
January 15, 2025
Eight heart-healthy habits in middle age may help to keep the brain in good working order for decades, researchers report. The findings underscore the importance of heart and vascular health in helping to stave off dementia and other serious brain problems later in life.
The eight cardiovascular health factors, known as the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8, are: being active; eating better; maintaining a healthy weight; not smoking; maintaining a healthy blood pressure; getting enough sleep; and controlling cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
“Brain health is paramount for the optimal well-being of every person, enabling us to function at our highest level and constantly adapt in the world,” said study author Dr. Santiago Clocchiatti-Tuozzo of Yale University. “Our study found that making these healthy lifestyle choices in middle age can have meaningful impacts on brain health later in life.”
For the study, researchers reviewed medical data from 316,127 men and women whose average age was 56. They assessed participants’ adherence to the eight cardiovascular health factors and organized them into three categories: optimal, intermediate and poor. Of the total group, 64,474 people had optimal scores, 190,919 people were in the intermediate category, and 60,734 people had poor scores.
Researchers then evaluated health records to identify who developed any of the following three serious brain ailments over the next five years: Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia; stroke; or late-onset depression. Poor brain health was defined as the development of any of these conditions during the five-year follow up period.
The group studied was relatively young, so it’s not surprising that only 1.2 percent of the participants developed any of these conditions, with a total of 3,753 cases of dementia, stroke, or the onset of depression later in life. But after adjusting for factors that could affect the risk of these three neurological conditions, such as age, sex, race and ethnicity, the researchers found that people with poor scores on the healthy lifestyle factors were more than twice as likely to develop any of the three neurological conditions compared to those people with optimal scores. The researchers also found that people who had an intermediate score had a 37 percent higher risk of having one of the three neurological conditions than those who had an optimal score.
The study showed only an association between heart-related health and lifestyle behaviors and brain risks and cannot prove cause and effect. But the researchers repeated the study in a separate group of 68,407 participants followed for a total of five years and found similar results, further bolstering the results.
“Because the risk factors we looked at are all ones that people can work to improve, our findings highlight the potential brain health benefits of using these eight cardiovascular and brain health factors to guide healthy lifestyle choices,” Dr. Clocchiatti-Tuozzo said. “More research is needed to understand this link between lifestyle habits and brain health, as well as how social factors like race and ethnicity can influence this connection.” The findings were published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The results are consistent with earlier studies showing that men and women who have the highest levels of cardiovascular health are at less risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia than those who were less heart healthy. Those with the highest levels of cardiovascular health also tend to have slower rates of cognitive decline than their less healthy peers.
The findings add to evidence that what’s good for the heart is good for the brain and underscore the importance of regular monitoring and treatment for those with heart risks. Such treatment can not only help to prevent heart attacks and strokes. They may also help to curb declines in memory and thinking skills, and possibly help lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in old age.
By ALZinfo.org, The Alzheimer’s Information Site. Reviewed by Eric Schmidt, Ph.D. Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation at The Rockefeller University.
Santiago Clocchiatti-Tuozzo, Cyprien A. Rivier, Daniela Renedo, et al, “Life’s Essential 8 and Poor Brain Health Outcomes in Middle-Aged Adults.” Neurology, November 26, 2024