older, the percentage of people with Alzheimer’s is decreasing in populations where certain risk factors—such as smoking, low education, and physical inactivity—are in decline.

The opportunity for health care, then, is to help patients who are at risk for dementia to adopt the day-to-day habits for staying healthier and maintaining cognitive strength.